January 2022

Post n°251

Monetary-fiscal policy interactions: the post-pandemic challenges

Published on 01/18/2022

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By Jean Barthélemy, Katja Schmidt and Giulia Sestieri

Both monetary and fiscal expansions have been needed during the past recent period in the euro area to sustain demand and inflation, mitigate the costs of the pandemic crisis and ensure a robust recovery. Conflicts of objectives between the two policies could, however, arise again in the future, in particular as a result of the ongoing accumulation of public debts and the large expansion of the Eurosystem’s balance sheet. Building on the work done during the recent ECB strategy review, this blog recalls the recent monetary and fiscal actions and presents some of the trade-offs for the post-pandemic period.

Chart 1. Public debt to GDP ratio in the euro area and for its largest countries (left hand side axis) and evolution of the Eurosystem balance sheet over GDP (right hand size axis)
Chart 1. Public debt to GDP ratio in the euro area and for its largest countries (left hand side axis) and evolution of the Eurosystem balance sheet over GDP (right hand size axis) Source: Eurostat, National accounts, Eurosystem data. Authors’ calculation.
Updated on 01/18/2022 18:46
Post n°250

The Fed’s monetary policy influences the US corporate debt structure

Published on 01/14/2022

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Urszula Szczerbowicz

The Fed’s monetary policy influences firms’ debt composition. Conventional monetary policy (CMP) easing increases firms’ bank loans and reduces their bond issuance, while unconventional monetary policy (UMP) easing stimulates corporate bond issuance. UMP affects the US corporate debt structure through a portfolio-rebalancing channel, rather than a bank lending one.

Chart 1: Evolution of loans and debt securities of US non-financial corporations
Chart 1: Evolution of loans and debt securities of US non-financial corporations Source: Financial Accounts of the United States, L.103.
Updated on 01/14/2022 14:15
Post n°249

System-wide stress tests: a deep dive into the financial system

Published on 01/07/2022

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By Gábor Fukker, Thibaud Piquard, Aurore Schilte and Matthias Sydow

The growth of non-bank financial intermediation calls for a more holistic risk assessment encompassing the entire financial system and the interactions between financial intermediaries. The incorporation of investment funds into a stress test for banks further increases the impact of a shock in terms of depletion of bank capital by 1%.

Chart 1: Representation of securities holdings networks for euro area banks and funds.
Chart 1: Representation of securities holdings networks for euro area banks and funds. Source: Sydow et al. (2021). Note: Each dot is an entity of all possible sectors. Each line shows that a bank (blue dot) or a fund (purple dot) holds a security issued by another entity.
Updated on 01/07/2022 15:06
Post n°248

Biodiversity loss and financial stability

Published on 01/05/2022

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By Mathilde Salin, Romain Svartzman, Etienne Espagne, Julien Gauthey, Paul Hadji-Lazaro, Thomas Allen, Joshua Berger, Julien Calas, Antoine Godin and Antoine Vallier

Like climate change, biodiversity loss could be a source of financial risk. As a first analysis, we study the dependencies of the securities portfolio held by French financial institutions on ecosystem services, and the impacts on biodiversity of the activities financed.

Chart 1: Dependencies of the securities portfolio held by French financial institutions on ecosystem services
Chart 1: Dependencies of the securities portfolio held by French financial institutions on ecosystem services Source: Svartzman et al. (2021). Note: 42% of the value of the securities portfolio held by French financial institutions was issued by companies that are highly or very highly dependent on at least one ecosystem service.
Updated on 01/06/2022 16:45