IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lmu/muenar/84737.html

Capital flows in the euro area and TARGET2 balances

Author

Listed:
  • Hristov, Nikolay
  • Huelsewig, Oliver
  • Wollmershaeuser, Timo

Abstract

This paper explores how the uneven recourse by national banking systems in the euro area to the ECB's unconventional refinancing operations that led to the accumulation of large TARGET2 balances at the NCBs has contributed to the evolution of aggregate economic activity in important member states of the euro area. For the period between 2008 and 2014 we estimate a panel VAR model and identify the structural shocks by means of sign restrictions. Our results suggest that the build-up of TARGET2 balances was driven mainly by capital flow shocks while being barely responsive to other aggregate shocks. Furthermore, on the basis of counterfactual experiments we find that the ability to build up sizeable TARGET2 liabilities has contributed substantially to avoiding deeper recessions in the distressed euro area member countries like Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal, while to a smaller extent depressing aggregate economic activity in core member states such as Germany, the Netherlands and Finland.

Suggested Citation

  • Hristov, Nikolay & Huelsewig, Oliver & Wollmershaeuser, Timo, 2020. "Capital flows in the euro area and TARGET2 balances," Munich Reprints in Economics 84737, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:84737
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ferrari Minesso, Massimo & Gräb, Johannes, 2022. "E pluribus plures: shock dependency of the USD pass-through to real and financial variables," Working Paper Series 2684, European Central Bank.
    2. Krahnen, Jan Pieter, 2018. "Über Scheinriesen: Was TARGET-Salden tatsächlich bedeuten. Eine finanzökonomische Überprüfung," SAFE White Paper Series 56, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    3. Belke, Ansgar & Klose, Jens, 2021. "Safe haven flows, natural interest rates and secular stagnation—Empirical evidence for Euro area countries," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1164-1190.
    4. Sinn Hans-Werner, 2019. "Der Streit um die Targetsalden : Kommentar zu Martin Hellwigs Artikel „Target-Falle oder Empörungsfalle?“," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 20(3), pages 170-217, September.
    5. Giovannini, Alessandro & Ioannou, Demosthenes & Stracca, Livio, 2022. "Public and private risk sharing: friends or foes? The interplay between different forms of risk sharing," Occasional Paper Series 295, European Central Bank.
    6. Chmielewski Tomasz & Sławiński Andrzej, 2019. "Lessons from TARGET2 imbalances: The case for the ECB being a lender of last resort," Economics and Business Review, Sciendo, vol. 5(2), pages 48-63, June.
    7. Bettendorf, Timo & Jochem, Axel, 2021. "What drives the German TARGET balances? Evidence from a BVAR approach," Discussion Papers 12/2021, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    8. Constantin Drott & Stefan Goldbach & Axel Jochem, 2025. "Determinants of Net Transactions in TARGET2 of European Banks Based on Micro-data," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 25-61, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • F45 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Macroeconomic Issues of Monetary Unions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:84737. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.