Monetary transmission and equity markets in the EU

We assess the role of equity markets in the transmission of monetary policy in the EU. We use a structural VAR model based upon the models of Kim and Roubini [2000] and Brischetto and Voss [1999] and we find that there are differences in monetary policy transmission across our sample of countries. The largest output losses following a monetary shock are seen in a core of euro area countries: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, and Germany. Germany also displays the largest response of prices and is followed by Austria and Finland. Variance decompositions also suggest that the bank based core euro area countries are different from market based countries. As regards the channels of transmission we find no evidence to suggest an equity wealth effect channel in the euro area and only circumstantial evidence for the UK. We do, however, find that those countries that use equity finance (the UK and the Netherlands) suffer smaller output losses following a monetary shock indicating that a bank lending channel is less likely to be present in these countries.