Suchergebnisse

Sin dagli anni Ottanta del secolo scorso, la comunicazione delle banche centrali ha vissuto un cambiamento radicale. La letteratura è passata da un'attenzione ai livelli ottimali di segretezza delle banche centrali ad un'analisi dei benefici della comunicazione e della trasparenza. Le banche centrali hanno gradualmente intensificato la loro attività di comunicazione. Ciò vale anche per la BCE, che ha adottato una politica di trasparenza avanzata già al momento del lancio dell'euro nel 1999, e da allora ha gradualmente ampliato le sue attività di comunicazione. L'articolo passa in rassegna le ragioni di questa evoluzione - o rivoluzione - della comunicazione delle banche centrali, concentrandosi su tre tendenze ed illustrandole con il caso concreto della BCE. La tendenza di più lunga data, più o meno sin dagli anni Settanta e Ottanta, è un legittimo aumento della domanda di trasparenza come parte di un cambiamento della società e come correlato naturale di una maggiore indipendenza delle banche centrali. Una seconda tendenza, più recente, è la crescente consapevolezza che la comunicazione non è solo una risposta alla domanda del pubblico, ma anche una componente chiave di un moderno kit di strumenti di politica monetaria. Una terza tendenza riguarda il crescente interesse dell'opinione pubblica - ma anche la crescente critica dell'opinione pubblica - nei confronti delle istituzioni in generale e delle banche centrali in particolare, che è diventata particolarmente intensa all'indomani della crisi iniziata nel 2008.

Since 2008, Emerging Europe has been in the grip of a severe economic and financial crisis. The region is now gradually recovering but the speed and sustainability of this recovery and the prospects for economic reconvergence with the rest of the EU are still uncertain. Against this background, policy makers, high-level practitioners and experts from central banks, international institutions and academia identify the main reasons for the crisis and the main challenges for the recovery process. Essays highlight the significant cross-country differences within Emerging Europe including the Western Balkans and the Commonwealth of Independent States, focusing on the region's growth model as well as the pros and cons of financial integration and the challenges to financial stability.

In this paper, we take a systematic look at global imbalances. First, we provide a definition of the phenomenon, and relate global imbalances to widening external positions of systemically important economies that reflect distortions or entail risks for the global economy. Second, we provide an operational content to this definition by measuring trends in external imbalances over the past decade and putting these in a historical perspective. We argue that three main features set today's situation apart from past episodes of growing external imbalances - (i) the emergence of new players, in particular emerging market economies such as China and India, which are quickly catching up with the advanced economies; (ii) an unprecedented wave of financial globalisation, with more integrated global financial markets and increasing opportunities for international portfolio diversification, also characterised by considerable asymmetries in the level of market completeness across countries; and (iii) the favourable global macroeconomic and financial environment, with record high global growth rates in recent years, low financial market volatility and easy global financing conditions over a long time period of time, running at least until the summer of 2007. Finally, we provide an analytical overview of the fundamental causes and drivers of global imbalances. The central argument is that the increase in imbalances has been driven by a unique combination of structural and cyclical determinants.

This paper reviews financial stability challenges in the EU candidate countries Croatia, Turkey and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It examines the fi nancial sectors in these three economies, which, while at very different stages of development and embedded in quite diverse economic settings, are all in a process of rapid financial deepening. This manifests itself most clearly in the rapid pace of growth in credit to the private sector. This process of financial deepening is largely a natural and welcome catching-up phenomenon, but it has also increased the credit risks borne by the banking sectors in the three economies. These credit risks are compounded by the widespread use of foreign currency-denominated or -indexed loans, leaving unhedged bank customers exposed to potential swings in exchange rates or foreign interest rates. Moreover, these financial risks form part of a broader nexus of vulnerabilities in the economies concerned, in particular the external vulnerabilities arising from increasing private sector external indebtedness. That said, the paper also fi nds that the authorities in the three countries have taken several policy actions to reduce these fi nancial and external vulnerabilities and to strengthen the resilience of the financial sectors.

This paper reviews financial stability challenges in the EU candidate countries Croatia, Turkey and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It examines the fi nancial sectors in these three economies, which, while at very different stages of development and embedded in quite diverse economic settings, are all in a process of rapid financial deepening. This manifests itself most clearly in the rapid pace of growth in credit to the private sector. This process of financial deepening is largely a natural and welcome catching-up phenomenon, but it has also increased the credit risks borne by the banking sectors in the three economies. These credit risks are compounded by the widespread use of foreign currency-denominated or -indexed loans, leaving unhedged bank customers exposed to potential swings in exchange rates or foreign interest rates. Moreover, these financial risks form part of a broader nexus of vulnerabilities in the economies concerned, in particular the external vulnerabilities arising from increasing private sector external indebtedness. That said, the paper also fi nds that the authorities in the three countries have taken several policy actions to reduce these fi nancial and external vulnerabilities and to strengthen the resilience of the financial sectors.