This paper aims at establishing the link between economic performance, financial depth and financial stability in the European Union from 1998 to 2011. We use the standard framework -both in terms of variables and econometric method -of Beck and Levine (2004) to estimate these relationships. Our results suggest that the traditional result that financial depth positively influences economic performance (or components of aggregate dynamics like consumption, investment or disposable income) is not confirmed for European countries. Furthermore, we use different measures of financial instability (institutional index, microeconomic indicators, and our own statistical index derived from a Principal Component Analysis) and find that financial instability has a negative effect on economic growth.

This paper aims at establishing the link between economic performance, financial depth and financial stability in the European Union from 1998 to 2011. We use the standard framework -both in terms of variables and econometric method -of Beck and Levine (2004) to estimate these relationships. Our results suggest that the traditional result that financial depth positively influences economic performance (or components of aggregate dynamics like consumption, investment or disposable income) is not confirmed for European countries. Furthermore, we use different measures of financial instability (institutional index, microeconomic indicators, and our own statistical index derived from a Principal Component Analysis) and find that financial instability has a negative effect on economic growth.

This paper aims at investigating first the (possibly time-varying) empirical relationship between the level and conditional variances of price and financial stability, and second, the effects of macro and policy variables on this relationship in the United States and the Eurozone. Three empirical methods are used to examine the relevance of A.J. Schwartz's "conventional wisdom" that price stability would yield financial stability. Using simple correlations, VAR and Dynamic Conditional Correlations, we reject the hypothesis that price stability is positively correlated to financial stability. We then discuss the empirical appropriateness of the "leaning against the wind" monetary policy approach.

We explore empirically the theoretical prediction that optimism or pessimism have aggregate effects, in the context of monetary policy. First, we quantify the tone conveyed by FOMC policymakers in their statements using computational linguistics. Second, we identify sentiment as the unpredictable component of tone, orthogonal to fundamentals, expectations, monetary shocks and investors' sentiment. Third, we estimate the impact of FOMC sentiment on the term structure of private interest rate expectations using a high-frequency methodology and an ARCH model. Optimistic FOMC sentiment increases policy expectations primarily at the one-year maturity. We also find that sentiment affects inflation and industrial production beyond monetary shocks.