Mortgage lending,monetary policy,and prudential measures in small euro‐area economies: Evidence from Ireland and the Netherlands

This paper examines whether the increased use of macroprudential policies since the global financial crisis has affected the impact of (euro‐area and foreign) monetary policy on mortgage lending in Ireland and the Netherlands, which are both small open economies in the euro area. Using quarterly bank‐level data on domestic lending in both countries for 2003–2018, we find that restrictive euro‐area monetary policy shocks reduce the growth of mortgage lending. We find evidence that stricter domestic prudential regulation mitigates this effect in Ireland, but not so in the Netherlands. There is some weak evidence for an international bank lending channel that can be mitigated by stricter lender‐based domestic prudential regulation.     

Domestic Credit Growth and International Capital Flows*

During the pre‐crisis period, Europe experienced substantial cross‐country variation in domestic credit growth and cross‐border capital flows. We investigate the inter‐relations between domestic credit growth and international capital flows during the period 1993–2008, with a special focus on the boom period of 2003–2008. We establish that domestic credit growth in European countries is strongly related to net debt inflows but not to net equity inflows. This pattern also holds for an extended sample of 54 advanced and emerging economies.     

Order-Dependent Knowledge and the Economics of Science

Economists approaching the study of science typically assume the applicability of a market analogy, but then base their analysis on the presumption that science constitutes an area of pervasive market failure. Given the interactions that are actually observed to occur between scientists, we suspect that the failure is in the analogy, not in the putative market. In considering how one might better apply the economic way of thinking to the understanding of science as an activity, we suggest that it is necessary to specify exactly how scientific interaction differs from market interaction, and to be clear about how the behavior of interacting scientists might be modeled in terms of the general pursuit of self-interest in a noncatallactic context. Our model of science portrays an institutionalized mode of interaction between scientists involving the publication, use, and citation of scientific papers, and it is in the exploration of the individual incentives thrown up by this arrangement that the interesting empirical implications arise. We give a short exposition of the possible lines of investigation that could be followed based on this approach.