SUERF BAFFI Bocconi e-Lecture

Negative Interest Rates: Effectiveness and Side Effects – Taking Stock

May 06, 2021 15:00 - 16:15 CET (UTC+01:00)

Date:    Thursday, 6 May 2021
Time:    15:00-16:15 CET
Format: Cisco Webex

About the webinar
Over past years, several central banks around the world have lowered policy rates below zero. Also, bond yields have entered negative territory as a result of central banks’ asset purchase programmes. How effective has negative interest rate policy been in stimulating aggregate demand and in bringing inflation up back to target? What were the effects on banks’ profitability and on the monetary transmission mechanism? What other side effects emerged?

	Jakob de Haan is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Groningen. He has been Head of Research of De Nederlandsche Bank and also Scientific Director of SOM, the graduate school and research institute of the faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen. He has published extensively on issues like public debt, monetary policy, central bank independence, political and economic freedom and European integration. He is member of the editorial board of Public Choice, European Union Politics, and the Journal of International Money and Finance. He has been editor of the European Journal of Political Economy, and President of the European Public Choice Society. He is also research fellow of CESIfo.
	Gaston Gelos is Assistant Director and Chief of the Monetary and Macroprudential Policies Division in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department. Previously, he headed the Global Financial Stability Analysis Division, where he was responsible for the analytical chapters of the Global Financial Stability Report. Prior to that, he held positions as an Advisor at the IMF Institute, as a Deputy Division Chief in the Western Hemisphere Department, and as the Fund’s Resident Representative for Argentina and Uruguay. He also worked as an economist in the European, Research, and Western Hemisphere Departments. His research covers a range of topics including financial liberalization, banking issues in emerging markets, the behavior of international investors, financial contagion and crises, and inflation dynamics. Mr. Gelos holds a Ph.D. from Yale and a "Diplom" from Bonn University. He has worked at the IMF since 1998.
	Florian Heider  is Head of the Financial Markets Research Section at the European Central Bank, a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation. He is also a Fellow of the Centre for Financial Studies at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and a Research Affiliate at the IWH Institute for Economic Research in Halle. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Université catholique de Louvain and a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University. His research focuses on banking, market infrastructures, and corporate finance, both from a theoretical and an empirical angle. Recent work focuses on the transmission of negative policy rates, the efficiency of fire sales, and functioning of money markets. His work has published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and other peer reviewed academic journals.
	Jesper Berg joined the Danish FSA as Director General in October 2015. From 2010 to 2015 he was a member of the Executive Board at Nykredit Bank, a part of the Nykredit Group, which is the largest lender in Denmark. He was also responsible for regulatory affairs and ratings at the Group level. Jesper Berg has previously held positions as Head of Financial Stability, Head of Market Operations and Head of Payment Systems at the Danish Central Bank. He also served as Head of the Capital Markets and Financial Structure Division at the European Central Bank from 2000 to 2004 and was earlier economist at IMF’s Exchange and Trade Relations Department. Jesper Berg is MSc in Economics and Management from the University of Copenhagen and has an MBA from IMD. He is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He has written extensively on financial issues, and was the co-author of ‘Finansernes Fald’, a book about the financial crisis, which was published in 2009.

With friendly support of the Intesa Sanpaolo Chair in Economics of Financial Regulation, Bocconi University.
SUERF gratefully acknowledges professional technical support of SUERF online events by the OeNB’s Information Management and Services Division.