Seminar: Bernhard Winkler, "A flow-of-funds perspective on the financial crisis: the Euro Area"

Past Event

Date
 30 September 2011, 3:15pm - 5:00pm

Location
 Lecture Theatre, Oxford Martin School
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Speaker: Bernhard Winkler, Senior Advisor, Directorate Monetary Policy, European Central Bank (ECB)

Abstract: The global financial crisis that erupted in 2008 has shown how a build-up of financial imbalances in various sectors of the economy, in conjunction with innovation in the financial system, can give rise to powerful feedback loops between the financial and the real side of the economy. The crisis has underlined the importance of developments in balance sheets as well as financial flows and the need to look at both quantities and price variables. This seminar examines the evolution of the various stages of the financial crisis through the lens of the integrated Euro Area Accounts, which provide comprehensive information on economic and financial developments by institutional sector. It highlights three main issues: the evolution and interplay of sectoral financial balances, the dynamics of sectoral leverage and the associated changes in financial intermediation patterns in successive stages of the crisis.

Bio: Bernhard Winkler studied Economics and Political Science at the University of Trier, holds an M.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford (1993), visited UC Berkeley in 1994-5 and received a PhD. from the European University Institute, Florence in 1997. He has worked at the Deutsche Bundesbank before joining the European Central Bank’s Directorate-General Research as economist in July 1998. Subsequently he held positions as Senior Economist in the Monetary Policy Strategy Division, in the Counsel to the Executive Board as adviser to Prof. Otmar Issing, and since May 2005 as Senior Adviser in the Directorate Monetary Policy responsible, inter alia, for flow-of-funds analysis at the ECB and the co-ordination of financial projections as part of the quarterly macroeconomic projections exercises. He has published on issues related to monetary and fiscal policy in a monetary union, such as on monetary policy communication and on the Stability and Growth Pact as well as on cross-checking and the flow of funds.