Since France voted “no” to the referendum on the Constitutional Treaty, Europe seems to be totally paralysed. Does that worry you? J.-C. T. Europe has experienced and is experiencing a complex historical episode in a rapidly changing world. I remain very optimistic.
While such effects have been extensively studied in other jurisdictions where large-scale asset purchases were introduced, the way in which they work may differ in the euro area compared with other regions given our specific financial structure – namely the prevalence of bank-based over market-based intermediation. Indeed, I expect that an important transmission channel for our new measures will be via banks.