The third aspect is the impact on financial intermediaries. The effect of monetary easing usually materializes when firms and households increase their expenditures, induced by low interest rates. Within that process, we should bear in mind that there are financial intermediaries and financial markets that connect monetary policy conducted by the central bank with firms and households.
Looking back over the last ten years, it is clear that the euro area has suffered a growth deficit when compared, for example, with the US. Since the mid-1990s euro area real GDP has grown at an average rate of around 2% per annum, whereas growth in the US has been almost one and half percentage points higher. Why is this?