(2007). 5  See Bernanke and Blinder (1988), Bernanke and Gertler (1989, 1995), Bernanke and Gertler and Gilchrist (1999) and Kashyap and Stein (2000) for some of the seminal contributions to this line of the literature. Empirical findings for the euro area can be found in Ehrmann et al. (2001), Angeloni and Ehrmann (2003), Gambacorta and Mistrulli (2004), Altunbas et al. (2007).
The euro was launched as the new common currency of 11 participating EU Member States and, undoubtedly, the newly created currency area has a considerable weight in the world economy: it accounts for a 22% share of world GDP, 20% of world exports and hosts the world’s largest banking sector.