Three essays on the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area.

Summary After September 2008, due to the freezing of the interbank market, a lack of liquidity, a loss of confidence and the difficulties of financial institutions, the transmission of monetary policy within the euro zone was severely impaired. The European Central Bank (ECB) has therefore had to resort to unconventional monetary policies. Considering, within the Eurozone, the constraints imposed on the central bank and the fragmentation of the financial markets, the objective of this empirical thesis is to evaluate the transmission channels of the ECB's conventional and non-conventional monetary policies. Since banks' lending behavior is related to their funding costs, the first essay focuses on the transmission channel of bank lending. It studies the evolution of syndicated lending activities of European financial institutions and their response to ECB policies. Central bank communication is of particular importance in a monetary union. The second and third essays focus on the signaling channel. The second essay examines communication during monthly press conferences and its effects on the predictability of monetary policy decisions and on financial market returns and volatility. The last essay focuses on the use of forward guidance, an unconventional communication informing markets of the future level of short-term interest rates. It studies the effectiveness of this announcement and its ability to influence the interest rate forecasts made by market participants.