摘要：This paper offers a comprehensive comparison of the structure of banking and financial markets
in the euro area. Based on this, several hypotheses about the role of banks in monetary policy
transmission are developed. Many of the predictions that have been proposed for the U.S. are
deemed unlikely to apply in Europe. Testing these hypotheses we find that monetary policy does
alter bank loan supply, with the effects most dependent on the liquidity of individual banks.
Unlike in the US, the size of a bank does generally not explain its lending reaction. We also show
that the standard publicly available database, BankScope, obscures the heterogeneity across
banks. Indeed, for several types of questions BankScope data suggest very different answers than
more complete data that reside at national central banks.
关键词：monetary policy transmission, financial structure, bank lending
