期刊名称:Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN:1830-3420
电子版ISSN:1830-3439
出版年度:2010
出版社:European Central Bank
摘要:Banks do not charge explicit fees for many of the services they provide but the service payment is bundled with the offered interest rates. This output therefore has to be imputed using estimates of the opportunity cost of funds. We argue that rather than using the single short-term, low-risk interest rate as in current official statistics, reference rates should more closely match the risk characteristics of loans and deposits. For the euro area, imputed bank output is, on average, 24 to 40 percent lower than according to current methodology. This implies an average downward adjustment of euro area GDP (at current prices) between 0.16 and 0.27 percent.