Philippe Gilles

The ECB, Between Conservatism and Pragmatism

Abstract The 2008 and 2011 crises have durably affected the conditions of monetary policy transmission, particularly in the euro area. However, it is generally considered that the European Central Bank’s (ECB) monetary policy truly became unconventional only at a late stage. Our contribution is threefold. We first show that the notion of “conventional” monetary policy, which is the reference of this assessment, is a recent theoretical construction. Secondly, the mandate of the ECB, which is its institutional expression, may raise specific difficulties in managing major financial crises, particularly with regards to the forward guidance of expectations and the commitment to an accommodative policy. Finally, the resulting policies have, at this stage, paradoxically achieved acceptable levels of macroeconomic and overall financial stability, but failed to restore a private funding supply to the banking sector enabling it to play its normal role in financing economic activity.

Measuring Efficiency of Islamic and Conventional Banks in MENA Region

This study aims to measure the performance and efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks in the MENA region and its determinants. The authors use for this purpose the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and the analysis of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) method for calculating the technical efficiency scores. The results reveal similar trends for both types of performance measurement. The banks category analysis revealed that conventional banks are more efficient than Islamic banks. Despite technological changes experienced by the banking system in the MENA region, the efficiency analysis shows that the technical inefficiency results from the pure technical inefficiency. Finally, the effectiveness of banks in the MENA region is sensitive to variables such as the crisis, deposits, capitalization and including especially variables related to business lines.