Abstract
We study central bank liquidity provisions to the banking sector in a DSGE model estimated for the Euro Area with financial frictions on the supply and demand side of credit. We show that liquidity provisions, as in the ECB’s recent Long Term Refinancing Operations, can be welfare-enhancing or welfare-reducing when both these financial frictions exist. They relax the banks’ leverage constraint and induce banks to provide more credit. This reduces the credit spread facing firms and increases investment, but this comes at the cost of implementing the liquidity policy. We compute a welfare optimized liquidity rule for the central bank responding to output, inflation and the interest rate spread that can increase welfare in comparison with the case of no liquidity provision. Crucially, this result is conditional on a high level of central bank monitoring of the its loanable funds to banks