The financial relations between the Nationalbank and the government

Walpurga Köhler-Töglhofer, Doris Prammer and Lukas Reiss ()
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Lukas Reiss: Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Economic Analysis Division

Monetary Policy & the Economy, 2016, issue 3, 77-93

Abstract: The privilegirte oesterreichische National-Bank was founded in 1816, but the central government has held a major share in the Austrian central bank only since 1955. However, the government has always participated significantly in the Nationalbank’s profits via various channels. In this paper we analyze the financial relations between the Nationalbank and the Austrian (or Austro-Hungarian) government over the last 200 years. While today, the Austrian government’s share in the effective profit distribution of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank(OeNB) is 100% (and thus much above 19th-century levels), the OeNB’s holdings of Austrian government debt were relatively small from the mid-1950s until recently. The Eurosystem’s Public Sector Purchase Programme is currently leading to a significant increase in holdings of Austrian government debt recorded at OeNB’s balance sheet. It will likely go somewhat above the levels observed from the 1830s to the 1890s, when average inflation was around ½%.

Keywords: economic history; public debt; inflation; central banks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 N14 N43 N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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