European Central Bank Tools and Actions B: Asset Purchase Programs (original) (raw)
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European Central Bank Tools and Policy Actions B: Asset Purchase Programs
The Journal of Financial Crises, 2019
Beginning in August 2007, the European Central Bank (ECB) used standard and nonstandard monetary policies as the global financial markets progressed from initial turmoil to a widespread sovereign debt crisis. This case describes the key features of the ECB's asset purchase programs throughout the Global Financial Crisis and subsequent European sovereign debt crisis. These programs include the Covered Bond Purchase Programs (
The ECB's asset purchase programme: Theory, effects, and risks
Journal of Economic Surveys, 2022
In response to the Covid-19 crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has relaunched a massive asset purchase programme within its combined-arms monetary strategy. This paper surveys and discusses the theory and the evidence of the central bank's unconventional monetary tools for the euro area. It analyses the role of the asset purchase programmes in the ECB's toolkit and the associated risks, focusing specifically on the gradual unwinding of these unconventional initiatives. Finally, the paper offers some insight into the possible evolution of the ECB's monetary policy.
This article investigates why the European Central Bank's (ECB's) unconventional monetary policies were relatively modest during the crisis, focusing specifically on the design of its government bond purchase programmes. Building from available explanations of the ECB's behaviour in the political science and public policy literature, we extrapolate a number of testable propositions with a view to helping to account for the specific features of the policies under investigation. These propositions build from scholarly works that emphasize three distinct fundamentals of the ECB's behaviour: legal; doctrinal; and institutional. We then provide evidence supporting our propositions by evaluating the ECB's policy settings during the crisis. In addition, we identify other factors that have shaped the design of the ECB's bond buying policies, namely the ECB's conception of its own independence.
ABSTRACT This article investigates why the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) unconventional monetary policies were relatively modest during the crisis, focusing specifically on the design of its government bond purchase programmes. Building from available explanations of the ECB’s behaviour in the political science and public policy literature, we extrapolate a number of testable propositions with a view to helping to account for the specific features of the policies under investigation. These propositions build from scholarly works that emphasize three distinct funda- mentals of the ECB’s behaviour: legal; doctrinal; and institutional. We then provide evidence supporting our propositions by evaluating the ECB’s policy settings during the crisis. In addition, we identify other factors that have shaped the design of the ECB’s bond buying policies, namely the ECB’s conception of its own independence. KEY WORDS Balance sheet policies; European Central Bank; global financial crisis; policy settings; unconventional monetary policies.
The ECB and the European Debt Crisis
This paper examines the ECB’s policies since 2008 to argue that the Eurozone crisis is (also) a crisis of central banking. It first offers a detailed timeline of the crisis measures adopted since September 2008, including the introduction of long-term liquidity provision, the adoption of the covered bond program (CBP) in May 2009 and then the securities market program (SMP) in May 2010. It then identifies three turning points in the ECB’s struggle to reconcile its allegiance to sound money principles with the consequences of securitized (shadow) banking, documenting how exit strategies predicated on traditional models of financial intermediation contributed to the spread of sovereign debt pressures from Greece to Ireland, Portugal, then Spain and Italy. The paper lastly proposes that the ECB's lender of last resort activity should be extended to include a buyer of last resort arm that recognizes that the role of sovereign debt instruments as collateral in repo transactions renders volatility in sovereign debt markets a threat to financial stability.
The Crisis Management of the ECB
Financial and Monetary Policy Studies, 2016
A sequence of crises-the global financial crisis in 2008, the "Great Recession" in 2009 and the subsequent Euro crisis-constituted a major challenge for policy makers. After the fiscal policy had used up its powder in fighting the 2009 recession, monetary policy remained the only expansionary player in the policy arena. The ECB reacted to the crises with applying conventional (interest rate) and unconventional (qualitative easing) measures, however, with a considerable delay to the US Fed. The interest (main refinancing operation) rate was set to zero in September 2014 (the Fed already in December 2008) and the proper QE programme started not until March 2015 (the Fed shortly after the Lehman brothers crash). In evaluating the crisis management of the ECB one must state a clear failure in reaching its own medium term inflation target of 2 percent. However, it was successful in bringing down interest rates for government bonds after Draghi's famous "whatever it takes" speech in July 2012 and the following announcement of the outright monetary transactions programme. Whether ECB's QE programme 2015-2017 will be successful in reaching its primary goal, namely regaining the inflation target of 2 percent is an open question. Simulations with the Global Economic Model of Oxford Economics indicate that it will be able to reach the inflation goal but only with a considerable lag. The impact on the real economy will not be as large as QE experiments in the USA. Other unintended effects-e.g., the creation of bubbles on the stock markets-are larger than the intended effects. In contrast to the usual dynamic stochastic general equilibrium exercises our simulations of ECB's QE with the global economic model can not only quantify the effects for the Euro area as a whole but also for its member countries and it can identify the possible spillovers to countries outside the Euro area.
The Eurosystem�s asset purchase programmes for monetary policy purposes
Research Papers in Economics, 2015
This paper analyzes the operation of the Eurosystem's public and private assets purchases programmes for monetary policy purposes, quantifying the potential effect on the Italian economy. First we give an exhaustive account of the main transmission channels by which the purchases can be expected to affect economic activity and inflation. Then we assess the effects on the main channels of transmission to the economy and measure the impact on the main macroeconomic variables, applying the Bank of Italy's quarterly model. For 2015-16 the purchase programme can be expected to make a significant contribution to the growth of output and of prices, of more than 1 percentage point in both cases. Among the channels examined, the largest contribution is judged to come through the depreciation of the euro and the reduction in the interest rates on government securities and bank loans. These effects are comparable in magnitude to those found by studies on the securities purchase programmes conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom.