Quantitative Easing And Long Term Yields In Small Open Economies

We compare the effectiveness of Federal Reserve's asset purchase programs in lowering longterm yields with that of similar programs implemented by the Bank of England, the Swedish Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank's reserve expansion program. We decompose government bond yields into (i) an expectations component, (ii) a global, and (iii) a country specific term premium to analyze two-day changes in 10-year yields around announcement dates. We find that, in contrast to the Federal Reserve's asset purchases, the programs implemented in these smaller economies have not been able to affect the global term premium and, furthermore, they have had limited, but significant, effect in lowering long-term yields.

Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

The success over the years in reducing inflation and, consequently, the average level of nominal interest rates has increased the likelihood that the nominal policy interest rate may become constrained by the zero lower bound. When that happens, a central bank can no longer stimulate aggregate demand by further interest-rate reductions and must rely on "non-standard" policy alternatives. To assess the potential effectiveness of such policies, we analyze the behavior of selected asset prices over short periods surrounding central bank statements or other types of financial or economic news and estimate "noarbitrage" models of the term structure for the United States and Japan. There is some evidence that central bank communications can help to shape public expectations of future policy actions and that asset purchases in large volume by a central bank would be able to affect the price or yield of the targeted asset.

As the Federal Reserve continues to normalize its monetary policy, this paper studies the impact of U.S. interest rates on rates in other countries. We find a modest but nontrivial pass-through from U.S. to domestic short-term interest rates on average. We show that, to a large extent, this comovement reflects synchronized business cycles. However, there is important heterogeneity across countries, and we find evidence of limited monetary autonomy in some cases. The co-movement of longer term interest rates is larger and more pervasive. We distinguish between U.S. interest rate movements that surprise markets versus those that are anticipated, and find that most countries receive greater spillovers from the former. We also distinguish between movements in the U.S. term premium and the expected path of risk-free rates, concluding that countries respond differently to these shocks. Finally, we explore the determinants of monetary autonomy and find strong evidence for the role of exchange rate flexibility, capital account openness, but also for other factors, such as dollarization of financial system liabilities, and the credibility of fiscal and monetary policy.

The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interest rates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature; it is a policy choice. The central message of this paper is that with readily available tools a central bank can enable deep negative rates whenever needed—thus maintaining the power of monetary policy in the future to end recessions within a short time. This paper demonstrates that a subset of these tools can have a big effect in enabling deep negative rates with administratively small actions on the part of the central bank. To that end, we (i) survey approaches to enable deep negative rates discussed in the literature and present new approaches; (ii) establish how a subset of these approaches allows enabling negative rates while remaining at a minimum distance from the current paper currency policy and minimizing the political costs; (iii) discuss why standard transmission mechanisms from interest rates to aggregate demand are likely to remain unchanged in deep negative rate territory; and (iv) present communication tools that central banks can use both now and in the event to facilitate broader political acceptance of negative interest rate policy at the onset of the next serious recession.

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Using a panel of daily CUSIP-level data, the authors study the effects of the Federal Reserve¿s program to purchase $300 billion of U.S. Treasury coupon securities announced and implemented during 2009. The authors find that each purchase operation, on average, caused a decline in yields in the sector purchased of 3.5 basis points on the days when these purchases occurred (the ¿flow effect¿ of the program). In addition, the program as a whole resulted in a persistent downward shift in the yield curve of as much as 50 basis points (the ¿stock effect¿), with the largest impact in the 10- to 15-year sector. The coefficient patterns generally support a view of segmentation or imperfect substitution within the Treasury market. Charts and tables.

This paper focuses on negative interest rate policies and covers a broad range of its effects, with a detailed discussion of findings in the academic literature and of broader country experiences.

Several emerging market central banks in Europe deployed asset purchase programs (APPs) amid the 2020 pandemic. The common main goals were to address market dysfunction and impaired monetary transmission, distinct from the quantitative easing conducted by major advanced economy central banks. Likely reflecting the global nature of the crisis, these APPs defied the traditional emerging market concern of destabilizing the exchange rate or inflation expectations and instead alleviated markets successfully. We uncover some evidence that APPs in European emerging markets stabilized government bond markets and boosted equity prices, with no indication of exchange rate pressure. Examining global and domestic factors that could limit the usability of APPs, in the event of renewed market dysfunction we see a potential scope for scaling up APPs in most European emerging markets that used APPs during the pandemic, provided that they remain consistent with the primary objective of monetary policy and keep a safe distance from the risk of fiscal dominance. As central banks in the region move towards monetary policy tightening, the tapering, ending, and unwinding of APPs must also be carefully considered. Clear and transparent communication is critical at each step of the process, from the inception to the closure of APPs, particularly when a large shock hits and triggers a major policy shift.