The Financial Market Effects Of The Ecb S Asset Purchase Programs

The European Central Bank's asset purchase programs, while intended to stabilize the economy, may have unintended side effects on financial stability. This paper aims at gauging the effects on financial markets, the banking sector, and lending to non-financial firms. Using a structural vector autoregression analysis, we find both in the euro area and in Germany a positive effect on output, while prices do not respond significantly. Asset purchases reduce financial stress, but this beneficial effect is overturned in the medium run. In Germany, implicit firm default rates rise, while loan write-offs by banks decrease. This could point to an avoidance of balance sheet repair in the financial sector.

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,7, University of St Andrews (School of Management), language: English, abstract: This study quantifies the financial market impact of the ECB’s public and corporate bond purchase programs from January 2015 to June 2016. The conducted event study analyses eleven announcement events and their influence on government bonds, corporate bonds, exchange rates and equity markets. The focus lies on the German market, although all other G7 countries are included for reasons of comparison. These are the main findings: Government bond and corporate bond yields fell by 23bp and 32bp respectively over all events; the effect on the euro was negative but weak; and the euro equity markets were positively driven by 680bp. Furthermore, most of the effects occur on the day following the events. Finally, the news impact diminishes over time, causing an observable break between the public and corporate bond purchase program.

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.

We analyse euro area investors' portfolio rebalancing during the ECB's Asset Purchase Programme at the security level. Our empirical analysis shows that euro area investors (in particular investment funds and households) actively rebalanced away from securities targeted under the Public Sector Purchase Programme and other euro-denominated debt securities, towards foreign debt instruments, including `closest substitutes', i.e. certain sovereign debt securities issued by non-euro area advanced countries. This rebalancing was particularly strong during the first six quarters of the programme. Our analysis also reveals marked differences across sectors as well as country groups within the euro area, suggesting that quantitative easing has induced heterogeneous portfolio shifts.

The COVID-19 pandemic led many emerging market central banks to adopt, for the first time, unconventional policies in the form of asset purchase programs. In this study, we analyze the effects of these announcements on domestic financial markets using both event studies and local projections methodology. We find that these asset purchase announcements lowered bond yields, did not lead to a depreciation of domestic currencies, and did not have much effect on equities. While the immediate effect of asset purchases appears positive, further consideration of the risks and longer-term effects of unconventional monetary policies is needed. We highlight the trade-offs involved with the implementation of these measures, and discuss their risks. This working paper adds to the debate on how asset purchase programs should be a regular part of the emerging market policy toolkit.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,0, Vienna University of Economics and Business (Finance and Accounting), language: English, abstract: During the financial crisis and the following Eurozone crisis, liquidity in financial markets basically froze and became a problem for the real economy. Therefore, market liquidity became one of the major concerns of the ECB, which applied non-standard measures, e.g. irregular asset purchasing programmes. This paper sheds light on the impact of monetary policy on liquidity levels of the DAX 30 equity index and German 10-year government bonds. For the following analysis, the monetary policy impacts are estimated using the base money growth rate and EONIA rate, whereas the relative bid-ask spread is employed for measuring liquidity levels. The research method includes literature-based research about common market liquidity theories, a short timeline of important ECB monetary policy decisions, descriptive statistics on liquidity levels and monetary policy variables and a VAR analysis, including variables spreads, returns, volatilities, industrial production and inflation. The results indicate that a decrease (increase) in stock market liquidity or an increase (decrease) in bondmarket volatility lead to a decrease (increase) of EONIA. Furthermore, decreases (increases) in stock return or industrial production result in a decrease (increase) of EONIA. However, base money growth is positively correlated only to changes in bond market volatility. Overall, the results suggest that the monetary policy decisions by the ECB are influenced by changing market conditions without the ability to forecast liquidity levels.

Most short-term interest rates in the Euro area are below the European Central Bank deposit facility rate, the rate at which the central bank remunerates banks’ excess reserves. This unexpected development coincided with the start of the Public Sector Purchase Program (PSPP). In this paper, we explore empirically the interactions between the PSPP and repo rates. We document different channels through which asset purchases may affect them. Using proprietary data from PSPP purchases and repo transactions for specific (“special") securities, we assess the scarcity channel of PSPP and its impact on repo rates. We estimate that purchasing 1 percent of a bond outstanding is associated with a decline of its repo rate of 0.78 bps. Using an instrumental variable, we find that the full effect may be up to six times higher.

This paper introduces a new dataset on the composition of the investor base for government securities in the G20 advanced economies and the euro area. During the last decades, investors from abroad have increased their presence in government bond markets. The financial crisis broke this trend. Domestic financial institutions allocated a larger share of government securities in their portfolios, as Japan has done since its crisis in the 1990s. Increases in the share held by institutional investors or non-residents by 10 percentage points are associated with a reduction in yields by about 25 or 40 basis points, respectively. The data show a varied lead-lag relationship between bond yields and investor holdings. Portfolio balance estimates suggest that a change in statutory or regulatory holdings of government securities to the tune of 10 percent of the outstanding stock causes expected returns to decline by 7 to 25 basis points.