Expansionary monetary policy is ineffective in a liquidity trap. In another case, which we call a “reserve trap,” money supply increase is trapped in bank reserves; there is no credit expansion through the banking system. In such case, quantitative easing (QE) will not boost credit to the...

The paper analyses the global spillovers of the Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policy measures since 2007. First, we find that Fed measures in the early phase of the crisis (QE1), but not since 2010 (QE2), were highly effective in lowering sovereign yields and raising equity markets...

This paper briefly assesses the effectiveness of the different non-standard monetary policy tools in the Euro Area. Its main focus is on the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme which is praised by some as the ECB’s “magic wand”. Moreover, it discloses further possible unintended...

A number of debates are taking place regarding the appropriate response of monetary policy both to the crisis and the Great Recession that followed, particularly in regard to interest on reserve balances and so-called unconventional monetary policy operations. This paper describes in detail an...

In response to the Great Financial Crisis, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and many other central banks have adopted unconventional monetary policy instruments. We investigate if one of these, purchases of long-term government debt, could be a valuable addition to conventional...

From the beginning of 2003 to the spring of 2004, Japan’s monetary authorities conducted large-scale yen-selling/dollar-buying operations in what Taylor (2006) has labeled the “Great Intervention.” This paper examines the relationship between this “Great Intervention” and the...

We study optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian model at the zero bound interest rate where households use cash alongside house equity borrowing to conduct transactions. The amount of borrowing is limited by a collateral constraint. When either the loan to value ratio declines or house...

The Federal Reserve’s 2009 program to purchase $300 billion of US Treasury securities represented an unprecedented intervention in the Treasury market and provides a natural experiment with the potential to shed light on the price elasticities of Treasuries and theories of supply effects in...

How large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs affect financial markets is an important question for policy makers that face the zero lower bound. While so-called “stock effects”–that is, persistent shifts in asset prices observed as the result of an LSAP program–are relatively well...

Using post-1995 Japanese data we propose a new sign restriction SVAR approach to identify monetary policy shocks when the economy is at the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB). The identifying restrictions are based on predictions of Eggertsson's (2010) New Keynesian DSGE models when the economy is stuck at...