I find that the Eurosystem can stimulate the economy beyond the policy rate by increasing the size of its balance sheet or the monetary base, that is so-called quantitative easing. The transmission mechanism turns out to be different compared to traditional interest rate innovations: whilst the...

We examine the effects of the Asset Purchase Programme (APP) gradually introduced by the European Central Bank from September 2014 onwards. Studying the short-term reaction of financial markets after APP press releases, we analyse the development of bond yields and spreads around these releases....

This paper investigates the role of unconventional monetary policy as a source of time-variation in the relationship between sovereign bond yield spreads and their fundamental determinants. Our results provide evidence of a new bond-pricing regime following the announcement of the Outright...

We document a large return drift around monetary policy announcements by the Federal Open Market Committee. Stock returns start drifting up 25 days before expansionary monetary policy surprises, whereas they decrease before contractionary surprises. The cumulative return difference across...

We construct a slope factor from changes in federal funds futures of different horizons. Slope predicts stock returns at the weekly frequency: faster monetary policy easing positively predicts excess returns. Investors can achieve increases in weekly Sharpe ratios of 20% conditioning on the...

In this paper we present a three period setup to model central bank forward guidance in a liquidity trap. We analyze the role of long-run and short-run price stickiness under discretion and commitment in a straightforward and intuitive way. Despite the impact of price rigidity on welfare being...

We derive counterfactual national interest rate paths for the 17 Euro Area countries for the period 1999 to 2012 to approximate the interest rates countries would have implemented had they still been able to conduct independent monetary policy. We find that prior to the financial crisis the...

This paper explores the potential effectiveness of the ECB's Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program in safeguarding an appropriate monetary policy transmission. Since the program aims at manipulating bank lending rates by conducting sovereign bond purchases on secondary markets, a stable...

This paper uses panel vector autoregressive models and simulations of an estimated DSGE model to explore the reaction of Euro–area banks to the global financial crisis. We focus on their interest–rate setting behavior in response to standard macroeconomic shocks. Our main empirical finding...