Most quantitative easing programmes primarily involve central banks acquiring government liabilities in return for central bank reserves. In all cases this process is undertaken by purchasing these liabilities from private sector intermediaries rather than directly from the government. This...

We document that a theoretically founded, real-time, and easy-to-implement option-based measure, termed synthetic-stock difference (SSD), accurately estimates the part of stock's expected return arising from stock's transaction costs. We calculate SSD for U.S. optionable stocks. SSD can be more...