A safe asset is of high credit quality, retains its value in bad times, and is traded in liquid markets. We show that bonds issued by the European Union (EU) are widely considered to be of high credit quality, and that their yield spread over German Bunds remained contained during the 2020...

We estimate the effects of the 2000-2002 Treasury Buyback program on Treasury returns and the Federal Reserve’s System Open Market Account (SOMA) portfolio. The buybacks had statistically significant, but economically very modest, effects on both bonds and bonds of similar securities: by...

We study the effectiveness of central bank liquidity injections in restoring bank credit supply following a wholesale funding dry-up. We combine borrower-level data from the Italian credit registry with bank security-level holdings and analyze the transmission of the European Central Bank...

This paper presents case studies of central bank crisis interventions during the Covid-19 and the Global Financial Crises in four jurisdictions (Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The paper serves as an Annex to the main IMF Working Paper WP/23/114 ‘Quasi-Fiscal...

We develop a stylized balance sheet framework to help identify ‘quasi-fiscal’ components of central bank crisis interventions and show how sources of fiscal risk are created from both the new claims and how they are funded. Combining central bank balance sheet data with survey evidence from...

The euro area suffers from excessive public debt, which is the primary cause of the so-called fragmentation. It should be remedied by fiscal consolidation instead of the quasi-fiscal activities of the European Central Bank, which are inconsistent with its legal status, compromise its...

Central banks (CB) around the world are currently exploring the implications of issuing a new form of sovereign currency known as Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Introducing CBDC is a compelling need for governments and CBs alike, as powerful private players have already taken the lead in...

In this paper, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is confronted with the peculiarities of the institutional setting of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB). Since the financial and euro crises of 2008, monetary policy has changed drastically both...

The number of variables related to long-run economic growth is large compared with the number of countries. Bayesian model averaging is often used to impose parsimony in the cross-country growth regression. The underlying prior is that many of the considered variables need to be excluded from...

We explore a view of the crisis as a shock to investor sentiment that led to the collapse of a bubble or pyramid scheme in financial markets. We embed this view in a standard model of the financial accelerator and explore its empirical and policy implications. In particular, we show how the...