Quantitative easing in the Euro Area - An event study approach

Florian Urbschat and Sebastian Watzka

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: 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. More precisely, we try to estimate different asset price channels by quantifying the cumulative decrease of spreads and by running event regressions for several Euro Area countries. Focusing on the signalling channel, measured by the OIS rate, and the portfolio rebalancing channel, proxied by the conditional bond-OIS spread, we find that the effects in yield and spread reduction were most pronounced for the initial announcement on the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) but declined afterwards for additional announcements. Possible explanations for this are the declining degree to which the ECB surprised markets and the increasingly burdensome institutional set-up of the APP. While yield reductions were larger for periphery countries' than for core countries' bonds, our evidence suggests that this stronger reduction is mostly due to a decreasing risk component of southern bonds. In fact, once controlling for this implicit credit risk reduction we find rather mild effects from portfolio rebalancing for all countries.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published in Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 77(2020): pp. 14-36

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenar:84755

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tamilla Benkelberg ().