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Negative Rates and Seigniorage: Turning the central bank business model upside down? The special case of the ECB

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  • Gros, Daniel
Abstract
Negative rates have invalidated the normal business model of central banks, which consists of issuing zero-interest bearing cash as liabilities and earning a return on their assets (the resulting profits are called “seigniorage”). But many central banks are now earning a negative rate on their assets. Seigniorage, in fact, might now become negative in the euro area and in Japan. Bond purchasing programmes (called usually QE for quantitative easing) offer central banks at least temporary profit opportunities since they can issue liabilities at lower rates than the long-term bonds they acquire. The resulting profits should be regarded in the same way as those of investment banks. For the time being, central banks are making large profits on their investment banking activities, but little in terms of traditional seigniorage. The QE programme of the European Central Bank does not increase its seigniorage revenues, because 80% of the euro area’s sovereign bond purchase programme is done by the national central banks on their own accounts. The policy implication of this assessment is that the seigniorage income of the ECB will be much smaller than many assume and one should thus not count on it as a source for any euro-area projects.

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  • Gros, Daniel, 2016. "Negative Rates and Seigniorage: Turning the central bank business model upside down? The special case of the ECB," CEPS Papers 11754, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:eps:cepswp:11754
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Meixing Dai, 2020. "La réponse de la BCE face à la pandémie de Covid-19," Bulletin de l'Observatoire des politiques économiques en Europe, Observatoire des Politiques Économiques en Europe (OPEE), vol. 42(1), pages 5-14, July.
    3. Economides, George & Papageorgiou, Dmitris & Philippopoulos, Apostolis, 2020. "Macroeconomic policy lessons from Greece," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 107155, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Gros, Daniel, 2017. "Tightening by Stealth: Why keeping the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve constant is equivalent to a gradual exit," CEPS Papers 12652, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    5. Meixing Dai & Moïse Sidiropoulos, 2017. "Le bitcoin est-il une monnaie ?," Bulletin de l'Observatoire des politiques économiques en Europe, Observatoire des Politiques Économiques en Europe (OPEE), vol. 37(1), pages 5-12, December.
    6. Gros, Daniel, 2017. "Implications of the Expanding Use of Cash for Monetary Policy," CEPS Papers 12661, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    7. Massoc, Elsa Clara, 2022. "How do Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) hold the European Central Bank (ECB) accountable? A descriptive quantitative analysis of three accountability forums (2014-2021)," LawFin Working Paper Series 40, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).
    8. Massoc, Elsa C., 2022. "Climate change versus price stability: How "green" central bankers and members of the European parliament became pragmatic (yet precarious) bedfellows," LawFin Working Paper Series 33, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).
    9. Berthold, Kristin & Stadtmann, Georg, 2018. "The fear of float of the Swiss National Bank," Discussion Papers 404, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics.

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