QE in the future: the central bank's balance sheet in a financial crisis

Ricardo Reis

No 1620, Discussion Papers from Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM)

Abstract: Analysis of quantitative easing (QE) typically focus on the recent past studying the policy's effectiveness during a financial crisis when nominal interest rates are zero. This paper examines instead the usefulness of QE in a future fiscal crisis, modeled as a situation where the fiscal outlook is inconsistent with both stable inflation and no sovereign default. The crisis can lower welfare through two channels, the first via aggregate demand and nominal rigidities, and the second via contractions in credit and disruption in financial markets. Managing the size and composition of the central bank's balance sheet can interfere with each of these channels, stabilizing inflation and economic activity. The power of QE comes from interest-paying reserves being a special public asset, neither substitutable by currency nor by government debt.

Keywords: New-style central banks; Unconventional monetary policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 E58 E63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2016-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.centreformacroeconomics.ac.uk/Discussio ... MDP2016-20-Paper.pdf (application/pdf)

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:cfm:wpaper:1620

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Helen Power ().