QE: is there a portfolio balance effect?

Daniel Thornton

Review, 2014, vol. 96, issue 1, 55-72

Abstract: The Federal Open Market Committee has recently attempted to stimulate economic growth using unconventional methods. Prominent among these is quantitative easing (QE)?the purchase of a large quantity of longer-term debt on the assumption that it will reduce long-term yields through the portfolio balance channel. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and others suggest that QE works through the portfolio balance channel, which implies a strong, statistically significant positive relationship between the public?s holding of long-term Treasury debt and long-term Treasury yields. The author uses the econometric approach of Gagnon et al. (2011) and others to investigate the relationship between a variety of measures of the public?s debt holding and various yield measures in the literature. The empirical results provide virtually no support for the portfolio balance channel.

JEL-codes: E43 E44 E52 E58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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