Raising Rates with a Large Balance Sheet: The Eurosystem’s Net Income and its Fiscal Implications

Nazim Belhocine, Ashok Bhatia and Jan Frie

No 2023/145, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: The Eurosystem, having purposefully expanded its footprint in recent years, confronts a period of loss-making as rising policy rates lift the remuneration of bank reserves while assets churn more slowly. This paper projects the net income of the Eurosystem and its “top-five” national central banks over a ten-year horizon, finding that losses, while large, will be temporary and recoupable. The policy conclusions are fourfold. First, the temporary and recoupable nature of the loss-making obviates any need for capital contributions or indemnities from the state, instead allowing losses to be offset against future net income. Second, it must nonetheless be communicated that fiscal impacts will be material, with annual taxes and transfers of 0.1−0.2 percent of GDP giving way to potentially long interruptions in some cases. Third, more-conservative profit distribution policies in the future steady state could help mitigate the on-off pattern of dividends. Finally and most vitally, loss-making must remain orthogonal to monetary policy decision-making, as indeed it is at the ECB. Ultimately, credibility will rest on performance in delivering on the price stability mandate.

Keywords: Eurosystem; balance sheet; monetary policy; profit distribution; seigniorage; central bank independence; ECB Policy; net purchase; QE portfolio; selected NCBs; Eurosystem's net income; rate path; pooling reference rate; distribution policy; Income; Financial statements; Unconventional monetary policies; Central bank policy rate; Global; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43
Date: 2023-07-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cba and nep-mon
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