The effects of unconventional monetary policy in the euro area

How effective are unconventional monetary policies? Through which mechanisms do they work? Central banks have been conducting monetary policy through unconventional means such as expanding their balance sheets or forward guidance because the conventional instrument of monetary policy, the short-term policy rate, has been at or close to the zero lower bound since shortly after the fall of Lehmann Brothers. These unconventional monetary policies are new and bring with them many questions, which were addressed in the CPB policy brief ‘Onderweg naar normaal monetair beleid’ [CPB policy brief 2017/07, 8 June 2017]. Understanding how and why unconventional monetary policy works is a crucial first step for answering subsequent questions, such as the likely effects of the withdrawal of unconventional monetary policy, or about how domestic policy makers can best respond. This discussion paper contains a detailed presentation of the new scientific evidence we reported in the policy brief, and adds to the relatively scarce literature in this field We estimate the effects of unconventional monetary policy shocks on output and inflation in the euro area using data from 2009 to 2016, which covers the period of all of the major unconventional monetary policies that the ECB has used. We employ a two stage estimation strategy: first, we identify unconventional monetary policy shocks in a dedicated euro area level structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. Subsequently we use these unconventional monetary policy shocks in country level models. By estimating the effects of unconventional monetary policy shocks in the individual countries of the euro area, we aim to shed some light on the most important transmission mechanisms through which unconventional monetary policy works.