Qualitative Easing: How it Works and Why it Matters
Abstract
This paper is about the effectiveness of qualitative easing; a government policy that is designed to mitigate risk through central bank purchases of privately held risky assets and their replacement by government debt, with a return that is guaranteed by the taxpayer. Policies of this kind have recently been carried out by national central banks, backed by implicit guarantees from national treasuries. I construct a general equilibrium model where agents have rational expectations and there is a complete set of financial securities, but where agents are unable to participate in financial markets that open before they are born. I show that a change in the asset composition of the central bank’s balance sheet will change equilibrium asset prices. Further, I prove that a policy in which the central bank stabilizes fluctuations in the stock market is Pareto improving and is costless to implement.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 18421.Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18421
Note: EFG
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Farmer, Roger E A, 2012. "Qualitative Easing: How it Works and Why it Matters," CEPR Discussion Papers 9153, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
- E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
- E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
- E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2012-10-06 (All new papers)
- NEP-DGE-2012-10-06 (Dynamic General Equilibrium)
- NEP-FMK-2012-10-06 (Financial Markets)
- NEP-MAC-2012-10-06 (Macroeconomics)
- NEP-MON-2012-10-06 (Monetary Economics)
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Blog mentions
As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:- The end of central banking as we knew it
by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-10-17 14:49:00 - 10 Thursday PM Reads
by Barry Ritholtz in The Big Picture on 2012-10-18 20:30:34
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