IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v115y2025i1p295-329.html

Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises

Author

Listed:
  • Valentin Haddad
  • Alan Moreira
  • Tyler Muir

Abstract

At the announcement of a new policy, agents form a view of state-contingent policy actions and impact. We develop a method to estimate this state-contingent perception and implement it for many asset-purchase interventions worldwide. Expectations of larger support in bad states—"policy puts"—explain a large fraction of the announcements' impact. For example, when the Fed introduced purchases of corporate bonds in March 2020, markets expected five times more price support had conditions worsened relative to the median scenario. Perceived promises of additional support in bad states alter asset prices, risk, and the response to future announcements.

Suggested Citation

  • Valentin Haddad & Alan Moreira & Tyler Muir, 2025. "Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(1), pages 295-329, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:1:p:295-329
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20230486
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230486
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E209147V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230486.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230486.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20230486?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bo Becker & Efraim Benmelech, 2021. "The Resilience of the U.S. Corporate Bond Market During Financial Crises," NBER Working Papers 28868, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Acharya, Viral V. & Banerjee, Ryan & Crosignani, Matteo & Eisert, Tim & Spigt, Renée, 2025. "Exorbitant privilege? Quantitative easing and the bond market subsidy of prospective fallen angels," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. Boyarchenko, Nina & Kovner, Anna & Shachar, Or, 2022. "It’s what you say and what you buy: A holistic evaluation of the corporate credit facilities," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 695-731.
    4. Asquith, Paul & Au, Andrea S. & Covert, Thomas & Pathak, Parag A., 2013. "The market for borrowing corporate bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 155-182.
    5. Breeden, Douglas T & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1978. "Prices of State-contingent Claims Implicit in Option Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 621-651, October.
    6. Rohan Arora & Sermin Gungor & Joe Nesrallah & Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc & Jonathan Witmer, 2021. "The impact of the Bank of Canada’s Government Bond Purchase Program," Staff Analytical Notes 2021-23, Bank of Canada.
    7. Boyarchenko, Nina & Kovner, Anna & Shachar, Or, 2020. "It’s what you say and what you buy: A holistic evaluation of the Corporate Credit Facilities," CEPR Discussion Papers 15432, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Ben S. Bernanke, 2020. "The New Tools of Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 943-983, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Athanasios Geromichalos & Kuk Mo Jung & Ioannis Kospentaris & Changhyun Lee & Sukjoon Lee, 2025. "Central bank interventions and asset market liquidity," Working Papers 373, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Metrick, Andrew, 2022. "Market Support Programs: COVID-19 Crisis," Journal of Financial Crises, Yale Program on Financial Stability (YPFS), vol. 4(2), pages 179-219, April.
    2. John J Shim & Karamfil Todorov, 2021. "ETFs, illiquid assets, and fire sales," BIS Working Papers 975, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Pegoraro, Stefano & Montagna, Mattia, 2021. "Issuance and valuation of corporate bonds with quantitative easing," Working Paper Series 2520, European Central Bank.
    4. Augustin, Patrick & Sokolovski, Valeri & Subrahmanyam, Marti G. & Tomio, Davide, 2022. "In sickness and in debt: The COVID-19 impact on sovereign credit risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1251-1274.
    5. Valentin Haddad & Alan Moreira & Tyler Muir, 2021. "When Selling Becomes Viral: Disruptions in Debt Markets in the COVID-19 Crisis and the Fed’s Response [Funding value adjustments]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5309-5351.
    6. Boyarchenko, Nina & Crump, Richard K. & Kovner, Anna & Shachar, Or, 2025. "Corporate bond market distress," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    7. W. Blake Marsh & Padma Sharma, 2021. "Government Loan Guarantees during a Crisis: The Effect of the PPP on Bank Lending and Profitability," Research Working Paper RWP 21-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    8. Mahyar Kargar & Benjamin Lester & David Lindsay & Shuo Liu & Pierre-Olivier Weill & Diego Zúñiga, 2021. "Corporate Bond Liquidity during the COVID-19 Crisis [The day coronavirus nearly broke the financial markets]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5352-5401.
    9. Andrew F. Haughwout & Benjamin Hyman & Or Shachar, 2022. "The Municipal Liquidity Facility," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 28(1), July.
    10. Breckenfelder, Johannes & De Falco, Veronica, 2024. "Investor heterogeneity and large-scale asset purchases," Working Paper Series 2938, European Central Bank.
    11. Koji Takahashi & Sumiko Takaoka, 2025. "Corporate Bond Purchase Program and Corporate Debt Issuance: Evidence from Japanese Corporate Bond Marketing News," IMES Discussion Paper Series 25-E-11, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    12. Gilchrist, Simon & Wei, Bin & Yue, Vivian Z. & Zakrajšek, Egon, 2024. "The Fed takes on corporate credit risk: An analysis of the efficacy of the SMCCF," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    13. Patricia C. Mosser, 2020. "Central bank responses to COVID-19," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 191-201, October.
    14. Kenechukwu E. Anadu & Sean Baker & John Levin & Victoria Liu & Antoine Malfroy-Camine & Noam Tanner, 2022. "Swing Pricing Calibration: A Simple Thought Exercise Using ETF Pricing Dynamics to Infer Swing Factors for Mutual Funds," Supervisory Research and Analysis Notes, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue 2022-06, pages 1-18, January.
    15. Egemen Eren & Denis Gorea & Daojing Zhai, 2025. "How do quantitative easing and tightening affect firms?," BIS Working Papers 1286, Bank for International Settlements.
    16. Filippo Occhino, 2020. "Quantitative Easing and Direct Lending in Response to the COVID-19 Crisis," Working Papers 20-29, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    17. Andrew F. Haughwout & Benjamin Hyman & Or Shachar, 2021. "COVID Response: The Municipal Liquidity Facility," Staff Reports 985, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    18. Dutordoir, Marie & Shemesh, Joshua & Veld, Chris & Wang, Qing, 2024. "Can existing corporate finance theories explain security offerings during the COVID-19 pandemic?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    19. Cimon, David A. & Walton, Adrian, 2024. "Central bank liquidity facilities and market making," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    20. Duncan, Elizabeth & Horvath, Akos & Iercosan, Diana & Loudis, Bert & Maddrey, Alice & Martinez, Francis & Mooney, Timothy & Ranish, Ben & Wang, Ke & Warusawitharana, Missaka & Wix, Carlo, 2022. "COVID-19 as a stress test: Assessing the bank regulatory framework," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:1:p:295-329. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.