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The financial market effects of unwinding the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet

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  • Smith, A. Lee
  • Valcarcel, Victor J.

Abstract

Twice in a brief 12-year period between 2008 and 2020, central banks turned to asset purchase programs to combat a global economic downturn. While balance sheet expansions have become familiar and been widely studied, balance sheet normalization is less well understood. This paper provides a first analysis of the financial market effects of balance sheet normalization based on the U.S. experience between 2017 and 2019. We find evidence that unwinding past asset purchases tightens financial conditions. However, we show that these effects cannot be merely portrayed as quantitative easing in reverse. In particular, we find that balance sheet normalization generally lacked the large announcement effects that characterized quantitative easing. Instead, the effects of normalization manifested upon implementation and surfaced, in part, through larger liquidity effects than were evident during various phases of balance sheet expansion.

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  • Smith, A. Lee & Valcarcel, Victor J., 2023. "The financial market effects of unwinding the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:146:y:2023:i:c:s0165188922002858
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2022.104582
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    Cited by:

    1. Laine, Olli-Matti & Pihlajamaa, Matias, 2023. "Asymmetric effects of conventional and unconventional monetary policy when rates are low," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 3/2023, Bank of Finland.
    2. Karlye Dilts Stedman & Chaitri Gulati, 2021. "When Normalizing Monetary Policy, the Order of Operations Matters," Economic Bulletin, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue October 1, pages 1-4, October.
    3. Bonam, Dennis & Ciccarelli, Matteo & Gomes, Sandra & Aldama, Pierre & Bańkowski, Krzysztof & Buss, Ginters & da Costa, José Cardoso & Christoffel, Kai & Elfsbacka Schmöller, Michaela & Jacquinot, Pasc, 2024. "Challenges for monetary and fiscal policy interactions in the post-pandemic era," Occasional Paper Series 337, European Central Bank.
    4. Chen, Zhengyang & Valcarcel, Victor J., 2021. "Monetary transmission in money markets: The not-so-elusive missing piece of the puzzle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    5. Axelsson, Birger & Song, Han-Suck, 2023. "The effect of quantitative easing and quantitative tightening on U.S. equity REIT returns," Working Paper Series 23/9, Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Real Estate and Construction Management & Banking and Finance, revised 14 Nov 2023.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy; Balance sheet; Announcement effect; Liquidity effect; Event study; Structural VAR; Financial conditions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

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