Discussion paper

DP9153 Qualitative Easing: How it Works and Why it Matters

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.

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Citation

Farmer, R (2012), ‘DP9153 Qualitative Easing: How it Works and Why it Matters‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 9153. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp9153