Sustainability of the Bank of Japan’s ETF Purchasing Policy

The Bank of Japan is the only central bank that holds enormous amounts of stocks of listed companies by purchasing ETFs via its unconventional monetary policy measures. The Bank of Japan has been buying ETFs for more than a decade and, seemingly, has no awareness that it has become a huge investor in the stock market. This article explains how this policy has potentially distorted market mechanisms and how it is difficult to find an exit strategy.

Spillovers of US unconventional monetary policy: quantitative easing, spreads, and international financial markets

This study investigates the international spillover effects of US unconventional monetary policy (UMP)—frequently called large-scale asset purchases or quantitative easing (QE)—on advanced and emerging market economies, using structural vector autoregressive models with high-frequency daily data. Blinder (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Rev 92(6): 465–479, 2010) argued that the QE measures primarily aim to reduce US interest rate spreads, such as term and risk premiums. Considering this argument and recent empirical evidence, we use two spreads as indicators of US UMP: the mortgage and term spreads. Based on data from 20 emerging and 20 advanced countries, our empirical findings reveal that US unconventional monetary policies significantly affect financial conditions in emerging and advanced countries by altering the risk-taking behavior of investors. This result suggests that the risk-taking channel plays an important role in transmitting the effects of these policies to the rest of the world. The extent of these effects depends on the type of QE measures. QE measures such as purchases of private sector securities that lower the US mortgage spread exert stronger and more significant spillover effects on international financial markets than those that reduce the US term spread. Furthermore, the estimated financial spillovers vary substantially across countries and between and within the emerging and advanced countries that we examine in this study.

Dynamic Impact of Unconventional Monetary Policy on International REITs

In this paper, we estimate the dynamic impact of unconventional monetary policy in the US on international REITs. Unlike existing studies which are limited to conventional policy tools and undertake a static approach, we use an event study approach and estimate a time-varying parameter model to investigate the dynamic impact of forward guidance (FG) and large-scale asset purchases (LSAP) shocks on the international REIT returns. We also compare the effects of these unconventional tools with the effects of conventional federal funds rate (FFR) shocks. The results show that the response of international REITs to unconventional policy shocks depends on the time under consideration. FG shocks have greater time-variation in the impact on REIT returns compared to LSAP shocks, particularly with Australia, Belgium, and the US REIT markets. Furthermore, FG shocks broadly have a negative impact on REITs while the results for LSAP effects are mixed. We also find that in most countries, REITs time-varying response of FG shocks is related to changes in gold prices and financial conditions.

Evaluating the Unconventional Monetary Policy of the Bank of Japan: A DSGE Approach

When the nominal interest rate reaches the zero lower bound (ZLB), a conventional monetary policy, namely, the adjustment of short-term interest rate, may become impractical and ineffective for central banks. Therefore, quantitative easing (QE) is one of the few available policy options of central banks for stimulating the economy and dealing with deflationary pressure. Since February 1999, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) has conducted several unconventional monetary policy programs. Considering the scarce research in this field from a structural macroeconomic model approach, a medium-scale New Keynesian DSGE model with government bonds of different maturities was developed to check the portfolio rebalancing channel of quantitative qualitative easing (QQE) conducted by the BoJ from April 2013 on the basis of the assumption of imperfect asset substitutability. The model was calibrated on the basis of the structure of the Japanese economy in April 2013. The main conclusion is that the BoJ’s asset purchase has a real effect on pushing output and inflation higher, and long-term interest rates lower. Sensitivity simulation analysis shows that, given the same size of asset purchase, the persistence of asset purchase determines the peak effect in the short run. A long-lasting asset purchase can push up inflation higher, and long-term interest rates lower for a relatively longer period, but the long-run effect on output and investment does not have much difference. The policy implication for BoJ is just to announce a long-lasting QE program and make it credible to the market.