...A review of Quantitative easing Student’s Name: Institutional Affiliation: Quantitative Easing: Is it effective? Quantitative easing is an untypical monetary policy adopted by central banks to stimulate the economy and ease liquidity if other methods are ineffective. A steady and low rate of inflation is crucial for a stable and thriving economy. Without a steady rate of inflation, the economy becomes unpredictable, discouraging long-term ventures. Central banks use interest rates to control inflation (Gagnon et al, 2010). They set interest rates at which financial institutions can borrow from them. These rates trickle down to consumers in the end, thus affecting inflation. When inflation declines below a safe level for the economy, say 2 %, this is referred to as deflation. When deflation occurs to the point where there is hardly any inflation, the government may intervene by introducing money directly into the economy to achieve a desired level of inflation. This is what is referred to as quantitative easing (Rothbard, 1999). The central bank does this by buying financial assets from both banks and the private sector, and thus introducing new money into the economy. This paper investigates the efficacy of quantitative easing and its effects to the economy. Typically, central banks stimulate economies by purchasing government bonds to lower short-term interest (Krugman, 2003). However, when the central bank has lowered interest to the point that it is at zero or...
Words: 2848 - Pages: 12
...The International Effects of Quantitative Easing The fiat currency system of today’s global economy makes possible one peculiar modern phenomenon: quantitative easing. Birthed from the Keynesian school of thought, quantitative easing is the hands-on method governments use to control economic growth by pumping money directly into the economy. The process begins when the central bank of a particular country prints new money in order to purchase assets—typically government bonds. The government then takes this new money and buys bonds from investors (banks, pension funds, i.e.), which increases the amount of cash in the financial system. The hope is that these financial institutions will be encouraged to lend more to businesses and individuals leading to an increase in investment and spending, and thus causing economic growth (Walker, 2014). Though reasonable in theory, it is heavily disputed whether QE has been successful at its intended purpose or actually quite harmful. Quantitative easing was first implemented on a large scale by Japan in 2001 after the Japanese economy had suffered persistent deflation (Zaidi, 2015). The traditional monetary policy of lowering interest rates to stimulate growth was not feasible, as interest rates at the time were already near zero (sound familiar?). Instead, the Japanese looked to quantitative easing to be the country’s savior. Unfortunately, rather than taking advantage of the extra cash bestowed upon them by this new policy, the financial...
Words: 1709 - Pages: 7
...QUANTITATIVE EASING: A RATIONALE AND SOME EVIDENCE FROM JAPAN This paper was prepared for the NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2009. Volker Wieland thanks the European Central Bank for support as Duisenberg Research Fellow while the initial presentation for the ISOM conference in June 2009 in Cyprus was prepared. The help of Alberto Musso from the European Central Bank in collecting data on Japan is gratefully acknowledged. Helpful comments by conference participants, and in particular by Huw Pill, Vincent Reinhart, Frank Smets, Christian Thimann and Athanasios Orphanides were highly appreciated. The usual disclaimer applies. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2009 by Volker Wieland. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Quantitative Easing: A Rationale and Some Evidence from Japan Volker Wieland NBER Working Paper No. 15565 December 2009 JEL No. E31,E52,E58,E61 ABSTRACT This paper reviews the rationale for quantitative easing when central bank policy rates reach near zero levels in light of recent...
Words: 4448 - Pages: 18
...By Abraham Ko Economics 332 October 22, 2014 ABENOMICS Japan, as a country, has been the prime example of what most economists refer to as the East Asian Miracle. A small island country centered on isolationist policies during the early 19th century, Japan first opened its doors to economic world trade with the arrival of Commodore Perry and his “Black Ships.”(US Navy Museum 2014) Although small in size, and low in resources, Japan saw the power and might of its Western contemporaries and aimed to follow in their footsteps. Near the end of the 20th Century, Japan was officially recognized as an economic superpower throughout the world. However, growth never lasts forever and by the 1990s, Japan’s economy had come to a grinding halt due to a massive collapse in both the real estate and stock markets of the Japanese economy and remains in a recession that has lasted till now. As Japan looked to face another year of stagnant growth of the economy, Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, decided enough was enough. With the assistance of the new governor of the Bank of Japan, Shinzo Abe embarked on a radical economic plan that focused on three arrows of design. The arrows depict the strategy of Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” program in which it focuses on fiscal stimulus, monetary easing, and structural reforms. (International Monetary Fund 2013) It is almost near the two year mark since the implementation of Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” program has begun. Although typically, economic...
Words: 2726 - Pages: 11
...Assignment One: Complexities of the U.S. Financial System Christine Capell Professor.Umair Warsi FIN 100 - Principles of Finance May 5, 2013 The US financial markets impact the economy, businesses, and individuals in a variety of ways, one of which is providing a way for businesses to raise capital by issuing securities. The capital markets enable new companies to raise funds to grow. Typically, banks would not lend in these situations because of the lack of sufficient collateral and high risk. Without the public securities markets or private venture capitalists to provide the funding for these higher risk investments, the economy would be much smaller. The markets and the economy are closely linked and are especially reactionary to the each other, i.e. if the economic indicators show recession, the markets typically turn down, particularly the equity markets. Currency markets, FOREX or foreign-exchange markets, and the mortgage markets will move in response to the health of the economy and the movement of interest rates. Should those economic indicators prove to be positive, then the markets turn upwards or even “fly”. When the markets experience an intense downtown, it can lead to a severe recession with the prices of financial assets declining sharply, which can cause individuals, businesses, and financial institutions to become less able to handle their debt payments or it can even lead to financial system failure with widespread bank closures and mortgage foreclosures...
Words: 1364 - Pages: 6
...provides an insight to the fluctuations experienced in the currency of Japan, Yen from the late 1990’s to recent years. Japan follows the floating currency monetary policy due to which there is no measures taken on to control the fluctuations. Japan experienced magnificent growth through the 60's, 70's, and 80's leading into the 90's beginning. In the late 1990's, Japan’s economy marked its growth significantly slower, which had then come to be known as the 'lost decade' due to Japanese Asset Price bubble that collapsed. Eventually the nation faced major issues regarding environmental disasters, hollowing out of industries, etc. The past events which have caused the rise and downfall of Japanese Yen has been illustrated for examining the causes of the appreciation and depreciation of this currency. The influence of this floating currency on Japan's economy has been depicted in this case study. This paper also provides some applications of the measures that can maintain the stability of the Japanese Yen. Japan experienced tremendous growth throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s leading into the leading into the early 1990s. After World War II, Japan underwent a period of restoration followed by the events in 1978 where Japan excelled as a manufacturer partnering with the United States which helped to make its economy world's second largest economy until 2010, where it was surpassed by China, moving Japan to the world's third position. Japan’s economy saw growth slow significantly...
Words: 4326 - Pages: 18
...------------------------------------------------- Quantitative Easing ------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents Quantitative Easing in general: 2 How the USA Federal Reserve has put QE in practice. 3 QE plan recently approved by the European Central Bank. 4 Likely effects of QE in the Euro Area in relation to the aggregate supply/aggregate demand model and the loanable funds theory 5 Discuss the effects the QE can have on exchange rates. 6 Abstract This paper presents an overview of the policy of Quantitative Easing, used by central banks in an effort to revive the economic system and interrupt a period of economic recession. Quantitative Easing in general In the instance of a crisis such as the one of 2008, Central Banks put monetary and fiscal policies in practice in order to limit the damage to firms and households an maintain a healthy economic environment. The most used and widespread policy used by Central Banks acts upon the interest rates. Lowering interest rates, for example, makes it more convenient for individuals and firms to increase investments rather than save, thereby increasing spending. An increase in investments and spending within the system should, in theory, take the economy out of a recession. However, once the interest rate reaches zero (zero bound ratio) without obtaining any results, CBs must adopt other policies. One of these is the policy of Quantitative Easing; it consists in CBs providing liquidity to...
Words: 1272 - Pages: 6
...TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Cover Page 2 Table of Contents 3 1. Introduction 4 2.1. Expansionary Monetary Policy 5 2.2. Contractionary Monetary Policy 6 2. Overview of the United States Monetary Policy 7 2.1 Overview of Recent United States Monetary Policy 8 3. Recent (2011) Direction of Monetary Policy 10 4. Market Reaction to Monetary Policy 12 5. Conclusion 15 6. Reference List 16 1.0 Introduction In macroeconomics, monetary policy is an importance tool to Central Bank and is a policy set by the members of Central Bank. It is an economic strategy chosen by government that authorizes Central Bank to regulate and influence the economic activity by controlling the monetary base flow into national economy. The goals of monetary policy are to promote growth of the economy, stability of prices and reduce unemployment rate. Monetary policy can be classified into two categories, namely expansionary monetary policy and contractionary monetary policy. Although, the objective for the two policies is the same, they adopt different approaches in reaching this objective. Expansionary monetary policy is used when a country is facing a recession in the economy business cycle, whereby it increases the money supply in economy system...
Words: 3702 - Pages: 15
...finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Given his vantage position, the viewpoint of the chief economic advisor is always critical, more so now than ever when the global economy is going through a turbulent phase. Basu took some time off to speak to Mint, just ahead of a key G20 meeting in Seoul, to provide an overview of how India perceives global economic trends. Articulating his thoughts on the latest round of monetary quantitative easing, he proposed a radically different long-term fix for the global economy, held out hope that the persistent domestic inflation would ease and painted a positive economic outlook ahead of next year’s Budget. Edited excerpts: What do you think is the outlook for the global economy? The outlook is best described as mixed; it changes from week-to-week, month-to-month. European unemployment has deteriorated slightly, while US unemployment has held steady at a high of 9.6% for three months. So the expectations on the global front continue to be uncertain. The somewhat risky move that the US has made with the second round of quantitative easing—something that is akin to printing money—is a gamble. It is not all negative, as some make it out to be. But it is a risky move, given the changed structure of the world economy. The relatively benign interpretation of what is happening in the world is that this is a temporary earthquake caused by the tectonic shift of economic power that is occurring beneath the surface of the world economy, marking the rise of...
Words: 2315 - Pages: 10
...Devaluation in modern monetary policy is a reduction in the value of money with a respect to those goods, services or other monetary units with which that currency can be exchanged. ‘Devaluation’ means official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange rate system, by which the monetary authority formally sets a new fixed rate with respect to a foreign reference currency. There many reasons for devaluation, and but most have severe consequences that do more harm than good. One of the main reasons a country devalues its currency is to increase its ability to bring in production from the outside and boost its own labor and development. When outside currencies are much stronger, a country can attract international business with cheaper production and labor costs by having a lower valued currency. Alternatively, a country may want to recover its currency from overseas holders. By devaluing the currency it becomes worth less and cheaper to buy back. They country can then re-inflate the value again over time to bring it back to its original state, however it’s no longer sitting overseas. Finally, a country may want to devalue its currency to pay off international debt. If its original loans were made in the same currency, the country could devalue the monetary value by printing more to then pay off the loan faster. This approach gets the borrow The fastest way to devalue a currency is through inflation. When inflation occurs, it takes more currency...
Words: 1357 - Pages: 6
...Quantitative Easing: Entrance and Exit Strategies by Alan S. Blinder, Princeton University CEPS Working Paper No. 204 March 2010 Acknowledgements: Paper prepared for the Homer Jones Memorial Lecture at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, April 1, 2010. I am grateful to Gauti Eggertsson, Todd Keister, Jamie McAndrews, Paul Mizen, John Taylor, Alexander Wolman, and Michael Woodford for extremely useful comments on an earlier draft, and to Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies for research support. Apparently, it can happen here. On December 16, 2008, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), in an effort to fight what was shaping up to be the worst recession since 1937, reduced the federal funds rate to nearly zero. 1 From then on, with all of its conventional ammunition spent, the Federal Reserve was squarely in the brave new world of quantitative easing. Chairman Ben Bernanke tried to call the Fed’s new policies “credit easing,” probably to differentiate them from what the Bank of Japan had done earlier in the decade, but the label did not stick. 2 Roughly speaking, quantitative easing refers to changes in the composition and/or size of the central bank’s balance sheet that are designed to ease liquidity and/or credit conditions. Presumably, reversing these policies constitutes “quantitative tightening,” but nobody seems to use that terminology. The discussion refers instead to the “exit strategy,” indicating that quantitative easing (“QE”) is looked upon as...
Words: 7030 - Pages: 29
...Introduction In recent 3 years, Japanese Yen has depreciated against USD rapidly, from 78.6 USD/JPY in 2012 to about 120 USD/JPY in 2015. Will Japanese Yen continue to depreciate against USD? This question is worth researching. This study will be totally divided into two parts. The first part aims to analyze the past performance that how much JPY appreciated or depreciated against USD between Jan 1st 2015 to Oct 31st 2015 and the reason about this past performance. Meanwhile, through different methods, the second part try to forecast exchange rate of USD/JPY in the future at the end of 2016. JPY/USD from Jan 1st 2015 to Oct 31st 2015 According to the following Figure 1, the close exchange rate of JPY/USD in Jan 1st 2015 was $0.00835/¥ and it was $0.00829/¥ in Oct 31st 2015. It seemed that the exchange rate remain stable within the 10 months, while the big fluctuation existed during this period. The lowest close exchange rate JPY/USD was $0.00796/¥ and the highest one was $0.00861/¥. Specifically, if a speculator used 1,000,000 Yen to buy dollar at the highest exchange rate and sold these dollar for Yen at the lowest exchange rate, he would obtain 1,081,714 Yen at the end, whose profit was much higher than depositing in the bank. Therefore, the fluctuation between JPY and USD made the exchange rate hard to predict. In addition, the percentage of change in exchange rate was – 0.72% during this period. It indicated that JPY had depreciated 0.72% against USD from 1/1/2015 to...
Words: 1661 - Pages: 7
...On 31st October 2014, with the historical move of ending the bond buying program of the US Federal Reserve after 5 years, Japan started off with yet another monetary stimulus program. Japan has been suffering from a deflationary trap for the past 2 decades. Hence, the bank aims to buy more assets this year in order to bring back the economy on the right path. Quantitative Easing is the unconventional supply of money in the economy by the Central Bank by buying assets from the commercial banks thus put money in the hands of the people. Most of the economies have a target inflation rate which needs to be maintained and if the rate falls much below the target, the economy can fall into a deflationary trap like Japan. Japan’s Quantitative-Easing Program: Japan has seen development and economic prosperity in the initial period of 1980s which turned out to be a scenario where the banks were lending money to the people without keeping a check on the borrower’s credibility. This led to the creation of a bubble and as a measure they increased the inter-bank lending rates and the bubble burst. Since the burst the economy has remained in a stagnant phase. This led to the creation of ‘Zombie Firms’ (firms which need constant bail-outs for their existence and operations) which is said to be responsible for the long stagnation of the country. The banks and financial institutions were constantly funded because the government thought these banks were ‘Too Big to Fail’. ...
Words: 716 - Pages: 3
...Question 1. (a) Explain what you understand by each of the following terms. In each case give an example relating to the financial markets to illustrate your answer. • asymmetric information • moral hazard • quantitative easing (QE) Asymmetric information In the financial market, asymmetric information is a situation in which economic agents involved in a transaction have different information. It happens in the transaction when the buyer has more information than the seller, or contrary, as when a private motorcycle seller has more detailed...
Words: 1682 - Pages: 7
...worldwide financial crisis in 2008, Bank of England (BoE) and other central banks seek to stabilize and stimulate the economy by conventional and non-conventional policies. It seems that one of the non-conventional policies, called quantitative easing (QE), has become the most popular and controversial topic. In March 2009, the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) announced that the central banking would purchase the financial asset. They would use the central banking reserves created electronically to achieve this. More specifically, the BoE announced a 50 billion pounds increase in the program of purchasing the asset, to 375 billion pounds totally. However, it was not the first time that central banking used such monetary policy. From 2001 to 2006, the Bank of Japan purchased a great number of public loan and long-term bond to infect the liquidity to the market when the domestic economy was depressed continually and a sharp drop on investment. It seems that QE is an effective way to stimulate the economy and promote the recovery from the financial crisis. However, it may cause the hyperinflation and destroy the whole financial system if it was out of management and supervision. Firstly, this essay will provide a definition of quantitative easing. Further, it will discuss how QE affects the economy and the aims that governments seek to achieve. At last, it will evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of QE as a monetary policy. First of all, in average time, if the central...
Words: 1745 - Pages: 7
