IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cbi/qtbart/y2019m04p78-100.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Irish Government Bond Market and Quantitative Easing

Author

Listed:
  • Larkin, John

    (Central Bank of Ireland)

  • Anderson, PJ

    (Central Bank of Ireland)

  • Furlong, Sean

    (Central Bank of Ireland)

Abstract

Between September 2014 and the end of 2018, under the ECB’s Asset Purchase Programme (APP), the Eurosystem purchased over €2.5 trillion worth of securities. By the end of December 2018, over €30bn of Irish government bonds, a significant portion of the Irish government bond market, had been purchased under the programme. As might be expected after such an event, the bond market has undergone a number of changes. We examine these changes under three key themes. Firstly, we look at the impact on yields. Secondly, we look at the market structure in terms of the duration, the cost of Irish government debt and the change in the structure of the investor base. Finally, we examine the impact on the liquidity of Irish government bonds over the period. We present strong evidence that announcement effect of the APP caused a compression of Irish bond yields. This has contributed to financing conditions that indirectly support increased issuance of Irish sovereign debt at lower interest rates, which in turn has reduced Ireland’s debt servicing costs. The maturity profile of Irish government debt has also been extended. Finally, we find little evidence that liquidity conditions deteriorated over the period, contrary to expectations when the programme was announced.

Suggested Citation

  • Larkin, John & Anderson, PJ & Furlong, Sean, 2019. "The Irish Government Bond Market and Quantitative Easing," Quarterly Bulletin Articles, Central Bank of Ireland, pages 78-100, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbi:qtbart:y:2019:m:04:p:78-100
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/publications/quarterly-bulletins/quarterly-bulletin-signed-articles/the-irish-government-bond-market-and-quantitative-easing-(larkin-anderson-and-furlong).pdf?sfvrsn=4
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Florian Urbschat & Sebastian Watzka, 2017. "Quantitative Easing in the Euro Area - An Event Study Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 6709, CESifo.
    2. João Tovar Jalles, 2018. "What determines the share of non-resident public debt ownership? Evidence from Euro Area countries," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 379-414, August.
    3. Schlepper, Kathi & Riordan, Ryan & Hofer, Heiko & Schrimpf, Andreas, 2017. "Scarcity effects of QE: A transaction-level analysis in the Bund market," Discussion Papers 06/2017, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    4. Carlo Altavilla & Giacomo Carboni & Roberto Motto, 2021. "Asset Purchase Programs and Financial Markets: Lessons from the Euro Area," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 17(70), pages 1-48, October.
    5. Wieladek, Tomasz & Haldane, Andrew & Roberts-Sklar, Matt & Young, Chris, 2016. "QE: the story so far," CEPR Discussion Papers 11691, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Joseph Gagnon & Matthew Raskin & Julie Remache & Brian Sack, 2011. "The Financial Market Effects of the Federal Reserve's Large-Scale Asset Purchases," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 7(1), pages 3-43, March.
    7. Kandrac, John & Schlusche, Bernd, 2013. "Flow effects of large-scale asset purchases," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 330-335.
    8. Urbschat, Florian & Watzka, Sebastian, 2017. "Quantitative Easing in the Euro Area," Discussion Papers in Economics 37365, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    9. Ambler, Steve & Rumler, Fabio, 2019. "The effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy announcements in the euro area: An event and econometric study," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 48-61.
    10. Urbschat, Florian & Watzka, Sebasitan, 2017. "Quantitative Easing in the Euro Area - An Event Study Approach," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168135, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Mr. Serkan Arslanalp & Mr. Takahiro Tsuda, 2012. "Tracking Global Demand for Advanced Economy Sovereign Debt," IMF Working Papers 2012/284, International Monetary Fund.
    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. Conefrey, Thomas & O'Reilly, Gerard & Walsh, Graeme, 2019. "Fiscal Windfalls: A Model-Based Analysis," Economic Letters 3/EL/19, Central Bank of Ireland.
    2. Cawley, Cormac & Finnegan, Marie, 2019. "Transmission channels of central bank asset purchases in the Irish economy," MPRA Paper 96547, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Cormac Cawley & Marie Finnegan, 2019. "Transmission Channels of Central Bank Asset Purchases in the Irish Economy," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-25, September.
    4. Vasiliki Dimakopoulou & George Economides & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2021. "The ECB's Policy, the Recovery Fund and the Importance of Trust: The Case of Greece," CESifo Working Paper Series 9371, CESifo.

    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. Ralf Fendel & Frederik Neugebauer, 2018. "Country-Specific Euro Area Government Bond Yield Reactions to ECB’s Non-Standard Monetary Policy Announcements," WHU Working Paper Series - Economics Group 18-02, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.
    2. Cormac Cawley & Marie Finnegan, 2019. "Transmission Channels of Central Bank Asset Purchases in the Irish Economy," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-25, September.
    3. Zhou, Siwen, 2019. "Assessing the Macroeconomic Impact of the ECB’s Asset Purchase Programme in a Dynamic Nelson–Siegel Modelling Framework," MPRA Paper 92530, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Cawley, Cormac & Finnegan, Marie, 2019. "Transmission channels of central bank asset purchases in the Irish economy," MPRA Paper 96547, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. De Santis, Roberto A., 2020. "Impact of the Asset Purchase Programme on euro area government bond yields using market news," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 192-209.
    6. Jan Willem van den End, 2019. "Effects of QE on sovereign bond spreads through the safe asset channel," DNB Working Papers 647, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    7. Belke, Ansgar & Gros, Daniel, 2021. "QE in the euro area: Has the PSPP benefited peripheral bonds?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    8. Giovanna Bua & Peter G. Dunne, 2019. "The Portfolio Rebalancing Effects of the ECB's Asset Purchase Programme," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 15(5), pages 1-46, December.
    9. Martijn Boermans & Viacheslav Keshkov, 2018. "The impact of the ECB asset purchases on the European bond market structure: Granular evidence on ownership concentration," DNB Working Papers 590, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    10. Belke, Ansgar & Gros, Daniel, 2019. "QE in the euro area: Has the PSPP benefited peripheral bonds?," Ruhr Economic Papers 803, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Jakl Jakub, 2019. "The True Nature of the Portfolio Balance Channel of Quantitative Easing Policy," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 19(2), pages 95-117, June.
    12. Schlepper, Kathi & Riordan, Ryan & Hofer, Heiko & Schrimpf, Andreas, 2017. "Scarcity effects of QE: A transaction-level analysis in the Bund market," Discussion Papers 06/2017, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    13. Pagliari, Maria Sole, 2024. "Does one (unconventional) size fit all? Effects of the ECB’s unconventional monetary policies on the euro area economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    14. Aßhoff, Sina & Belke, Ansgar & Osowski, Thomas, 2021. "Unconventional monetary policy and inflation expectations in the Euro area," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    15. Lemke, Wolfgang & Werner, Thomas, 2020. "Dissecting long-term Bund yields in the run-up to the ECB’s public sector purchase programme," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    16. Motto, Roberto & Özen, Kadir, 2022. "Market-stabilization QE," Working Paper Series 2640, European Central Bank.
    17. Feldkircher, Martin & Gruber, Thomas & Huber, Florian, 2020. "International effects of a compression of euro area yield curves," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    18. Gunther Tichy, 2019. "Das vernachlässigte Massensparen. Die wirtschaftspolitischen Folgen zunehmender Intermediation," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 92(8), pages 583-597, August.
    19. Zhou, Siwen, 2018. "Measuring the Signaling Effect of the ECB’s Asset Purchase Programme at the Effective Lower Bound," MPRA Paper 87084, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Blattner, Tobias Sebastian & Joyce, Michael A. S., 2016. "Net debt supply shocks in the euro area and the implications for QE," Working Paper Series 1957, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    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:cbi:qtbart:y:2019:m:04:p:78-100. 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: Fiona Farrelly (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbigvie.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.