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Buying into new ideas: The ECB’s evolving justification of unlimited liquidity

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Listed:
  • Lea Steininger

    (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business; Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies)

  • Casimir Hesse

    (Rothschild & Co.)

Abstract

In 2012, Draghi put an end to rising euro area sovereign bond yield spreads by resolving to do 'whatever it takes'. The crisis rhetoric and institutional practices of unlimited liquidity have since become commonplace, as countermeasures to recent market turmoil show. This paper sets out to explain how and why 'unlimited liquidity' ideas moved to the ECB's center of economic analysis during the euro crisis. Previous work fails to decipher that the ideational shift was highly anomalous when viewed against German ordoliberalism or scholarly support for 'expansionary austerity'. Addressing this relative neglect in other accounts, we draw on qualitative text analysis and expert interviews to argue that this shift was due to norm entrepreneurs who capitalized on the uncertainty of the crisis. We employ constructivist arguments to identify four scoping conditions that account for the ascendance of 'unlimited liquidity': an indicative reference, credibility, institutional positioning, and -- as an extension to the literature -- intellectual sensitivity. Our analysis suggests that the euro crisis changed economic ideas, and fundamentally remodels the constructivist framework for studying monetary policy in crisis times.

Suggested Citation

  • Lea Steininger & Casimir Hesse, 2024. "Buying into new ideas: The ECB’s evolving justification of unlimited liquidity," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp357, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp357
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    European Central Bank; euro crisis; monetary policy; unlimited liquidity; economic ideas; constructivism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General

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