Fiscal implications of central bank balance sheet policies

  • Under ordinary circumstances, the fiscal implications of central bank policies tend to be seen as relatively minor and escape close scrutiny. The global financial crisis of 2008, however, demanded an extraordinary response by central banks which brought to light the immense power of central bank balance sheet policies as well as their major fiscal implications. Once the zero lower bound on interest rates is reached, expanding a central bank’s balance sheet becomes the central instrument for providing additional monetary policy accommodation. However, with interest rates near zero, the line separating fiscal and monetary policy is blurred. Furthermore, discretionary decisions associated with asset purchases and liquidity provision, as well as with lender-of-last-resort operations benefiting private entities, can have major distributional effects that are ordinarily associated with fiscal policy. In the euro area, discretionary central bank decisions can have immense distributional effects across member states. However, decisions of this nature are incompatible with the role of unelected officials in democratic societies. Drawing on the response to the crisis by the Federal Reserve and the ECB, this paper explores the tensions arising from central bank balance sheet policies and addresses pertinent questions about the governance and accountability of independent central banks in a democratic society.

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Metadaten
Author:Athanasios OrphanidesORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-410439
URL:http://www.imfs-frankfurt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/IMFS_WP/IMFS_WP_105.pdf
Parent Title (English):Working paper series / Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability ; 105
Series (Serial Number):Working paper series / Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (105)
Publisher:Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Univ., Inst. for Monetary and Financial Stability
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2016
Year of first Publication:2016
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2016/07/20
Tag:central bank accountability; central bank governance; central bank independence; lender of last resort; loss sharing; monetary financing; quantitative easing; rules vs discretion
Edition:July 2016
Page Number:34
HeBIS-PPN:386326851
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht