QE is a policy consisting of large, sustained, and publicly announced programs of open market operations (The Economist, 2014). QE is not money creation; it’s more accurately described as reserve creation. A central bank buys securities and pays for them with bank reserves (liabilities of the central bank and assets of commercial banks), thereby increasing the central bank’s balance sheet and the reserves of its member banks.
The linkage between QE and the money supply is indirect. Banks will use new reserves to create money, but only when reserves are an active constraint on lending. When banks do not wish to lend and/or borrowers do not wish to borrow, then reserves are an inactive constraint. When banks seek to increase their capital and borrowers strive to pay down their debts, QE does not increase the money supply and therefore does not cause inflation. When reserves are an inactive constraint on borrowing and lending, a central bank engaged in buying securities is said to be “pushing on a string.”
Has QE succeeded? The answer depends on the central bankers’ intentions—their objective for adopting a policy of QE in the first place (Samuelson, 2014). During the global financial crisis (GFC), the first round of QE seems to have been effective in averting a financial collapse.1 A central bank can act as lender of last resort by making loans directly to individual banks through its discount window. During the GFC, however, many distressed financial institutions were not banks and so did not have access to the discount window. In addition, the banks that did have access hesitated to borrow because of the stigma attached to demonstrating a need for government support. Through QE, the Fed and the Bank of England (BOE) provided liquidity to the financial system by buying large quantities of securities from the market rather than waiting for banks to show up at the discount window.
Beyond providing the liquidity necessary to avoid financial panics and bank runs, can QE increase economic output and employment? On this question the evidence is distinctly mixed. Certainly, a central bank can hold interest rates lower than market-determined levels, in the process inflating capital asset prices. We have many examples, both historical and current, of central banks engineering capital asset price appreciation (Kindleberger and Aliber, 2011).
Some believe that, when an economy is operating below its potential growth rate, lowering interest rates to inflate capital asset prices indirectly stimulates the economy through a wealth effect: People who own stocks, bonds, and houses will spend more if they feel wealthier. Others worry that intentionally inflating capital asset prices distorts markets, creates bubbles, and leads to malinvestment. Arbitrating this question, which harks back to the debate between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek, is beyond the scope of this article. Nonetheless, it is possible that both are right.