The Normalization of the European Central Bank’s Monetary Policy from an Austrian Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52195/pm.v15i2.57Abstract
After several years of historically low interest rates and quantitative easing, the European Central Bank (ECB) has finally started wind-ing down its ultra-accommodative monetary policy in late 2018. Among the first steps tapering its asset purchase programme (APP), which foresees monthly purchases of up to €30bn per month until September 2018 — «or beyond, if necessary, and in any case until the Governing Council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of infla-tion consistent with its inflation aim» (ECB, 2018a). By then, pur-chases of euro area fixed income securities on behalf of the ECB will have mounted to as much as €2,550bn or almost 90% of euro area GDP (€2,834bn in market prices in Q4 2017, the latest date for which data were available (ECB, 2018b)). Further, according to market esti-mates, the first hike of the main refinancing rate, which was slashed to 0% in March 2016, could emerge in Q1 2019, thereby following a tightening of the monetary policy the US Federal Reserve (FED) had already started in December 2015 (FED, 2015).
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