Flow and Stock Effects of Large-Scale Asset Purchases: Evidence on the Importance of Local Supply

39 Pages Posted: 19 Dec 2012

See all articles by Stefania D'Amico

Stefania D'Amico

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Thomas B. King

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Date Written: February 29, 2012

Abstract

The Federal Reserve's 2009 program to purchase $300 billion of U.S. Treasury securities represented an unprecedented intervention in the Treasury market and provides a natural experiment with the potential to shed light on the price elasticities of Treasuries and theories of supply effects in the term structure. Using security-level data on Treasury prices and quantities during the course of this program, we document a 'local supply' effect in the yield curve — yields within a particular maturity sector responded more to changes in the amounts outstanding in that sector than to similar changes in other sectors. We find that this phenomenon was responsible for a persistent downward shift in yields averaging about 30 basis points over the course of the program (the "stock effect"). In addition, except at very long maturities, purchase operations caused an average decline in yields in the sector purchased of 3.5 basis points on the days when those operations occurred (the "flow effect"). The sensitivity of our results to security characteristics generally supports a view of segmentation or imperfect substitution within the Treasury market during this time.

Keywords: Yield curve, quantitative easing, LSAP, preferred habitat, limits of arbitrage

JEL Classification: E43, E5, E6, G1

Suggested Citation

D'Amico, Stefania and King, Thomas B., Flow and Stock Effects of Large-Scale Asset Purchases: Evidence on the Importance of Local Supply (February 29, 2012). FEDS Working Paper No. 2012-44, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2191269 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2191269

Stefania D'Amico

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago ( email )

230 South LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL 60604
United States

Thomas B. King (Contact Author)

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago ( email )

230 South LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL 60604
United States

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