Term premia

We study the effects of the announcements of ECB asset purchases and of financial stability measures in the euro area in the wake of the global financial crisis and the euro area sovereign debt crisis on ten-year government bond term premia in eleven euro area countries. We find that the term premia of euro area countries with higher sovereign risk, as measured by sovereign CDS spreads, decreased more in response to the announcements of asset purchases and financial stability measures.

Recent history suggests that raising interest rates higher than warranted by macroeconomic prospects would not be the right policy for financial stability. The significant tightening of monetary policies in the advanced economies from mid-2004 to mid-2006 failed to stop increased risk-taking in the financial system. The pre-GFC policy failure was not lax monetary policy but the failure of regulators to address (and markets to sanction) new risks created by innovation in international banks.