Call for Book Chapters: "The ECB’s unconventional monetary policies from 2011 to 2018: An overview and lessons"

Vernon Press invites book chapter proposals for an edited collection on "The ECB’s unconventional monetary policies  from 2011 to 2018: An overview and lessons."

European Central Bank (ECB) undertook a series of unconventional monetary policies to combat unfavorable market developments in the euro area such as the interbank market dry-up and a credit crunch during and after the European sovereign-debt crisis. ECB implemented lending schemes, various asset purchase programs and low interest rate environment. The ECB’s strategy focused on restoring the overall market liquidity and enhancing commercial bank lending. As such, the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy measures represent a unique market feature in the euro area during the crisis and post-crisis period, 2008-2019. Their impact spans across three dimensions: ECB lending operations known as Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTRO), Asset Purchase Programs (APP) and interest rate on ECB’s deposit facility.

In this policy toolkit, LTRO is the policy through which ECB supplied liquidity directly to banks and thus, represents the main tool in the accumulation of risky sovereign debt. Namely, the literature on European sovereign debt crisis shows that the large-scale purchases are exactly in times when the 1 st round of LTRO took place: 2011-2014. Under these circumstances, ECB made changes in its unconventional policy measures. In September 2014, it introduced targeted LTRO, which imposed constraints on banks’ borrowing from ECB’s facilities. Targeted LTRO, further in the text referred to as (T) LTRO, kept all features of the first round LTRO in their structure: unlimited amounts of liquidity provision and long-term maturities. However, (T) LTRO constrained banks’ eligibility to borrow by imposing thresholds in the volume and categories of loans on their assets portfolios. While ECB changed the terms for borrowing by banks in (T) LTRO, they did not differ much by magnitude in comparison to the first round LTRO.

In 2014 and 2015, ECB made certain changes in the interest rate on its deposit facilities and in the asset purchase programs affecting only the magnitudes of these programs and not necessarily their structure. Since the onset of the European sovereign debt crisis in 2010, ECB implemented low interest rate policy on deposit facility, and in June, 2014, the ECB took the extraordinary action of lowering the interest rate on banks’ deposits at ECB to -10 basis points. Thereafter, in 2015, ECB began government bonds purchases as part of its series in asset purchase programs. In summary, of all of these changes, the new term for banks’ borrowing under the (T) LTRO directly affected the total amounts and structures of loans on banks’ asset portfolios.

Nevertheless, the evidence in the literature regarding the true effects of the ECB’s unconventional monetary policies is inconclusive. The aim of this edited volume is to present studies that show the different effects of each of the three major ECB’s unconventional monetary policies. The main idea is to provide a summary of all expected and unexpected effects of the ECB’s unconventional monetary policies.

We are interested in the following research studies:

• Studies that document the effects on the economy and financial markets when ECB communicates the introduction and changes within the unconventional monetary policies to the public.
• Studies that examine the effects of the ECB’s lending programs: long-term refinancing operations (LTRO) and the targeted long-term refinancing operations (T-LTRO).
• Studies that examine the effects of the ECB’s asset purchase programs.
• Studies that examine the effects of the ECB’s negative interest rate on deposit facility.
• Studies that provide comparative analysis between the unconventional monetary policies implemented by ECB in the euro area and by the Federal Reserve in the United States.

Additionally, if you have other research work related to a topic on ECB’s unconventional monetary policies not mentioned here, however, you believe it would be an excellent contribution to this edited volume, please do not hesitate to reach out the editor.

Please send a title and keywords along with an abstract of no more than 500 to the book editor, Biljana Gilevska, at gilevskabiljana@gmail.com.

Deadline for abstract submission: January 31, 2025.