The Effectiveness of Asset Purchases in Small Open Economies

We examine the potential effectiveness of asset purchases (AP) in small open economies. To that end we extend the model of Gertler and Karadi (2011) to a small open economy, in which households and firms can borrow and lend in the global. financial market. Our results confirm a previous finding of the literature: In a small open economy, the response of the main variables to AP is weaker than in a closed economy. However, this weaker response does not necessarily imply a weaker benefit of AP: We show that even in a small open economy AP can improve welfare, and that the improvement could potentially be larger than in a closed economy. The reason is that conducting AP allows the economy to restore a more efficient financing structure, in the sense that it reduces intermediation costs paid to foreign lenders.

JEL classification: E32,E44,E52,F41.

Keywords: small-open economy, unconventional monetary policy, financial fric-tions, asset purchases, welfare. Bank of Israel. E-mail address: eliezer.borenstein@boi.org.il, alexei.ilek@boi.org.il;

To the Full PDF File​