How Do Monetary Authorities Buy Publicly Traded Financial Assets? A Cross-Country Database and an Empirical Study of Central Bank Asset Purchase Programs

Despite the increasing use of asset purchase programs (APPs) by central banks over the past two decades, the economic literature has not empirically investigated how APPs are conducted from a cross-country perspective. Furthermore, a complete picture and critical details of APPs around the world remains lacking, particularly for small advanced economies and emerging markets. This paper fills this information gap by constructing a comprehensive global database on central bank asset purchase programs for the entire universe of advanced economies and emerging markets with monetary autonomy from 2008 to 2024. Our findings show that most central banks have conducted APPs, which have displayed heterogeneous characteristics, witnessed greater usage, and covered major asset classes beyond conventional government debt securities. The empirical analysis suggests that while triggers of APPs during 2008-2009 seem to be idiosyncratic across economies, disinflationary risks and government bond market volatilities activated the use of APPs in 2020. Furthermore, central banks that are constrained by the Zero Lower Bound and operate in countries with high public debt to GDP ratios tend to have longer buying durations of APPs. Finally, the pace of APPs depends on their previous pace as well as real GDP growth and CPI inflation and differs between buying and unwinding phases.