Replication files for: "Whatever-It-Takes Policymaking During the Pandemic," Journal of International Economics

Central banks across the globe introduced large-scale asset purchase programs to address the unprecedented circumstances experienced during the pandemic. Many of these programs were announced as open-ended to shock-and-awe market participants and restore confidence in financial markets. This paper examines whether these whatever-it-takes announcements had larger effects than announcements with explicit limits on scale. We use a narrative approach to categorize announcements made by twenty-two central banks, and event study, propensity-score-matching, and local projection methods to measure the short-term effects of policy announcements on exchange rates and sovereign bond yields. We find that on average a central bank's first whatever-it-takes announcement lowers 10-year bond yields by an additional 47 basis points relative to size-limited announcements, suggesting that communication of potential policy scale matters. Our results for yields hold for both advanced and emerging economies, while exchange rates go in opposing directions, muting their response when we group all countries together.全球各国央行纷纷推出大规模资产购买计划，以应对疫情期间遭遇的史无前例的形势。其中诸多计划以无限额形式公布，意在通过震慑策略影响市场参与者、重塑金融市场信心。本文旨在探究这类“不惜一切代价（whatever-it-takes）”的公告，是否比带有明确规模上限的公告产生了更为显著的政策效应。我们采用叙事方法（narrative approach）对22家央行的公告进行分类，并运用事件研究法（event study）、倾向得分匹配法（propensity-score-matching）以及局部投影法（local projection），测算政策公告对汇率与主权债券收益率的短期影响。研究结果显示，平均而言，央行首次发布的“不惜一切代价”公告，相较于有限额规模的公告，会使10年期主权债券收益率额外下降47个基点，这表明潜在政策规模的信息沟通至关重要。我们关于债券收益率的研究结论在发达经济体与新兴经济体中均成立，而汇率的变动方向则截然相反，当将所有国家合并为一组进行分析时，其整体响应会被弱化。