Monetary policy and asset prices in the euro area since the global financial crisis

Abstract

This paper assesses the non-linear effects of monetary policy in the euro area since the global financial crisis on both asset prices and their imbalances component, for the stock and housing markets. We compute these imbalances as the difference between asset prices and a benchmark value that we approximate with fundamentals in a discounted cash-flow model, the fitted value of asset prices in a data-driven model or the trend in a standard trend/cycle filtering model. We find that ECB monetary policy has affected both stock and house prices in the euro area since?2008. However, we show that monetary policy influences stock price imbalances but not house price imbalances. Exploring further the mechanism, we find that this response of stock price imbalances is driven by central bank information shocks, not by pure policy shocks.