In the run-up to the ECB’s public sector purchase programme in March 2015, German government bond yields declined significantly. Using an affine term structure model, we provide evidence that the yield declines are almost fully attributable to a decline in the term premium as opposed to the expectations component. This speaks in favour of a portfolio re-balancing channel being at work rather than a (policy rate) signalling channel. The result proves robust against changing the number of factors in the model, the estimation sample and the estimation approach.

In this paper, we ask whether the Bundesbank, prior to the European Central Bank taking responsibility for monetary policy in 1999, reacted systematically to stock price movements. In contrast to the results for the US, our empirical findings show a generally weak relationship between German stock returns and short-term interest rates at the daily and the monthly frequency. The results are extremely robust to alternative model specifications. The evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis of a systematic reaction of the Bundesbank to German stock prices. However, we do find that, as in the US, the Bundesbank may have reacted to the stock market crash of 1987 by loosening monetary policy.