ECB Interventions in Distressed Sovereign Debt Markets: The Case of Greek Bonds

This paper analyses the determinants and effects of ECB interventions in times of severe distress. We focus on the Greek government bond market in mid-2010 and use a unique new dataset to show, for the first time, what type of bonds the ECB bought. We then explore the short-term effects of ECB purchases at the bond-level. The results show a large impact of the interventions on the targeted instruments. Bonds bought by the ECB see a much steeper drop in yields than those not bought. This is consistent with theories of “local supply effects” in segmented or illiquid bond markets.