We examine the impact of the actual purchases of Treasury securities by the Federal Reserve on the Treasury yields. Using structural stability tests we find significant breaks in the relation between these variables. We find that in the zero lower bound period following the first phase of...

This paper analyzes the effect of the interest rate lower bound on long term sovereign bond spreads in the Euro area. We specify a joint shadow rate term structure model for the risk-free, the German and the Italian sovereign yield curves. In our model, the behavior of long term spreads becomes...