I estimate the costs of issuing UK government debt by auction from the inception of the market in 1987 through the financial crisis and the phases of QE and into the current period of policy responses to SARS-CoV-2. Issuance costs decreased from the start of QE and have remained stable since,...

We examine the returns to UK government bonds before, during and between the phases of quantitative easing to identify the side effects for the market itself. We show that the onset of QE led to a sustained reduction in the costs of trading and removed some return regularities. However,...

We model the effects of quantitative easing on the volatility of returns to individual gilts, examining both the effects of QE overall and of the specific days of asset purchases. The action of QE successfully neutralized the six fold increase in volatility that had been experienced by gilts...