Essay Assignment: Did the Fed’s LSAPs Succeed in Bringing Down U.S. Long-Term Interest Rates?

Purposes

Did the Fed’s LSAPs succeed in bringing down U.S. long-term interest rates?

Essays are intended to provide students with the opportunity to practise writing. Essays require that students assimilate information and knowledge acquired from presentations and discussions as well as the recommended texts and any additional information identified by students themselves.

Essays should answer the question set, be well structured and conform to the word limit.  Essays should not simply be reproductions of text material and should not be products of joint work by students. All direct quotations should be indicated clearly in the text and fully attributed to the source as included in a full list of references at the end (ordered alphabetically).  References should be limited to those only used by the students.

This assessment is in alignment with the following learning outcomes:

An ability to explain various instruments traded in different international markets
A solid understanding of risk-return trade-off faced by investors
A good understanding about the information content of financial markets
A good understanding on the pricing of selected securities
A good understanding of the impact of quantitative easing on financial markets

The question is whether the LSAPs were successful in bringing down long-term U.S. interest rates. You could start by defining the LSAPs and explaining the reasons why they were implemented during the crisis. Then you should answer the question clearly and provide plenty of evidence from various financial markets, such as Treasury bond market, corporate bond market and mortgage market to support your claim. When presenting evidence, you could briefly explain the methodologies used in different empirical studies to show your in-depth knowledge of the literature. Finally, you should explain why the LSAPs succeeded or failed in bringing down U.S. long-term interest rates, focusing on the channels through which the LSAPs were supposed to work.