Central Banks' Asset Purchase Programs, Asset Distributions, and Endogenous Market Segmentation

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of open-market operations on the distributions of assets and prices. It offers a theoretical framework to incorporate multiple asset holdings in a tractable heterogeneous-agent model. This model features competitive search, which produces distributions of money and bond holdings as well as price dispersion among submarkets. At a high enough bond supply, the equilibrium shows segmentation in the asset market; only households with good income shocks participate in the bond market. Segmentation in the asset market is generated endogenously without assuming any rigidities or frictions in the asset market. Numerical exercises show that when the asset market is segmented, the central bank can improve welfare by purchasing bonds and supplying money