Open-market operation

In the post-crisis economy, conventional short-term open market operations have been superseded by major central banks by quantitative easing (QE) programmes. QE are technically similar to open-market operations, but entail a pre-commitment of the central bank to conduct purchases to a predefined large volume and for a predefined period of time. Under QE, central banks typically purchase riskier and longer-term securities such as long maturity sovereign bonds and even corporate bonds.