/ 13 / 190, august 2013. for the lessons learnt from the financial crisis and proposals for future monetary policy frameworks, cf. bindseil, u. ( 2016 ), evaluating monetary policy operational frameworks, paper presented at the economic symposium of the kansas city fed, jackson hole, august 2016. page 5 / 8 an example of this is the continued efficient operation of the repo market. by contrast, the transmission of negative interest in the banking system is varied. as interest rates on bank deposits largely remain at zero, lending rates, particularly mortgage rates, have also fallen less sharply than money and capital market rates. from the snb ’ s perspective, this imperfect transmission to lending rates is not entirely unwelcome in the current economic environment. it has helped to ensure that the risks to financial stability associated with a persistent low interest rate environment have so far not increased to any significant degree since the introduction of negative interest. it is therefore all the more important for monetary policy purposes that we thoroughly understand the transmission mechanisms of negative interest. we have therefore extended our analyses in this area and are in regular contact with the relevant market participants. third, as far as the impact of negative interest on investors is concerned, varying levels of risk appetite are observed. domestic investments appear to be particularly popular. in international capital flows, we are continuing to see a strong aversion to risk among domestic investors. current account surpluses in the economy are generally converted into swiss francs and no longer invested abroad. this contributes significantly to the strength of the swiss franc. from a monetary policy perspective, increased willingness on the part of major investors to take additional risks would certainly be desirable. focus shifted to the foreign exchange market let me turn now to the foreign exchange market. as i mentioned already, the snb started to make large - scale purchases of foreign currency against swiss francs in 2009. naturally, the foreign exchange market is therefore of great interest to us. we are active in the foreign exchange market at all market hours. this is a particular challenge. after all, it is a global market and trading takes place round the clock. needless to say, we have built up the relevant capacities and necessary know - how in this area. but the changes go much deeper. in simple terms, the growing importance of the exchange rate instrument has meant that the snb has had to catch up rapidly with the structural changes that have taken place in the foreign exchange market in recent decades, especially in relation to the introduction

markets as a major participant. in the case of quantitative easing, or qe, it will often purchase medium and long - term government bonds with the aim of lowering the relevant interest rates. 5 as well as government bonds, some central banks have extended their purchase programmes to include other asset classes, including asset - backed securities, covered bonds and corporate bonds. at the bank of japan, the purchase programme also encompasses certain equities 6 and shares in real estate funds. in chart 3, you can see that a qe programme impacts directly on a number of financial markets. this more direct influence of monetary policy on a broader segment of the financial markets is evident in the extent and impact of the qe programmes. chart 4 shows the impact of the qe programmes by the federal reserve, the european central bank, the bank of england and the bank of japan. 7 the chart is based on findings from a total of 24 studies which estimated the impact of each securities purchase programme on capital market rates. the blue bars show the breadth of the estimated impact of each qe programme. the red diamonds indicate the respective median. we can see that the qe programmes across the different currency areas may have reduced the yields on ten - year government bonds by over half a percentage point on average. i now come to central banks ’ foreign exchange market interventions. the exchange rate is an important variable for a small open economy like switzerland, and thus for its monetary policy. yet the snb only rarely intervened directly in the market in previous decades, and in addition to the federal reserve, the european central bank, the bank of england and the bank of japan have also introduced securities purchase programmes. with respect to switzerland, the snb ’ s purchases of swiss franc bonds in 2009 and the large - scale repo transactions and foreign exchange swaps concluded in august 2011 may be termed quantitative easing. these are exchange - traded funds which replicate the topix, nikkei 225 or jpx - nikkei 400 indices. andrade et al. ( 2016 ), the ecb ’ s asset purchase programme : an early assessment, ecb working paper series, no. 1856, september 2016. page 4 / 8 then only with small amounts. since march 2009, this has changed. it was at this point that the snb began buying foreign currency on a large scale, in order to counter excessive upward pressure on the swiss franc and prevent an undesirable tightening of monetary conditions in switzerland. alongside the negative