Central Bank Response to COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has been, above all, a tragic public health crisis. It has entailed an enormous effort to respond to the demand for health services. In it, fiscal authorities have led the economic policy responses. For their part, central banks responded swiftly by easing their monetary policy stance and implementing facilities to provide liquidity and enable credit in the economy. We discuss key economic issues of the central bank response, in which the monetary authorities have had to account for the crisis’ nature. We argue that the actions taken by central banks in general avoided a further deterioration of financial and economic conditions.