The macroeconomic impact of OMT was also analogous to other purchase programmes: ECB research finds that the GDP and price effects of OMT were broadly in line with those estimated for the QE that took place in the United States and the United Kingdom.9 But the lingering effects of the sovereign debt crisis dented the capacity of this stimulus to counter the new disinflationary trend.
The delayed bank deleveraging process in the euro area began to accelerate, with banks further shrinking their balance sheets and paying back central bank loans. Bank balance sheets declined by around 20 percentage points of GDP in 2013 alone and, at the end of 2013, credit growth to the private sector was contracting at a rate of 2.4% relative to a year earlier.