A working paper published by the Federal Reserve has sought to study the transmission mechanism of quantitative easing (QE) in greater depth, focusing on the types of investors selling assets to the Fed.

In Analyzing Federal Reserve Asset Purchases: From whom does the Fed buy? authors Seth Carpenter, Selva Demiralp, Jane Ihrig and Elizabeth Klee use data on four separate QE programmes to identify investors. They find that the Fed buys from only a "handful" of investor types, primarily households