The Impact of the Volatility of Monetary Policy Shocks

This paper studies the impact of the volatility of monetary policy using a structural vector auroregression (SVAR) model enriched along two dimensions. First, it allows for time‐varying variance of monetary policy shocks via a stochastic volatility specification. Second, it allows a dynamic interaction between the level of the endogenous variables in the VAR and the time‐varying volatility. The analysis establishes that the nominal interest rate, output growth, and inflation fall in reaction to an increase in the volatility of monetary policy. The analysis also develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model enriched with stochastic volatility to monetary policy that generates similar responses and provides a theoretical underpinning of these findings.     

Monetary News Shocks

We pursue an empirical strategy to identify a monetary news shock in the U.S. economy. We use a monetary policy residual, along with other variables in a vector autoregression (VAR), and identify a monetary news shock as the linear combination of reduced-form innovations that is orthogonal to the current residual and that maximizes the sum of contributions to its forecast error variance over a finite horizon. Real GDP declines in a persistent manner after a positive monetary news shock. This contraction in economic activity is accompanied by a fall in inflation and a rapid increase in the nominal interest rate.     

Estimating monetary policy effects when interest rates are close to zero

Using a nonlinear structural VAR approach, we estimate the effects of exogenous monetary policy shocks in the presence of a zero lower bound constraint on nominal interest rates and examine the impact of such a constraint on the effectiveness of counter-cyclical monetary policies based on the data from Japan. We find that when interest rates are at zero, the output effect of exogenous shocks to monetary policy is cut in half if the central bank continues to target the interest rate. The conditional impulse response functions allow us to isolate the effect of monetary policy shocks operating through the interest rate channel when other possible channels of monetary transmission are present.     

Monetary policy shocks, Choleski identification, and DNK models

A popular identifying assumption in structural VAR studies is that the monetary policy shock does not affect macroeconomic variables contemporaneously. We examine the consequences of using this identification strategy when the data-generating process is a basic Dynamic New Keynesian (DNK) model but without these assumed time delays. The principle conclusion is that the standard Choleski assumption can severely distort the impulse response functions, producing price puzzles and muted responses of inflation and the output gap to monetary shocks.     

Data revisions and the identification of monetary policy shocks

Monetary policy research using time-series methods has been criticized for using more information than the Federal Reserve had available. To quantify the role of this criticism, we estimate VARs with real-time data while accounting for the latent nature of many economic variables, such as output. Our estimated monetary policy shocks are closely correlated with typically estimated measures. The impulse response functions are broadly similar across estimation methods. Our evidence suggests that the use of revised data in VAR analyses of monetary policy shocks may not be a serious limitation for recursively identified systems, but presents more challenges for simultaneous systems.     

Identifying the interdependence between US monetary policy and the stock market

We estimate the interdependence between US monetary policy and the S&P 500 using structural vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology. A solution is proposed to the simultaneity problem of identifying monetary and stock price shocks by using a combination of short-run and long-run restrictions that maintains the qualitative properties of a monetary policy shock found in the established literature [Christiano, L.J., Eichenbaum, M., Evans, C.L., 1999. Monetary policy shocks: what have we learned and to what end? In: Taylor, J.B., Woodford, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, vol. 1A. Elsevier, New York, pp. 65-148]. We find great interdependence between the interest rate setting and real stock prices. Real stock prices immediately fall by seven to nine percent due to a monetary policy shock that raises the federal funds rate by 100 basis points. A stock price shock increasing real stock prices by one percent leads to an increase in the interest rate of close to 4 basis points.     

The extensive margin and monetary policy

The creation of new firms, referred to as the extensive margin, is a significant but overlooked dimension of monetary policy. A monetary VAR documents that monetary policy has significant effects on firm creation. An analytically tractable model combining sticky prices and firm entry shows that entry alters the transmission of monetary policy innovations, acting much like a type of investment in more standard models. Monetary policy rules that offset the uncertainty of productivity shocks can raise the mean level of entry and thereby welfare, suggesting a new motivation for stabilization policy.     

Monetary policy shocks: : Testing identification conditions under time-varying conditional volatility

We propose an empirical procedure, which exploits the conditional heteroscedasticity of fundamental disturbances, to test the targeting and orthogonality restrictions imposed in the recent VAR literature to identify monetary policy shocks. Based on U.S. monthly data for the post-1982 period, we reject the non-borrowed-reserve and interest-rate targeting procedures. In contrast, we present evidence supporting targeting procedures implying more than one policy variable. We also always reject the orthogonality conditions between policy shocks and macroeconomic variables. We show that using invalid restrictions often produces misleading policy measures and dynamic responses. These results have important implications for the measurement of policy shocks and their temporal effects as well as for the estimation of the monetary authority's reaction function.     

A fiscal theory of sovereign risk

Under certain monetary-fiscal regimes the risk of default and thus the emergence of sovereign risk premiums are inevitable. This paper argues that in this context even small differences in the specification of monetary policy can have enormous effects on the equilibrium behavior of default rates and risk premiums. Under some monetary policy rules studied, the conditional expectation of default rates and sovereign risk premiums are constant, so movements in these variables always arrive as a surprise. Under other monetary regimes considered, the equilibrium default rate and the sovereign risk premium are serially correlated and therefore forecastable. The paper also studies the consequences of delaying default. It characterizes environments under which procrastinating on default is counterproductive.     

Level,slope, curvature of the sovereign yield curve,and fiscal behaviour

We study fiscal behaviour and the sovereign yield curve in the US and Germany. We obtain the latent factors, level, slope and curvature, with the Kalman filter, and use them in a VAR with macro, fiscal and financial stress variables. In the US, fiscal shocks generate an immediate response of the short-end of the yield curve, associated with monetary policy, lasting 6–8 quarters, followed by a response of the whole yield curve lasting 3 years, with an implied elasticity of long-term yields of 80% for the government debt shock and 48% for the budget balance shock. In Germany, fiscal shocks have entailed no significant reactions of the yield curve shape and no response of the monetary policy interest rate, notably after 1999; only in the case of debt shocks there is a short-lived decrease in the medium-end of the yield curve in the following 2nd and 3rd quarters.     

The impact of monetary policy shocks on stock prices: Evidence from Canada and the United States

Using structural VAR models with short-run restrictions appropriate for Canada and the United States, we empirically examine whether trade and financial market openness matter for the impact on and transmission to stock prices of monetary policy shocks. We find that, in Canada, the immediate response of stock prices to a domestic contractionary monetary policy shock is small and the dynamic response is brief, whereas in the United States, the immediate response of stock prices to a similar shock is relatively large and the dynamic response is relatively prolonged. We find that these differences are largely driven by differences in financial market openness and hence different dynamic responses of monetary policy shocks between the two countries that we model in this paper.     

Identifying VARS based on high frequency futures data

Using the prices of federal funds futures contracts, we measure the impact of the surprise component of Federal Reserve policy decisions on the expected future trajectory of interest rates. We show how this information can be used to identify the effects of a monetary policy shock in a standard VAR. This alternative approach to identification is quite different, and, we argue, more plausible, than the conventional identifying restrictions. We find that a usual recursive identification of the model is rejected, as is any identification that insists on a monetary policy shock having an exactly zero effect on prices contemporaneously. We nevertheless agree with the conclusion of much of the VAR literature that only a small fraction of the variance of output can be attributed to monetary policy shocks.     

Interest rate rules and price determinacy: The role of transactions services of bonds

Interest rate rules have been associated with price indeterminacy when they do not respond aggressively enough to inflation. Price indeterminacy is typically associated with indeterminacy of real bond balances, suggesting that the missing element is a meaningful role for government bonds. We assume that government bonds provide arbitrarily small transactions services and show that this can dramatically change the local and global determinacy conditions. In particular, the specification of fiscal policy affects the aggressiveness with which monetary policy must respond to inflation to deliver local determinacy—a range of passive monetary policies, even an interest rate peg, may yield determinacy.     

Reconsidering the role of money for output, prices and interest rates

New Keynesian models of monetary policy downplay the role of monetary aggregates, in the sense that the level of output, prices, and interest rates can be determined without knowledge of the quantity of money. This paper evaluates the empirical validity of this prediction by studying the effects of shocks to monetary aggregates using a vector autoregression (VAR). Shocks to monetary aggregates are identified by the restrictions suggested by New Keynesian monetary models. Contrary to the theoretical predictions, shocks to broad monetary aggregates have substantial and persistent effects on output, prices and interest rates.     

Deposit rate ceilings and monetary transmission in the US

Establishing the existence and nature of changes in the conduct and transmission of monetary policy is key in understanding the remarkable macroeconomic performance of the US since the mid-1980s. This paper presents evidence on a phenomenon of disintermediation occurring during the major recessions in the 1960s and 1970s, but absent ever since, and shows that disintermediation is closely linked to the existence of deposit rate ceilings under regulation Q. In a monetary DSGE model that incorporates deposit rate ceilings as occasionally binding constraints, the regulation alters the behavior of money aggregates and exacerbates the drop in economic activity following a monetary tightening. The results of a threshold VAR lend support to the main theoretical predictions of the model.     

Hot Money and Quantitative Easing: The Spillover Effects of U.S. Monetary Policy on the Chinese Economy

We develop a factor‐augmented vector autoregression (FA‐VAR) model to estimate the effects that unanticipated changes in U.S. monetary policy and economic policy uncertainty have on the Chinese housing, equity, and loan markets. We find the decline in the U.S. policy rate since the Great Recession has led to a significant increase in Chinese housing investment. One possible reason for this effect is the substantial increase in the inflow of “hot money” into China. The responses of Chinese variables to U.S. shocks at the zero lower bound are different from those responses in normal times.     

Information variables for monetary policy in an estimated structural model of the euro area

A small scale new keynesian model for the euro area is estimated with maximum likelihood under the assumptions of imperfect information and discretionary monetary policy. The estimated parametrization of this widely used dynamic stochastic model unveils the monetary authorities’ objectives and the information content of two indicator variables: monetary aggregates and real unit labour costs. The results highlight a significant policy concern about interest-rate smoothing and inflation; almost no concern for output gap stabilization emerges. Regarding indicator variables, unit labour costs provide information on potential output that is helpful for stabilization policy; no useful information role emerges for monetary aggregates.     

Optimal monetary policy with durable consumption goods

We document that the durable goods sector is much more interest-sensitive than the nondurables sector, and then investigate the implications of these sectoral differences for monetary policy. We formulate a two-sector general equilibrium model that is calibrated both to match the sectoral responses to a monetary shock derived from our empirical VAR and to imply an empirically realistic degree of sectoral output volatility and comovement. While the social welfare function involves sector-specific output gaps and inflation rates, the performance of the optimal policy rule can be closely approximated by a simple rule that targets a weighted average of aggregate wage and price inflation. In contrast, a rule that stabilizes a more narrow measure of final goods price inflation performs poorly in terms of social welfare.     

THE EFFECT OF MONETARY POLICY ON CREDIT SPREADS

We analyze the effect of monetary policy on yield spreads between corporate bonds with different credit ratings over the business cycle. We use futures contracts to distinguish between expected and unexpected changes in the Fed funds target rate and several indicators to distinguish between different phases of the business cycle. In line with the predictions of imperfect capital market theories, we find that yields on corporate bonds with low credit ratings widen (narrow) with respect to those with high credit ratings following an unexpected increase (decrease) in the Fed funds target rate during recession periods. Several tests suggest that our results are robust to outliers, potential endogeneity problems, empirical specification, control variables, countercyclical risk premium in futures, and alternative definitions of credit spreads and economic conditions.