Uncovering the Hit List for Small Inflation Targeters: A Bayesian Structural Analysis

We estimate underlying structural macroeconomic policy objectives of three of the earliest explicit inflation targeters within the context of a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. We assume central banks set policy optimally, such that we can reverse engineer policy objectives from observed time series data. Joint tests of the posterior distributions of these policy preference parameters suggest that the central banks are very similar in their overall objective. None of the central banks show a concern for stabilizing the real exchange rate. All three central banks share a concern for minimizing the volatility in the change in the nominal interest rate. We also show that the resulting optimal policy rule responds to exchange rate movements, even in the case where the central banks do not explicitly care about exchange rate stabilization. This result is also corroborated by results from an alternative simple-rule characterization and estimation of central bank behavior. These last two findings point to the pitfalls of making inferences, from the level of ad hoc simple rules, about what central banks may care about.     

The interbank market after the financial turmoil: Squeezing liquidity in a “lemons market” or asking liquidity “on tap”

After August 2007 the plumbing system that supplied banks with wholesale funding, the interbank market, failed because toxic assets obstructed the pipes. Banks were forced to squeeze liquidity in a “lemons market” or to ask for liquidity “on tap” from central banks. This paper disentangles the two components of the 3-month Euribor–Eonia swap spread, credit and liquidity risk and then evaluates the decomposition. The main finding is that credit risk increased before the key events of the crisis, while liquidity risk was mainly responsible for the subsequent increases in the Euribor spread and then reacted to the systemic responses of the central banks, especially in October 2008. Moreover, the level of the spread between May 2009 and February 2010 was influenced mainly by credit risk, suggesting that European banks were still in a “lemons market” and relied on liquidity “on tap” even before sovereign debt crisis unfolded in Europe.     

Interest rate corridors and reserves

This paper evaluates reserves regimes versus interest rate corridors, which have become competing frameworks for monetary policy implementation. Rate corridors, relying on lending and deposit facilities to create ceilings and floors for overnight interest rates, evince mixed results on controlling volatility. Reserve requirements allow period-average smoothing of interest rates but, even if remunerated, are subject to reserve avoidance activities. A system of voluntary, period-average reserve commitments could offer equivalent rate-smoothing advantages. If central banks created symmetric opportunity costs of meeting or falling short of period-average reserve requirements (or commitments), they could achieve flat reserve demand on settlement day.     

Political monetary cycles and a de facto ranking of central bank independence

Political monetary cycles are less likely to occur in countries with independent central banks. Independent central banks can withstand political pressure to stimulate the economy before elections or finance election-related increases in government spending. Based on this logic and supporting evidence, we construct a de facto ranking of central bank independence derived from the extent to which monetary policy varies with the electoral cycle. The ranking avoids well-known problems with existing measures of central bank independence and provides independent information about average inflation and inflation volatility differences across countries.     

The Impact of Central Bank Independence on Political Monetary Cycles in Advanced and Developing Nations

This paper examines the extent to which monetary policy is manipulated for political purposes during elections. We do not detect political monetary cycles in advanced countries or developing nations with independent central banks. We do find evidence, however, in developing countries that lack central bank independence. Furthermore, we find some evidence that these cycles are not caused by monetization of election-related fiscal expansions. This suggests that pressure by politicians on the central bank to exploit the Phillips curve may be an important factor in generating political monetary cycles.     

Heterogeneous Market-Making in Foreign Exchange Markets: Evidence from Individual Bank Responses to Central Bank Interventions

Using high-frequency data this article provides evidence that, on average, central bank interventions lead to increased volatility and a widening of bid–ask spreads in the intra-day market for foreign exchange. The results also show that there is dispersion in the bid–ask spread revisions posted by individual banks in response to the central bank entering the market. The findings are consistent with predictions from standard models of market microstructure with heterogeneous agents and have implications for the market power of central banks as well as the payoff generated by trading large amounts of international reserves.     

Announcements of Interest Rate Forecasts: Do Policymakers Stick to Them?

If central banks value the ex post accuracy of their published forecasts, previously announced interest rate paths might influence the current policy rate. We explore if “forecast adherence” has affected monetary policy in New Zealand and Norway, where central banks have published their interest rate forecasts the longest. We derive and estimate policy rules with separate weights on past interest rate forecasts and find that they have explanatory power for current policy decisions, over and above their correlation with other conventional interest rate rule arguments.     

Bank panics and the endogeneity of central banking

Central banking is intimately related to liquidity provision to banks during times of crisis, the lender-of-last-resort function. This activity arose endogenously in certain banking systems. Depositors lack full information about the value of bank assets, so that during macroeconomic downturns they monitor their banks by withdrawing in a banking panic. The likelihood of panics depends on the industrial organization of the banking system. Banking systems with well-diversified big banks are less prone to inefficient bank runs because diversification alleviates the information asymmetry. In addition, big banks can self-monitor through publicly observable branch closure. Systems of many small banks form incentive-compatible bank coalitions to emulate the big banks during times of crisis. Such coalitions improve efficiency by monitoring member banks and issuing money that is a kind of deposit insurance—a precursor of central banking.     

Purdah—On the Rationale for Central Bank Silence around Policy Meetings

Many central banks share the practice of purdah , a guideline of abstaining from communication around policy meetings. Although seemingly contradicting the virtue of transparency by withholding information precisely when it is sought after intensely, it has been justified on grounds that such communication may create excessive market volatility. This paper assesses the purdah for the Federal Reserve and confirms that financial markets are substantially more sensitive to central bank communication around policy meetings. Short-term interest rates react three to four times more strongly in the purdah before Federal Open Market Committee meetings than otherwise, and volatility increases (compared to a reduction otherwise).     

Monetary Policy and Financial Stability: Cross‐Country Evidence

We explain the heterogeneous response of central banks to financial stability risks based on a financial stability orientation (FSO) index, which reflects statutory, regulatory, and discretionary components of central banks' monetary policy frameworks. Our baseline results from a cross‐country panel of modified Taylor rules suggest that central banks with a high FSO increase their policy rates in response to elevated financial stability risks by 0.27 percentage points more than central banks with a low orientation. Back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations suggest that this policy rate differential translates into a reduced crisis probability but also into considerably lower inflation and output growth rates.     

Do Central Bank Forecasts Influence Private Agents? Forecasting Performance versus Signals

Focusing on a set of central banks that publish inflation forecasts in real time, this paper aims to establish whether central bank inflation forecasts influence private inflation forecasts. The response is positive in the five countries studied: Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, and Japan. Three hypotheses may explain this central bank influence: central bank forecasts are more accurate than private ones, are based on different information sets, and/or convey signals about future policy decisions and policymakers’ preferences and objectives. We provide evidence that the source of these central banks’ influence is not linked to their forecasting performance.     

Banking in a Matching Model of Money and Capital

We introduce banks in a model of money and capital with trading frictions. Banks offer demand deposit contracts and hold primary assets to maximize depositors’ utility. If banks’ operating costs are small, banks reallocate liquidity eliminating idle balances and improving the allocation. At moderate costs, idle balances are reduced but not eliminated. At larger costs, banks are redundant. A central bank policy of paying interest on bank reserves can reverse inflation's distortionary effects, and increase welfare, but only when costs are small. The threshold levels of banks’ costs increase with inflation, suggesting inflation and banks’ utilization are positively associated.     

Real Wage Rigidities and the New Keynesian Model

Most central banks perceive a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the gap between output and desired output. However, the standard new Keynesian framework implies no such trade-off. In that framework, stabilizing inflation is equivalent to stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. In this paper, we argue that this property of the new Keynesian framework, which we call the divine coincidence , is due to a special feature of the model: the absence of nontrivial real imperfections. We focus on one such real imperfection, namely, real wage rigidities. When the baseline new Keynesian model is extended to allow for real wage rigidities, the divine coincidence disappears, and central banks indeed face a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. We show that not only does the extended model have more realistic normative implications, but it also has appealing positive properties. In particular, it provides a natural interpretation for the dynamic inflation–unemployment relation found in the data.     

Reconciling Bagehot and the Fed's Response to September 11

Bagehot (1873) states that to prevent bank panics a central bank should provide liquidity at a "very high rate of interest." In contrast, most of the theoretical literature on liquidity provision suggests that central banks should lend at an interest rate of zero. This is broadly consistent with the Federal Reserve's behavior in the days following September 11, 2001. This paper shows that both policies can be reconciled. With commodity money, as in Bagehot's time, liquidity is scarce and a high price allows banks to self-select. In contrast, the Fed has a virtually unlimited ability to temporarily expand the money supply so self-selection is unnecessary.     

Optimal pricing of intraday liquidity

This paper presents a general equilibrium model where intraday liquidity is needed because the timing of payments is uncertain. A necessary and sufficient condition for an equilibrium to be efficient is that the nominal intraday interest rate be zero, even when the overnight rate is strictly positive. Because a market for liquidity may not achieve efficiency, this creates a role for the central bank. I allow for the possibility of moral hazard and study policies commonly used by central banks to reduce their exposure to risk. I show collateralized lending achieves the efficient allocation, while, for certain parameters, caps cannot prevent moral hazard.     

Managing Expectations

The idea that monetary policy is principally about “managing expectations” has taken hold in central banks around the world. Discussions of expectations management by central bankers, academics and by financial market participants frequently also include the idea that central bank credibility is imperfect. We adapt a familiar macroeconomic model so as to discuss key concepts in the area of expectations management. Our work also exemplifies a model construction approach to analyzing the dynamics of announcements, actions, and credibility that we think makes feasible a wide range of future investigations concerning the management of expectations.     

Implications of bank ownership for the credit channel of monetary policy transmission: Evidence from India

Using bank-level data from India, we examine the impact of ownership on the reaction of banks to monetary policy, and also test whether the reaction of different types of banks to monetary policy changes is different in easy and tight policy regimes. Our results suggest that there are considerable differences in the reactions of different types of banks to monetary policy initiatives of the central bank, and that the bank lending channel of monetary policy is likely to be much more effective in a tight money period than in an easy money period. We also find differences in impact of monetary policy changes on less risky short-term and more risky medium-term lending. We discuss the policy implications of the findings.     

The Bank Lending Channel Revisited

A central proposition in research on the role of banks in the transmission mechanism is that monetary policy imparts a direct impact on deposits and that deposits act as the driving force of bank lending. This paper argues that the emphasis on policy‐induced changes in deposits is misplaced. A reformulation of the bank lending channel is proposed that works primarily through the impact of monetary policy on banks’ balance sheet strength and risk perception. Such a recasting implies, contrary to conventional wisdom, that greater reliance on market‐based funding enhances the importance of the channel.     

Reserve Requirements,Liquidity Risk,and Bank Lending Behavior

Although reserve requirements (RR) have been used in emerging markets to smooth credit cycles, the transmission mechanism remains blurry. Using bank‐level data, we unveil the interaction of RR with bank lending. We identify a new channel that works through a decline in banks’ liquid assets and loan supply due to an increase in RR. “Quantitative tightening” through RR raises the short‐term funding needs of the banking system, which is met by collateralized central bank lending, thus depleting banks’ unencumbered liquid assets. Our results suggest that such a shift in bank liquidity is associated with a significant change in lending.     

Examining the Relationships between Capital,Risk and Efficiency in European Banking

This paper analyses the relationship between capital, risk and efficiency for a large sample of European banks between 1992 and 2000. In contrast to the established US evidence we do not find a positive relationship between inefficiency and bank risk‐taking. Inefficient European banks appear to hold more capital and take on less risk. Empirical evidence is found showing the positive relationship between risk on the level of capital (and liquidity), possibly indicating regulators' preference for capital as a mean of restricting risk‐taking activities. We also find evidence that the financial strength of the corporate sector has a positive influence in reducing bank risk‐taking and capital levels. There are no major differences in the relationships between capital, risk and efficiency for commercial and savings banks although there are for co‐operative banks. In the case of co‐operative banks we do find that capital levels are inversely related to risks and we find that inefficient banks hold lower levels of capital. Some of these relationships also vary depending on whether banks are among the most or least efficient operators.