Monetary policy and financial investments of nonfinancial firms: New evidence from China

This paper develops a portfolio choice model by incorporating monetary policy and analyzes the determinants of financial investments of nonfinancial firms in China. Unlike the literature assuming financial investments are riskless, we allow risks in both financial and real investments in firms' portfolio choice model. Our theoretical framework suggests that monetary policy, relative risk in fixed investment, and the risk-adjusted return gap between financial and fixed investments are determinants of firms' financial investments. Using firm-level panel data over the period from 2006 to 2016, we find that the relative risk in fixed investment and quantitative expansionary monetary policy have led to rising financial investments of nonfinancial firms in China over the post-2008 financial crisis period, whereas the rate of the risk-adjusted return gap between financial and fixed investments plays no role in firms' financial investments. The impact of monetary policy on firms' financial investments is also interlinked with their ownerships, with distinct impacts emerging between state-owned and non-state-owned firms.     

International monetary transmission in East Asia: Floaters,non-floaters,and capital controls

This paper analyzes the impacts of the United States (US) monetary shocks on East Asian countries using structural vector-autoregression (VAR) model. We find that the impacts of the US monetary shocks on East Asian domestic interest rates and exchange rates contradict conventional wisdom. The conventional exchange rate channel is unlikely to play much role in the transmission of the US monetary policy shocks to floaters in East Asian countries, excluding Japan. In these countries, the domestic interest rates respond strongly to the US interest rate changes, by giving up monetary autonomy, probably because of fear of floating. However, the domestic interest rate does not respond much in countries with fixed exchange rate regimes and capital account restrictions, such as China and Malaysia. This may suggest that the countries with fixed exchange rate regimes enjoy a higher degree of monetary autonomy, most likely with the help of capital account restrictions.     

Monetary policy shocks and exchange rates in Asian countries

In this paper, we empirically investigate the effects of monetary policy shocks on exchange rates in Asian countries. To do so, we use VAR models which impose sign restrictions on impulse responses to identify monetary policy shocks. We find that contractionary monetary policy shocks lead to significant exchange rate appreciation in Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea. However, in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, we find either a significant depreciation or no significant effect. These results suggest that an interest rate increase (or decrease) may not necessarily shield Asian countries from exchange rate depreciation (or appreciation) pressure following a U.S. interest rate increase (or decrease).     

A role model for China? Exchange rate flexibility and monetary policy in Japan

A substantial number of papers have proposed to allow for more exchange rate flexibility of the Chinese yuan. But few papers have tried to project how Chinese monetary policy will behave under flexible exchange rates. As Japan provides an important role model for China, this paper studies the role of the yen/dollar exchange rate for Japanese monetary policy after the shift of Japan from a fixed to a floating exchange rate regime. In contrast to prior studies, we allow for regime shifts in the impact of the exchange rate on monetary policy. The results show that the exchange rate had a substantial impact on Japanese monetary policy in periods of appreciation. This implies that repeated attempts to soften the appreciation pressure by interest rate cuts have led Japan into the liquidity trap. The economic policy conclusion for China is to keep the exchange rate pegged (to the dollar).     

The interest rate–inflation relationship under an inflation targeting regime: The case of Turkey

This paper examines the relationship between nominal interest rates and the expected inflation rate for the Turkish economy between 2002 and 2009, a period when the inflation-targeting regime was implemented as monetary policy. We use the test of cointegrating rank with a trend-break (a method introduced by Inoue, 1999) and we also apply exogeneity tests. Empirical findings indicate that monetary policy rates depend on inflationary expectations; long-term interest rates are affected by monetary policy; and the weak form of the Fisher effect is valid. This evidence implies that monetary policy has actually influenced the real long-term interest rates; the inflation targeting regime pursued by the Central Bank of Turkey is reliable; and hence realized inflation has remained close to its targeted level.     

China's monetary policy surprises and corporate real investment

We evaluate the effect of China's monetary policy shocks on corporate real investment. We propose a new approach to identify China's monetary policy shocks using high-frequency surprises based on treasury futures around monetary policy announcements as external instruments. We then estimate the dynamic effect of monetary policy shocks on corporate real investment using a rich firm-level data of all listed non-financial firms in China. We find that an unexpected monetary policy easing boosts firms' investment expenditures with heterogeneous dynamic responses across firms: small-sized firms have quicker responses than large-sized firms, especially for non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). We show that sales revenue response could be the channel through which monetary policy shock transmits to non-SOEs' investment expenditures in China.     

Monetary Policy and Corporate Investment： Evidence from Chinese Micro Data

This paper investigates how a firm's characteristics restrict the influence of monetary policy changes on its investment behavior. Focusing on China's listed companies for a sample period from the first quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2011, we find that quantity‐oriented and price‐based monetary policies have heterogeneous impacts on corporate investment behavior, but the influence of monetary policies is constrained by the liquidity, inventory, size and asset–liability ratio of a firm. Firms with higher liquidity, lower inventory level and lower asset–liability ratios are less sensitive to the impact from two kinds of monetary policies. The larger the size of the firm, the less it is subject to influence from quantity‐oriented monetary policy; it responds more to price‐based monetary policy. The policy implication is that the monetary authorities should pay attention to the importance of policy‐making based on the monetary demand of microeconomic entities.     

宏观经济对利率期限结构的动态影响研究

本文通过结构VAR模型发现宏观经济冲击对各期限利率水平产生显著的影响,但不同类型的冲击产生的影响不同：与成熟市场相似,90％以上的利率曲线变化可以由水平、倾斜和曲度因素来解释,且更多表现为平行移动;利用脉冲反应和方差分解,发现价格水平对水平因素的影响最大,而货币政策变化是倾斜因素和曲度因素变化的主要原因,这既体现了央行货币政策操作的有效性,也表明现阶段银行间市场利率期限结构的信息敏感性。这与成熟市场的表现是非常相似的。     

Monetary policy in the euro area: Was it too tight in the 1990s?

This paper studies the monetary policy in the euro area. An important question concerning the euro area is whether the monetary policy has been too tight in the 1990s and in turn, caused the high unemployment rates, in contrast to the economic prosperity and low unemployment rate of the U.S. Therefore, the authors explore what would have happened to the euro economy if the Central Banks had followed either the fixed or time-varying monetary policy rule of the U.S. The paper does find that the European central banks and then later the ECB overreacted to past inflation pressures.     

Can inflation targeting regimes be effective in developing countries? The Turkish experience

This paper examines the performance of Turkey's inflation targeting (IT) experience. We find the IT regime to be an effective framework. Our judgment is based on three broad conclusions supported by empirical analyses. First, fiscal stability is an effective tool for a successful monetary policy. Second, the overnight policy of the Central Bank of Turkey rate is a significant determinant of the changes in market lending rates, which is the preliminary step in the monetary transmission mechanism. Third, recent developments on the broader issue of the effectiveness of interest rate policy in controlling inflation through aggregate demand management and through other channels are encouraging. Based on our findings, we argue that the impact of policy rate changes on economic activity and inflation have become more predictable and changed in the direction in line with theory, improving the transmission capacity of monetary policy.     

Monetary policy,cash holding and corporate investment: Evidence from China

This paper uses 13,766 firm-year observations between 2003 and 2013 from China to investigate the effects of monetary policy on corporate investment and the mitigating effects of cash holding. We find that tightening monetary policy reduces corporate investment while cash holdings mitigate such adverse effects. The cash mitigating role is especially significant for financially constrained firms, non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) and those firms located in a less developed financial market. Cash holding also improves investment efficiency when monetary policy is tightening and tightening monetary policy enhances the ‘cash-cash flow’ sensitivity. Our empirical evidence calls for a critical evaluation on the monetary policies implemented in China which are less effective for state-owned enterprises. It also calls for a necessity for local government to further develop regional financial markets to protect vulnerable businesses, such as non-SOEs and financially constrained firms, from external shocks in order to maintain their sustainable growth and competitive advantages.     

Chinese monetary policy and the banking system

Chinese monetary policy differs from that of many other countries in its use of multiple policy instruments. This paper assesses the effectiveness of some of the instruments employed, using a model of the banking sector and elasticities estimated from Chinese data. We find that direct interest rate changes are a poorer instrument of monetary control in China than changes in reserve requirement ratios and loan-to-deposit ratios. This finding is based on the ambiguous estimated response of deposit demand to such changes, and may help to explain why changes to administered interest rates have been used sparingly as an instrument of Chinese monetary policy. We also find that the ambiguous deposit demand response could pose challenges for the effectiveness of open market operations under interest rate liberalisation, while exchange rate liberalisation is likely to make monetary instruments more powerful.     

企业债务违约风险与货币政策立场——微观财务信息的宏观预测价值

文章基于2004年第一季度至2019年第三季度数据，构建汇总层面的利息偿付倍数、现金持有水平以及会计盈余作为企业债务违约风险的代理变量，考察其对国家货币政策调控立场的预测价值。研究发现：（1）汇总层面的企业债务违约风险越高，政府未来越倾向于采取更为宽松的货币政策，表现为未来信贷投放规模的增长和借贷利率的下降；（2）分析师宏观预测以及投资者的投资决策也一定程度上考虑了汇总层面的企业债务违约风险。研究表明，汇总层面的企业债务违约风险能够反映实体经济的资金供求状况，从而对货币政策立场发挥一定的预测价值，有助于监管当局提高对宏观经济的监测和预警能力。     

The case for price level or inflation targeting—What happened to monetary policy effectiveness during the Japanese disinflation?

This paper examines whether price level or inflation targeting would have been appropriate policy choices for Japan during its disinflation and deflation period. We employ Markov switching and structural vector autoregressions, together with structural IS equations, to investigate monetary policy effectiveness during the Japanese disinflation. We find evidence of regime switching in the mid-1990s in a model including the nominal policy interest rate. When monetary policy shocks are identified by using the McCallum rule for monetary base, a monetary expansion is found to have a statistically significant impact on prices. Moreover, a lower real ex ante interest rate can still stimulate the economy despite the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates.     

Monetary Policy and Risk-Based Asset Allocation

This paper focuses on the effects of the Fed’s monetary policy on stock and bond returns co-movement and their implications to risk-based asset allocation. Using a regime-switching model that controls for the economic effects of monetary policy we identify three co-movement regimes. We document that risk-based portfolio strategies poorly perform in the low correlation regime which features inflation shocks. We find outperformance evidence under the negative correlation regime with a high stock market risk and a very accommodating Fed policy. Less effectiveness is demonstrated under the positive correlation regime where bonds are regarded as risky assets and interest rate volatility is fueled by monetary policy.     

Detrending and the Money-Output Link: International Evidence

An important policy question is whether nominal money is relatively more useful than interest rates in explaining movements in real output. Previous analyses usually rely only on U.S. data or other financially developed countries from a specific region, such as the EU. This study examines the empirical relation between money, interest rates, and output across a sample of 20 countries, including industrial countries from different regions as well as economically and financially less-developed countries. On the basis of estimating an unconstrained, four-variable VAR model, the weight of evidence indicates that rejecting money as a potentially informative tool in setting monetary policy is unwarranted.     

Is it really more dispersed?

The ECB’s one size monetary policy is unlikely to fit all euro area members at all times, which raises the question of how much monetary policy stress this causes at the national level. I measure monetary policy stress as the difference between actual ECB interest rates and Taylor-rule implied rates at the member state level. These rates explicitly take into account the natural rate of interest to capture changes in trend growth. I find that monetary policy stress within the euro area has been steadily decreasing prior to the recent financial crisis. Current stress levels are not only lower today than in the late 1990s, they are also in line with what is commonly observed among U.S. states or pre-euro German Länder.     

Evaluating monetary policy when nominal interest rates are almost zero

The non-negativity constraint on nominal interest rates may have been a major factor behind a putative structural break in the effectiveness of monetary policy. To check for the existence of such a break without making prior assumptions about timing, and to enable comparison between pre- and post-break monetary policy, we employ an identified Markov switching VAR framework. Estimation results support the existence of a structural break around the time when the de facto zero nominal interest rate policy was resumed and the effectiveness of monetary policy is seen to weaken since then although slightly positive effects from monetary easing still exist. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (3) (2006) 434–453.     

融资成本能评价新型货币政策工具的有效性吗

提升货币政策效果是近年来我国宏观经济调控改革中的重要任务,而如何正确评价货币政策有效性则是这一任务的前提条件。基于此,结合我国经济新变化,文章在经典的CC-LM模型中纳入了新型货币政策工具,从理论上分析了新型货币政策工具对信贷利率与实际产出的传导机制,并应用具有时变参数的TVP-SV-VAR模型进一步检验了理论分析的结论。理论研究与实证检验一致得出：第一,从对实际产出的影响来看,中期借贷便利为代表的新型货币投放方式是有效的;第二,中期借贷便利仅能降低短期信贷利率,而长期将提升信贷利率;第三,中期借贷便利与LPR报价市场的市场化程度提升可强化货币政策有效性。此外,实证研究还表明,依靠中期借贷便利方式投放基础货币会造成吉布逊谜团的现象,因此能否降低融资成本并不能作为评价货币政策有效性的指标。籍此,文章对如何优化新型货币政策有效性提出了富有建设性的政策建议。     

Divisia monetary aggregates and money demand for Malaysia

Divisia M1 and M2 are constructed for Malaysia. Unlike M1, Divisia M2 shows significant differences in both level and growth rates from its simple sum counterpart. We also compare these Divisia measures to simple sum M1 and M2 in a money demand function. Using error correction models, we examine short-run dynamics between these monetary aggregates and money demand determinants such as inflation, domestic and foreign interest rates, financial wealth, and income. We find that Divisia M2 is the most appropriate monetary aggregate of the four candidates to track money demand in Malaysia and should be used when conducting monetary policy.