Forecast uncertainty and the Taylor rule

In this paper, we derive a modification of a forward-looking Taylor rule by integrating two variables that measure the uncertainty of inflation and GDP growth forecasts into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model. We show that certainty-equivalence in New Keynesian models is a consequence of log-linearization and that a second-order Taylor approximation leads to a reaction function that includes the uncertainty of macroeconomic expectations. To test the model empirically, we use the standard deviation of individual forecasts around the median Consensus Forecast as a proxy for forecast uncertainty. Our sample covers the euro area, the United Kingdom, and the United States for the period 1990Q1–2016Q4. We find that the Bank of England and the European Central Bank have a significantly negative reaction to inflation forecast uncertainty. Our findings also reveal that the Federal Reserve (Bank of England) lowers (raises) its interest rate in response to higher GDP growth forecast uncertainty. We conclude by offering some implications for optimal monetary policy rules and central bank watchers.     

Exchange controls and interest rate determination with traded and non-traded assets: the Irish–United Kingdom experience

This paper is an empirical study of the effectiveness of exchange controls in recent Irish experience vis-à-vis the United Kingdom. Specifically, we examine the effects of domestic money market conditions on an array of Irish interest rates following the imposition of the controls, and the relative importance of covered British interest rates during the process of financial disintegration induced by these controls. Using time-varying parameter estimation, we find that the Central Bank gained only partial and temporary control over interest rates through domestic monetary channels. For most assets and liabilities, interest parity conditions were restored within six months after a policy change.     

Excess liquidity,bank pricing rules,and monetary policy

This paper studies the implications of excess bank liquidity for the effectiveness of monetary policy in a simple model with credit market imperfections. The demand for excess reserves is determined by precautionary factors and the opportunity cost of holding cash. It is argued that excess liquidity may impart greater stickiness to the deposit rate in response to a monetary contraction and induce an easing of collateral requirements on borrowers – which in turn may translate into a lower risk premium and lower lending rates. As a result, asymmetric bank pricing behavior under excess liquidity may hamper the ability of a contractionary monetary policy to lower inflation.     

Can central banks’ monetary policy be described by a linear (augmented) Taylor rule or by a nonlinear rule?

The original Taylor rule establishes a simple linear relation between the interest rate, inflation and the output gap. An important extension to this rule is the assumption of a forward-looking behaviour of central banks. Now they are assumed to target expected inflation and output gap instead of current values of these variables. Using a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function, this paper analyses whether central banks’ monetary policy can indeed be described by a linear Taylor rule or, instead, by a nonlinear rule. It also analyses whether that rule can be augmented with a financial conditions index containing information from some asset prices and financial variables. The results indicate that the monetary behaviour of the European Central Bank and Bank of England is best described by a nonlinear rule, but the behaviour of the Federal Reserve of the United States can be well described by a linear Taylor rule. Our evidence also suggests that only the European Central Bank is reacting to financial conditions.     

Monetary Policy Implementation in a Negative Rate Environment

To analyze monetary policy implementation in a negative rate environment, we add the option to exchange central bank reserves for cash to the standard workhorse model of monetary policy implementation (Poole 1968). Importantly, we show that monetary policy can be constrained when the target overnight rate is below the yield on cash. At this point, the overnight rate equals the yield on cash instead of the target rate. Modifications to the implementation framework, such as a reserve requirement that varies with cash withdrawals, can help restore the implementation of monetary policy such that the overnight rate equals the target rate.     

Inflation,Employment, and Monetary Policy: Objectives and Outcomes in the UK and U.S. Compared

This paper explores how sensitive is monetary policy to the precise preferences of the central bank over inflation and economic activity. It does so in order to address a puzzle—which is that the U.S. Fed and the Bank of England appear to have quite different objectives and yet have adopted strikingly similar policies in recent years. I use a calibrated model to assess how policy might be sensitive to attaching different weights to inflation, output, and the output gap in central bank objectives. I find that a wide range of weights can give rise to rather similar monetary policies.     

Power‐Sharing in Monetary Policy Committees: Evidence from the United Kingdom and Sweden

Committees may make better monetary policy decisions than individuals; however, the benefits of group decision making could be lost if committee members cede power to a chairman. We develop an econometric model to describe intracommittee power‐sharing across members. Estimation of the model permits us to classify monetary policy committees into the typology developed by Blinder ( 2004 , 2007 ). We estimate our model for the United Kingdom's Bank of England (BOE) and Sweden's Riksbank. Results for the BOE suggest that the Governor has little influence over other committee members, while those for the Riksbank indicate that the Governor is highly influential.     

Identifying Monetary Policy Shocks via Changes in Volatility

A central issue of monetary policy analysis is the specification of monetary policy shocks. In a structural vector autoregressive setting there has been some controversy about which restrictions to use for identifying the shocks because standard theories do not provide enough information to fully identify monetary policy shocks. In fact, to compare different theories it would even be desirable to have over-identifying restrictions that would make statistical tests of different theories possible. It is pointed out that some progress toward over-identifying monetary policy shocks can be made by using specific data properties. In particular, it is shown that changes in the volatility of the shocks can be used for identification. Based on monthly U.S. data from 1965 to 1996 different theories are tested and it is found that associating monetary policy shocks with shocks to nonborrowed reserves leads to a particularly strong rejection of the model whereas assuming that the Fed accommodates demand shocks to total reserves cannot be rejected.     

Monetary policy and the twin crises

After presenting a brief overview of the recent financial crisis and the European debt crisis that followed in its wake, this paper goes on discuss monetary policy in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Euro bloc prior to and during the course of the two crises. The paper presents historical evidence for the three areas on the relationships linking the volatilities of output, inflation and monetary growth. In all three these relations are strongly positive. There is, therefore, no tradeoff between inflation and output volatility; the two move up and down together. Both, moreover, move up and down with the volatility of monetary growth. Viewed from this perspective, the increased volatilities of money supplies and the monetary base in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Euro bloc over the last half decade pose problems.     

A Model of QE,Reserve Demand,and the Money Multiplier

Quantitative easing (QE) programs have driven unprecedented expansions in the supply of central bank reserves around the world over the past two decades, fundamentally changing the implementation of monetary policy. The collapse in money multipliers following QE episodes has often been interpreted as implying banks are happy to passively hold most of the reserves created by QE. This paper develops a simple microsimulation model of the banking sector that adapts the traditional money multiplier model and allows for bank reserve demand to be inferred from monetary aggregates. The model allows the use of unwanted reserves by banks to play out over time alongside QE purchases and incorporates both significantly higher reserve demand after 2008 and capital constraints. With these additions, the model explains the persistently lower money multipliers seen in the United States following QE, as well as the growth in commercial bank deposits. The model suggests the demand from banks for reserves has increased substantially since the introduction of QE but not to the point where banks are passively absorbing all newly created reserves.     

UK policy coordination: the importance of institutional design

This paper considers the principles that underpin the design of the UK's macroeconomic framework, with particular emphasis on the importance of good institutional design in ensuring effective coordination of monetary and fiscal policy when an independent Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee has operational responsibility for setting interest rates. The theoretical literature on policy coordination finds that the cost of central bank independence is less monetary‐fiscal coordination. We argue that once account is taken of the institutional arrangements, this conclusion does not hold for the UK. In fact, the UK macroeconomic policy framework represents a significant improvement in policy coordination through mechanisms that allow for greater transparency and accountability in policy‐making. Among the measures discussed in the paper is the role of the Treasury Representative on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee.     

中央银行前瞻性货币政策指引的比较研究

本文以英格兰银行首次正式推出前瞻性货币政策指引为切入点,对日本央行与美联储历次发布前瞻性指引的相关经验进行比较研究,从中借鉴总结对我国货币政策制定实施的实际指导意义。     

Central bank announcements of asset purchases and the impact on global financial and commodity markets

We present evidence on the effects of large-scale asset purchases by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England since 2008. We show that announcements about these purchases led to lower long-term interest rates and depreciations of the U.S. dollar and the British pound on announcement days, while commodity prices generally declined despite this more stimulative financial environment. We suggest that LSAP announcements likely involved signaling effects about future growth that led investors to downgrade their U.S. growth forecasts lowering long-term US yields, depreciating the value of the U.S. dollar, and triggering a decline in commodity prices. Moreover, our analysis illustrates the importance of controlling for market expectations when assessing these effects. We find that positive U.S. monetary surprises led to declines in commodity prices, even as long-term interest rates fell and the U.S. dollar depreciated. In contrast, on days of negative U.S. monetary surprises, i.e. when markets evidently believed that monetary policy was less stimulatory than expected, long-term yields, the value of the dollar, and commodity prices all tended to increase.     

Do central banks respond to exchange rate movements? A structural investigation

We estimate a small-scale, structural general equilibrium model of a small open economy using Bayesian methods. Our main focus is the conduct of monetary policy in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. We consider generic Taylor-type rules, where the monetary authority reacts in response to output, inflation, and exchange-rate movements. We perform posterior odds tests to investigate the hypothesis whether central banks do target exchange rates. The main result of this paper is that the central banks of Australia and New Zealand do not, whereas the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England do include the nominal exchange rate in its policy rule. This result is robust for various specification of the policy rule. We also find that terms-of-trade movements do not contribute significantly to domestic business cycles.     

2012年主要经济体经济形势和货币政策走势分析

该文分析展望了2012年主要经济体经济形势和货币政策走势,指出主要发达国家将继续实施“超紧”财政政策与“极松”货币政策组合;美国经济复苏进程加快,其货币政策将维持宽松;欧央行可能于上半年再度降息;英国经济不会陷人二次衰退,其量化宽松政策将止步于QE3;国际资本流动将呈回升趋势;外汇市场延续“美元震荡走高、欧元小幅走弱”格局。     

全球央行购买公司债的原因、效果及启示

中央银行购买公司债是次贷危机后货币政策理论的一项伟大创新和重要实践探索。通过对迄今为止购买过公司债的日本央行、英国央行和欧洲央行的公司债购买计划进行的系统梳理和总结,以及对中央银行购买公司债的理论依据进行分析,提出中央银行购买公司债的六大传导机制。对中央银行购买公司债的经验进行阐述后认为,鉴于当前实体经济依然存在融资难融资贵问题,中国央行在必要时也可实施公司债购买计划,以降低信用利差并提高货币政策传导效率。     

Realized and Optimal Monetary Policy Rules in an Estimated Markov‐Switching DSGE Model of the United Kingdom

This paper investigates underlying changes in the UK economy over the past 35 years using a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Using Bayesian analysis, we find UK monetary policy, nominal price rigidity and exogenous shocks, are all subject to regime shifts. A model incorporating these changes is used to estimate the realized monetary policy and derive the optimal monetary policy rule for the United Kingdom. This allows us to assess the effectiveness of the realized policy in terms of stabilizing economic fluctuations, and, in turn, provide an indication of whether there is room for the monetary authorities to further improve their policies.     

Financial stress and economic dynamics: The transmission of crises

A financial stress index for the United States is introduced—one used by the staff of the Federal Reserve Board during the financial crisis of 2008–2009—and its׳ interaction with real activity, inflation and monetary policy is investigated using a Markov-switching VAR model, estimated with Bayesian methods. A “stress event” is defined as a period of adverse latent Markov states. Results show that time variation is statistically important, that stress events line up well with historical events, and that shifts to stress events are highly detrimental for the economy. Conventional monetary policy is shown to be weak during such periods.     

Demand and supply functions for money in Canada: Some further evidence

The demand and supply functions for money in Canada are estimated in a simultaneous-equation model format in which the supply of money is considered endogenous. The results indicate that the important determinants of the demand for money are income, short-term interest rate and lagged real cash balance variables. Wealth is an unimportant explanatory variable in money demand thus rejecting the hypothesis that an increase in outside wealth increases the demand for money. The monetary base and cash reserve ratio are important explanatory variables in the money supply function and play a direct role in monetary control.     

货币政策在银行危机管理中的效果

本文从货币政策的信贷传导渠道出发,探讨了金融危机条件下商业银行资本管理、准备金需求的变化、信贷配给对货币政策有效性的影响机制。分析表明,货币政策的有效性不仅取决于中央银行的政策意图,还受制于商业银行资本量、风险偏好以及信贷配给程度的变化。因此,强化危机时期的货币政策效果必须配合影响银行信贷行为的措施。