United we stand: on the macroeconomics of a Fiscal union

In this paper, we apply dynamic tracking games to macroeconomic policy making in a monetary union. We use a small stylized nonlinear two-country macroeconomic model of a monetary union for analyzing the interactions between two fiscal (governments: “core” and “periphery”) and one monetary (central bank) policy makers, assuming different objective functions of these decision makers. Using the OPTGAME algorithm, we calculate numerical solutions for cooperative (Pareto optimal) and non-cooperative games (feedback Nash). We show how the policy makers react to adverse demand shocks. We investigate the consequences of three scenarios: decentralized fiscal policies controlled by independent governments (the present situation), centralized fiscal policy (a fiscal union) with an independent central bank (pure fiscal union), and a fully centralized monetary and fiscal union. For the latter two scenarios, we demonstrate the importance of different assumptions about the joint objective function corresponding to different weights for the two governments in the design of the common fiscal policy. We show that a fiscal union with weights corresponding to the number of states in each of the blocs gives better results than non-cooperative policy making. When one bloc dominates the fiscal union, decentralized policies yield lower overall losses than the pure fiscal union and the monetary and fiscal union.     

THE POWER OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIR

This article examines the influence exerted by the Federal Reserve chair on monetary policy decisions. We construct a voting model where the chair selects the proposal that is initially put to a vote but is subject to an acceptance constraint that incorporates the preferences of the median Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) member and the probability of counterproposals. The model is estimated by maximum likelihood using real-time data from FOMC meetings. Results for all chairs in our sample show that the chair's proposal is the result of a compromise, reflecting a stable balance of power within the FOMC.     

EFFECTS ON INTEREST RATES OF IMMEDIATELY RELEASING FOMC DIRECTIVES

Prior to February 1994, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) did not officially release its current Domestic Policy Directives to the public until after the next FOMC meeting, a lag of approximately 45 days. Thus, the public never knew the FOMC's latest decisions about short-run monetary policy. On 11 occasions between early 1989 and May 1993, however, the essence of the directives was "leaked" to the Wall Street Journal within one week of an FOMC meeting. This study tests Federal Reserve officials' original assertion that early release of directives would increase volatility in financial markets by creating announcement effects. The study finds some evidence of announcement effects in certain instances, but the assertion that an immediate release would "roil the markets" appears unfounded .     

The Policy Anticipation Hypothesis: Evidence from the Federal Funds Futures Market

In an era of increasingly transparent policy making by the Federal Reserve, market participants appear to interpret each economic announcement based on the implication for monetary policy. As a result, when macroeconomic news arrives economic agents revise their expectations of upcoming policy decisions and interest rates move accordingly. This article provides empirical support for this policy anticipation hypothesis utilizing the Federal funds futures market to proxy for policy expectations. The results indicate that once one controls for the role of policy anticipation the impact of many announcements on bond yields becomes statistically insignificant. (JEL E4 , E5 , G1 )     

FOMC VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTORAL CYCLES: PARTISAN IDEOLOGY AND PARTISAN LOYALTY

The influence of partisan and electoral considerations on the monetary policy voting behavior of Federal Reserve Governors is investigated in the context of a model permitting the estimation of reaction functions on the basis of FOMC voting records. The results suggest that once we have controlled for the state of the economy and for the prevailing stance of monetary policy, both partisan ideologies and partisan loyalties appear to play an important role in the Governors'voting calculus.     

Geography, skills or both: What explains Fed watchers’ forecast accuracy of US monetary policy?

The paper shows that there is a substantial degree of heterogeneity in the ability of Fed watchers to forecast US monetary policy decisions. Based on a novel database for 268 individual professional forecasters since 1999, the average absolute forecast error of FOMC decisions varies 5–10 basis points between the best and worst-performers across the sample. This heterogeneity is found to be related to both the skills of analysts – such as their educational and employment backgrounds – and to geography. In particular, forecasters located in regions which experience more idiosyncratic economic conditions perform worse in anticipating monetary policy. This evidence is indicative that limited attention and heterogeneous priors are present even for anticipating important events such as monetary policy decisions.     

Monetary and Fiscal Policy Rules in the EMU

Abstract. This paper studies the design and effects of monetary and fiscal policy in the euro area. To do so, a stylized two‐region model of monetary and fiscal policy rules in the EMU is built. We analyse how monetary and fiscal rules affect the adjustment dynamics in the model. Both the effects on the individual countries and on the EMU aggregate economy are studied. Three aspects play an important role in the analysis: (i) the consequences of alternative monetary and fiscal policy rules, (ii) the consequences of asymmetries between EMU countries (asymmetries in macroeconomic shocks and macroeconomic structures), and (iii) the role of alternative degrees of backward‐ and forward‐looking behaviour in consumer decisions and inflation expectations.     

Measuring Monetary Policy Stress for Fed District Representatives

This study provides a measure of the degree of stress that exists among Fed districts in the US. Stress in a district is defined as the difference between the desired interest rate of its representative and the actual policy rate implemented by the FOMC. I find that the degree of stress reflects the stance of the US monetary policy, a positive stress level in the 1990s (which corresponds to a policy rate higher than the desired rate of FOMC members), and a negative stress level from the 2000s (which corresponds to a policy rate lower than the desired rate of FOMC members). However, the economic and financial crisis exacerbated the degree of stress measure, suggesting an increase in monetary policy uncertainty among FOMC members from that time.     

International spillovers from US forward guidance to equity markets

We quantify the international spillovers of explicit Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy rate guidance used as an unconventional monetary policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on international equity markets, considering equity indices of both advanced and emerging economies. We find that stimulatory explicit FOMC policy rate guidance announcements at the zero lower bound led to higher equity prices in a number of advanced and emerging economies. Moreover, we find that equity indices of economies with lower sovereign ratings rose by more, consistent with the risk-taking channel of monetary policy.     

Measuring the effectiveness of US monetary policy during the COVID-19 recession

The COVID-19 recession that started in March 2020 led to an unprecedented decline in economic activity across the globe. To fight this recession, policy makers in central banks engaged in expansionary monetary policy. This paper asks whether the measures adopted by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) have been effective in boosting real activity and calming financial markets. To measure these effects at high frequencies, we propose a novel mixed frequency vector autoregressive (MF-VAR) model. This model allows us to combine weekly and monthly information within a unified framework. Our model combines a set of macroeconomic aggregates such as industrial production, unemployment rates, and inflation with high-frequency information from financial markets such as stock prices, interest rate spreads, and weekly information on the Fed's balance sheet size. The latter set of high-frequency time series is used to dynamically interpolate the monthly time series to obtain weekly macroeconomic measures. We use this setup to simulate counterfactuals in absence of monetary stimulus. The results show that the monetary expansion caused higher output growth and stock market returns, more favorable long-term financing conditions and a depreciation of the US dollar compared with a no-policy benchmark scenario.     

Hysteresis in Potential Output and Monetary Policy

We show that actively stabilizing economic activity plays a more prominent role in the conduct of monetary policy when potential output is subject to hysteresis. We augment a basic New Keynesian model by hysteresis in potential output and contrast simulation outcomes of this extended model to the standard model. We find that considering hysteresis allows for a more realistic amplification of macroeconomic shocks and persistent movements in output after monetary shocks. Our central policy implication of active output gap stabilization arises from stability analyses and welfare considerations.     

Reactions of real yields and inflation expectations to forward guidance in the United States

We study the impact of forward policy rate guidance by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) used as an unconventional monetary policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on real and breakeven US Treasury yield curves. We find that explicit FOMC policy rate guidance announcements led to a significant reduction in real yields at horizons of 2 to 5 years ahead. By contrast, long-term breakeven inflation rates were little affected, suggesting that inflation expectations have remained well anchored, and that explicit FOMC policy rate guidance has not adversely affected central bank credibility.     

Do the ECB's introductory statements help predict monetary policy? Evidence from a tone analysis

In this paper, we examine whether a tone shock derived from European Central Bank communication helps predict ECB monetary policy decisions. To this purpose, we first use a bag-of-words approach and several dictionaries on the ECB's Introductory Statements to derive a measure of tone. Next, we orthogonalise the tone measure on the latest data available to market participants to compute the tone shock. Finally, we relate the tone shock to future ECB monetary policy decisions. We find that the tone shock is significantly and positively related to future ECB monetary policy decisions, even when controlling for market expectations of monetary policy and the Governing Council's inter-meeting communication. Further extensions show that the predictive ability of the tone shock is robust to (i) the normalization of the tone measure, (ii) alternative market expectations of monetary policy, and (iii) the horizon of macroeconomic variables used in the Taylor-type monetary policy rule. These findings highlight an additional channel through which ECB communication improves monetary policy predictability, suggesting that the ECB may have private information that it communicates through its Introductory Statements.     

Monetary policy credibility and macrodynamics: evidence from Ghana

We compute a time-varying metric of monetary policy credibility based on Ghana’s experience, using both symmetric and asymmetric approaches. We then follow-up with some empirical evidence to address the linkages between macroeconomic developments and central bank credibility. The empirical results reveal high and low credibility cycles with an average duration of 2 years over the study period. Particularly, higher levels of credibility were associated with stable domestic currency and lower nominal interest rates. This reinforces the notion that efficient monetary policy delivers higher central bank credibility with better outcomes for macroeconomic variables. In contrast, the level of credibility tends to worsen in the wake of weakening macro fundamentals which are not adequately countered by monetary policy decisions. There is therefore the need for efficient monetary policy formulation to achieve a stable macroeconomic environment in Ghana. This will in the long-run build policy credibility towards attaining the central bank’s medium-term inflation target.     

On the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy and of Fiscal Policy

There has been a major shift within macroeconomic policy over the past two decades or so in terms of the relative importance given to monetary policy and to fiscal policy in both policy and theoretical terms. The former has gained considerably in importance, with the latter being rarely mentioned. Furthermore, the nature of monetary policy has shifted away from any attempt to control some monetary aggregate (prevalent in the first half of the 1980s), and instead monetary policy has focused on the setting of interest rates as the key policy instrument. There has also been a general shift towards the adoption of inflation targets and the use of monetary policy to target inflation. This paper considers the significance of this shift in the nature of monetary policy. This enables us to question the effectiveness of monetary policy, and to explore the role of fiscal policy. We examine these questions from the point of view of the "new consensus" in monetary economics and suggest that it is rather limited in its analysis. When the analysis is broadened out to embrace empirical issues and evidence the clear conclusion emerges that monetary policy is relatively impotent. The role of fiscal policy is also considered, and we argue that fiscal policy (under specified conditions) remains a powerful tool for macroeconomic policy. This is particularly an apt conclusion under current economic conditions.     

Bayesian forecasting of federal funds target rate decisions

In this paper we examine which macroeconomic and financial variables have most predictive ability for the federal funds target rate decisions made by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). We conduct the analysis for the 157 FOMC decisions during the period January 1990–June 2008, using dynamic ordered probit models with a Bayesian endogenous variable selection methodology and real-time data for a set of 33 candidate predictor variables. We find that indicators of economic activity and forward-looking term structure variables, as well as survey measures are most informative from a forecasting perspective. For the full sample period, in-sample probability forecasts achieve a hit rate of 90%. Based on out-of-sample forecasts for the period January 2001–June 2008, 82% of the FOMC decisions are predicted correctly.     

The Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks in Bangladesh: A Bayesian Structural VAR Approach

This paper develops a Bayesian structural VAR model for Bangladesh in a small-open-economy context in order to estimate the effects of monetary policy shocks on various macroeconomic variables. To increase the precision of the model identification, we allow the macroeconomic variables of the model to interact simultaneously with each other. This paper finds that the liquidity effect and the exchange-rate effect of the monetary policy shock are realized immediately, while industrial production responds with a lag of over half a year, and the inflation rate responds with a lag of more than one year. I also find that monetary policy shocks are not the dominant source of industrial production fluctuations in Bangladesh.     

The relative importance of monetary and fiscal policies in selected African countries

This paper examines the relative importance of monetary and fiscal policies in ten African countries using a trivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) model. The analysis is undertaken with annual data from 1960 to 1990 in logarithms first difference form. In five of the ten countries, our empirical results support the monetarist position that monetary policy is more important than fiscal policy. On the other hand, the Keynesian position that fiscal policy is more important than monetary policy is confirmed in the other five countries of the sample. The results of this study suggest that a particular economic philosophy cannot be generalized for African countries. These results may therefore prove useful not only to policy-makers but also to those interested in building macroeconomic models which may have implications for aggregate-demand management.