Shaken or Stirred? Financial Deregulation and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism in Norway

Is there a credit channel for monetary policy? Has the deregulation of financial markets had any temporary or permanent effects on the monetary transmission mechanism? We present empirical evidence on these issues for Norway by estimating a dynamic system of money, credit, real income and inflation. We find that the deregulation process has not caused any permanent shifts in the long‐run demand functions. Within a small simultaneous dynamic model, there is some evidence for the credit view of the monetary transmission mechanism, as both credit and money exhibit strong and stable effects on aggregate demand. JEL classification: E50; E44; C51     

The nature and role of monetary policy when money is endogenous

This paper considers the nature and role of monetary policywhen money is modelled as credit money endogenously createdwithin the private sector. There are currently two schools ofthought that view money as endogenous: one has been labelledthe ‘new consensus’ in macroeconomics, and the otheris the Keynesian endogenous (bank) money approach. The paperfirst explores the analysis of monetary policy in the ‘newconsensus’ macroeconomic model, followed by an examinationof the effectiveness of monetary policy in that analysis. TheKeynesian view of endogenous money is discussed, and the rolefor monetary policy in a Keynesian endogenous monetary policyanalysis is considered, including discussion of the objectivesand instruments of monetary policy.     

A Macro-Level Account of Money and Credit to Explain Gendered Financialization

ABSTRACT

The paper intervenes in the debate on macroeconomics, money, gender, and financialization. Generally, there is an omission in gender studies on gender-specific effects of monetary policy. Not only is there a blind-spot about the role of monetary policy in feminist political economy, there is equally a blind-spot in meso-level analysis which focus on the social construction of institutional mechanisms and the predatory market power of oligopolistic banks. Yet, monetary policy is neither neutral in the short-term nor long-term. Such policies have gender-differentiated effects on employment, income, consumption, savings which in turn have feed-back effects on economic growth. My intent is to focus on the changing role of monetary policy and highlight the omission in gender studies on financialization, as well as argue that the shift of the credit cycle to fictitious capital (future revenue) is one of the central explanatory variables in the predatory banking model of subprime lending. Yet, the financial crisis of 2007 did not usher in a normalisation of the credit and finance system. Exactly the opposite happened. Unconventional monetary policy continues to facilitate a credit system based on future claims which has gendered distributional effects, in the process increasing the wealth inequality on a global scale.     

The state as a creature of money

Recent social theories of money have challenged economic conceptions of it as first and foremost a medium of exchange. Writers such as Geoffrey Ingham and David Graeber have revived the chartalist position that money is essentially a creature of the state, whose primary function is to measure value or debt. In this paper, I argue that this is a wrong turning. I first clarify the conceptual underpinnings of Ingham’s treatment of money as an ‘institutional fact’, a concept drawn from Searle. I clarify the sense in which this argument establishes that the state ‘creates’ money – and show that this sense is quite limited. It is a theory of how something comes to be accepted as money, rather than a theory of why there is money in the first place, and it gives no account of money’s value. Finally, I sketch an alternative way of looking at the relationship between states and money. This recognises that modern states have been shaped in part by strategies with regard to monetary management, with state actors engaging strategically in a system they only partially constitute – so that states are ‘creatures of money’ as much as the reverse.     

货币政策能否促进银行对小微企业信贷投放——基于宏观经济不确定视角的研究

本文研究在宏观经济不确定条件下,不同货币政策工具能否促进银行对小微企业信贷投放。首先,将货币政策引入考虑了宏观经济不确定性的银行资产组合模型中,论证货币政策、宏观经济不确定性与银行信贷资产配置的理论关系。然后利用我国181家银行2004—2018年的数据,检验在宏观经济不确定条件下,不同货币政策工具对银行小微企业信贷行为调控的作用效果。研究结果表明：宏观经济不确定性会抑制银行信贷行为。其中小微企业信贷占比较大的银行受到的影响更为显著。与数量型货币政策相比,价格型货币政策能够更显著地减轻不确定性对银行小微信贷的消极影响。其中银行同业拆借利率的调控效果最强。研究结论对于选择适宜的货币政策工具促进银行向小微企业信贷投放,化解经济不确定性对银行信贷行为的影响并助力小微企业发展等具有政策借鉴意义。     

货币政策对房地产价格调控的非对称效应——基于STR模型

从货币政策的非对称效应的角度,运用非线性模型——STR模型,探究了中国货币政策与房地产价格的关系。研究结果表明:货币政策对房地产价格的影响确实因所处经济周期阶段的不同而发生变化;货币政策与房地产价格之间存在非线性关系;不同经济增长水平下货币政策对房地产价格的调控效应是不对称的;在调控房地产价格方面,我国货币政策的信贷传导路径比利率传导路径更有效。     

Sovereign Debt Management and the Transformation from Keynesian to Neoliberal Monetary Governance in Britain

ABSTRACT

Private financial markets are central to the implementation of monetary governance. This necessary integration of public and private finance means the way states govern must evolve with developments in financial markets. This article examines how the rise of liability management underpinned a shift to market-based banking and transformed the operation of monetary policy in Britain. It assesses the period of reform between 1967 and 1981 and what this meant for monetary governance. Political economy literature depicts this period as a shift to depoliticised, deregulated governance with public authority giving way to market power. This paper challenges this perspective on the grounds that it misconstrues the problem policymakers faced. The shift from Keynesian to neoliberal monetary governance came in response to the change in banking practice with the rise of liability management and a parallel money market. This underpinned an explosion of credit creation that the old system of monetary policy, organised around the Base Rate and ‘primary’ discount market could not fix. As a result, the monetary authorities had to render this new financial environment governable. The period should therefore be reassessed in terms of the capacities the state attempted to construct to conduct monetary governance.     

Structural VAR models for Malaysian monetary policy analysis during the pre- and post-1997 Asian crisis periods

This article conducts an in-depth investigation into building a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model and analysing the Malaysian monetary policy. Considerable attention is paid to: (i) the selection of foreign, policy and target variables; (ii) establish identifying restrictions and improve the estimates of impulse response functions; (iii) assess the importance of intermediate channels in transmitting monetary policy mechanism; and (iv) the way in which the 1997 Asian financial crisis affected the working of monetary policy. Malaysia is an interesting small open economy to study because, following this crisis, the government imposed capital and exchange rate control measures. The overall results suggest that the crisis and the subsequent major shift in the exchange rate regime have significantly affected the Malaysian ‘Black Box’. In the pre-crisis period, domestic variables appear to be more vulnerable to foreign monetary shocks. Further, the exchange rate played a significant role in transmitting the interest rate shocks, whereas credit and asset prices helped to propagate the money shock. In the post-crisis period however, asset prices play a more domineering role in intensifying the effects of both interest rate and money shocks on output, and the economy was insulated from foreign shocks.     

How justified is abandoning money in the conduct of monetary policy in Australia on the grounds of instability in the money‐demand function?

The role of money in the design and conduct of monetary policy has reemerged as an important issue in both advanced and developing economies, especially since the 2007 global financial crisis. A growing body of recent literature suggests that the causal relationship between money supply growth and inflation remains intact across countries and over time and that this relation is not conditional on the stability of the money‐demand function or whether money is endogenous or exogenous. Moreover, critical for a rule‐based monetary policy is the presence of a long‐run stable money‐demand function, rather than a short‐run money‐demand model that may exhibit instability for many reasons, including problems with estimating a money‐demand model with high‐frequency data. Provided that a stable money‐demand function exists, it could be useful to establish long‐run equilibrium relations among money, output, prices, and exchange rates, as the classical monetary theory suggests. Within this analytical framework, this paper addresses the question of whether money has any role in the conduct of monetary policy in Australia. The conventional wisdom is that the money‐demand function in Australia has been unstable since the mid‐1980s due to financial deregulation and reforms; this led to a change in the strategy of monetary policy for price stability in the form of inflation targeting that ignores money insofar as inflation and its control are concerned. This paper reports empirical findings for Australia, obtained from a longer quarterly data series over the period 1960Q1–2015Q1, which suggest that instability in the narrow‐money‐demand function in Australia was primarily due to the exclusion of variables which have become important in the deregulated environment since the 1980s. These findings are confirmed by an expanded form of the narrow‐money‐demand function that was found stable over the past two decades, although it experienced multiple structural breaks over the study period. The paper draws the conclusion that abandoning the monetary aggregate as an instrument of monetary policy in Australia, under a rule‐based monetary policy such as inflation targeting, cannot be justified by instability in the money‐demand function or even by lack of a causal link between money supply growth and inflation.     

The Politics of Shadow Money: Security Structures,Money Creation and Unconventional Central Banking

ABSTRACT

For the first time in the history of central banks, the Federal Reserve has been pursuing monetary policies which allow shadow banks to access its reserves. The paper examines these policies in an analysis based on the concept of security structure. The aim is to facilitate a better understanding of complex institutional arrangements which convert credit claims into money or enable them to simulate the money-form. As the financial crisis reached its peak in September 2008, the Fed was not able to contain the impact precisely because the security structure existing between banks and the Fed did not extend to the shadow banking system, which had meanwhile become thebackbone of the global financial system. To address this situation, the Fed initiated new security structures that were designed to also give players in the shadow banking system access to liquidity and collateral. The concept ‘security structure’ serves as an analytical tool to explore dynamic forms of safety and liquidity generation and to distinguish between credit expansion and money creation. It also helps to differentiate between three qualitatively different stages of security: central bank money, quasi-money and shadow money. In this way, it foregrounds the politics of (shadow) money creation.     

2011-2012年中国货币政策分析与展望

本文回顾了2011年中国货币政策操作的主要措施和金融运行情况,分析了2012年货币政策运行环境,提出了货币政策建议。本文认为,2011年,面对不断上升的通货膨胀压力,中国人民银行实行了稳健的货币政策,货币信贷条件向常态水平回归,有效遏制了物价过快上涨的势头。2012年,在经济增长下行压力和物价上涨压力并存的局面下,中国人民银行需要继续实施稳健的货币政策,进一步增强货币政策的针对性、灵活性和前瞻性,根据经济形势的变化,适时适度进行预调微调,保持货币信贷总量和社会融资规模的合理适度增长,更好地服务于实体经济发展。     

Fiscal Policy,Monetary Policy and the Mechanics of Modern Clearing and Settlement Systems

Thomas Palley, Eric Tymoigne and Randall Wray recently debated neo-Chartalism in this journal. This article argues that the mechanics of modern clearing and settlement systems is important to understanding this debate. In the neo-Chartalist framework taxes and bond issuance function as part of monetary policy; it is an alternative method for draining reserves to obtain the overnight target rate. Abba Lerner’s Chartalist framework is much clearer on public finance, noting that the federal government can use alternative financing methods to pay for expenditures. Palley’s concerns with central bank ‘money financing’ and inflation are unpersuasive. The Old Keynesian ‘budget restraint– high-powered money relation’ offers limited insight into modern clearing and settlement systems. The article concludes that policymakers should embrace Lerner’s advice and view ‘money printing’ as a normal policy instrument to support functional finance.     

The role of the state and the hierarchy of money

This paper uses Minsky's definition of money as a two-sidedbalance sheet phenomenon to challenge many common positionson the nature, evolution and role of money. His definition isapplied to two opposing theories in the history of monetarydebates, and it is shown that the Chartalists (as opposed tothe Metallists) developed a general theory of money that canbe applied equally convincingly to the entire era of state money.This theory is then used to show that the state's power to makeand enforce tax laws renders its money the most acceptable formof debt within what can be considered a 'hierarchy' of monies.This leads to some important policy implications as well asa strengthening of the endogenous money position.     

Application of local projections in the monetary policy in Brazil

This article examines the relationship between selected monetary aggregates and inflation and output in Brazil. Impulse responses under VAR and local projections were used to discover the leading or lagging role of the monetary aggregates. In addition, the information provided by the monetary aggregates as predictors of output and inflation was examined. This was assessed by examining their predictive power for subsequent observations on an in-sample basis. Overall, the results indicate that in order to control inflation rates, Brazilian authorities should focus on restricting money supply rather than increasing interest rates.     

货币政策、外部冲击与通货膨胀

利用2001年1月—2013年6月的月度数据,构建DCC-MVGARCH模型分析用货币供应量表征的我国内部因素和用汇率和国际原油价格表征的外部因素对我国通货膨胀率的动态影响。研究结果表明:我国通货膨胀既源于内部调整,也受到外部冲击的影响;内部因素中的货币供应量增长率是影响我国通货膨胀水平的主要决定因素;相对而言,外部因素对通货膨胀水平的影响不大。     

One size may not fit all: Financial fragmentation and European monetary policies

This article investigates the impact of European Central Bank policies on credits considering financial and banking fragmentation. Using European data from the past decade, we estimate SVAR models to analyze the regional impact of conventional and unconventional measures on price and volume indicators of fragmentation. The risk-taking channel is studied using GVAR models to document the national consequences of this fragmentation. We find that unconventional measures increase credit in peripheral countries. Monetary policies alleviate fragmentation, but mostly in terms of price dispersion rather than credit volume. Finally, unconventional measures imply a rebalancing of European bank assets in favor of foreign currency denominated-assets.     

Restoring Macroeconomic Stability through Fiscal Adjustment: a Real–Financial CGE Analysis for India

Developing‐country attempts to regain macroeconomic stability through fiscal adjustment are often unsuccessful in reducing inflation and balance‐of‐payments (BoP) disequilibrium. This paper examines why this may be so in the light of India's experience with stabilization in response to the BoP crisis in 1991. It does so using a novel real–financial computable general‐equilibrium model. Focusing on credit rather than money, the model goes beyond earlier modeling approaches by (1) incorporating credit rationing, (2) recognizing the dual role of credit for working capital and investment, and (3) allowing for switches between credit‐constrained, capacity‐constrained, and demand‐constrained, regimes. The simulations indicate that the macroeconomic effects of monetized deficit reduction differ widely depending on the mode of financing and on initial conditions in real and financial markets. Whenever fiscal reform leads to a squeeze on available working capital credit, deficit reduction will lead to only a limited inflation decline and a modest BoP improvement.     

基于CC-LM模型的信贷渠道的实证分析

运用CC-LM模型,基于VAR的时间序列分析货币政策中信贷渠道的存在性及其贡献度,同时分析了货币渠道的存在性,两者综合说明信贷渠道的作用强于货币渠道,也就是说信贷渠道是主要的货币政策的传导渠道。为了增强货币政策的有效性,人民银行在监控货币指标的同时,应该更加着力监控信贷指标,特别是流向中小企业的信贷量。     

Stabilisation, Policy Targets and Unemployment in Imperfectly Competitive Economies

This paper argues that the rate of equilibrium unemployment depends on the objectives of the Central Bank. In a model where the Central Bank uses monetary policy to stabilise the economy, we show that unemployment and inflation will be lower with an inflation target than with targets for output, money or nominal GDP. The intuition for this is that the elasticities of demand in both the product and the labour markets are greater when there is an inflation target; we show that this leads to a lower mark-up of price over marginal cost and makes wages more sensitive to unemployment.     

The effects of monetary policy in a small open economy: the case of Portugal

In this article, I analyse the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy on the Portuguese economy. I show that a positive interest rate shock leads to: (i) a contraction of real GDP and a substantial increase of the unemployment rate; (ii) a quick fall in the commodity price and a gradual decrease of the price level and (iii) a downward correction of the stock price index. It also produces a ‘short-lived liquidity effect’ and helps explain the negative comovement between bonds and stocks. In addition, I find evidence suggesting the existence of a money demand function characterized by small output and interest rate elasticities. By its turn, the central bank’s policy rule follows closely the dynamics of the money markets. Finally, both the real GDP and the price level in Portugal would have been higher during almost the entire sample period if there were no monetary policy surprises.