The International Bank Lending Channel of Monetary Policy Rates and QE: Credit Supply,Reach‐for‐Yield,and Real Effects

We identify the international credit channel by exploiting Mexican supervisory data sets and foreign monetary policy shocks in a country with a large presence of European and U.S. banks. A softening of foreign monetary policy expands credit supply of foreign banks (e.g., U.K. policy affects credit supply in Mexico via U.K. banks), inducing strong firm‐level real effects. Results support an international risk‐taking channel and spillovers of core countries’ monetary policies to emerging markets, both in the foreign monetary softening part (with higher credit and liquidity risk‐taking by foreign banks) and in the tightening part (with negative local firm‐level real effects).     

美联储政策变化、国际资本流动与宏观经济波动

本文构建包含国际投资者、外资企业和银行流动性冲击的DSGE模型来探究美联储货币政策变动和政策不确定性对我国宏观经济的影响和作用机制。研究发现:(1) 美联储加息会导致我国产出、投资和通货膨胀的下降、汇率贬值、国际资本外流和银行系统流动性紧张。随着金融摩擦程度的增加和银行杠杆率的上升,美联储加息对我国产出、投资和资产价格的负面影响会进一步增强。(2) 美联储货币政策不确定性的增加会直接导致外资企业的投资、劳动需求和产出的下降,并对我国总产出、总投资和资产价格产生明显的负向外溢效应,进一步加剧我国宏观经济的波动。(3)为应对美联储的利率变动,适当限制国际资本流动能有效稳定我国经济波动和改善社会福利,而实施固定汇率和央行盯住美国利率的政策会加大宏观经济的波动,并导致社会福利下降。     

Capital Inflows and the U.S. Housing Boom

We estimate an open‐economy vector autoregressive (VAR) model to study the effect of capital‐inflow shocks on the U.S. housing market. We look at different external shocks that generate capital inflows to the U.S., in particular “saving‐glut” shocks and foreign monetary‐policy expansions. The shocks are identified with theoretically robust sign restrictions derived from an open‐economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. Our findings suggest that capital inflows that result from “saving‐glut” shocks have a positive and persistent effect on real house prices and real residential investment.     

Spillovers of U.S. unconventional monetary policy to emerging markets: The role of capital flows

We employ a structural global VAR model to analyze whether U.S. unconventional monetary policy shocks, identified through changes in the central bank’s balance sheet, have an impact on financial and economic conditions in emerging market economies (EMEs). Moreover, we study whether international capital flows are an important channel of shock transmission. We find that an expansionary policy shock significantly increases portfolio flows from the U.S. to EMEs for almost two quarters, accompanied by a persistent movement in real and financial variables in recipient countries. Moreover, EMEs on average respond to the shock with an easing of their own monetary policy stance. The findings appear to be independent of heterogeneous country characteristics like the underlying exchange rate arrangement, the quality of institutions, or the degree of financial openness.     

美国货币政策溢出效应、中国资产价格波动与资本账户管理

本文以2016年美国加息事件为背景,研究美国货币政策对中国资本流动、资产价格和宏观经济的影响。基于小国开放动态随机一般均衡模型,本文梳理了美国货币政策溢出效应的具体传导渠道,发现国外利率升高后,资本流动具有外部性,导致国内资产价格下跌,其通过金融加速器进一步使国内投资下降、资产价格进一步下跌,从而使得国内资产预期回报进一步下降,加剧资本外流。基于政策和福利分析,本文发现资本账户管理可以有效缓解国外利率冲击对经济波动的影响,同时会提高货币政策的独立性,但也会影响国民财富的最优配置。因此,最优的资本账户管理应同时兼顾宏观审慎和效率两个方面。     

Capital inflows and asset prices: Evidence from emerging Asia

The withdrawal of foreign capital from emerging countries at the height of the recent financial crisis and its quick return sparked a debate about the impact of capital flow surges on asset markets. This paper addresses the response of property prices to an inflow of foreign capital. For that purpose we estimate a panel VAR on a set of Asian emerging market economies, for which the waves of inflows were particularly pronounced, and identify capital inflow shocks based on sign restrictions. Our results suggest that capital inflow shocks have a significant effect on the appreciation of house prices and equity prices. Capital inflow shocks account for – roughly – twice the portion of overall house price changes they explain in OECD countries. We also address cross-country differences in the house price responses to shocks, which are most likely due to differences in the monetary policy response to capital inflows.     

Global financial shocks and foreign asset repatriation: Do local investors play a stabilizing role?

We study the dynamic response of gross capital flows in emerging market economies to different global financial shocks, using a panel vector-autoregressive (PVAR) approach. Our focus lies primarily on the potentially stabilizing role played by domestic investors in offsetting the response of foreign investors to adverse global shocks. We find that, while foreign investors tend to retrench from emerging markets in response to global risk aversion and monetary policy shocks, foreign asset repatriation by resident investors does not always follow suit. Local investors play a meaningful stabilizing role in the face of global risk aversion shocks, with sizeable asset repatriation largely offsetting the retrenchment of non-residents. In contrast, foreign investor retrenchment in response to global monetary policy shocks is not mirrored by asset repatriation. Finally, we find robust evidence that positive global real shocks tend to have a positive impact on net capital inflows to emerging markets. Our results shed light on the likely impact of the Fed's QE tapering on capital flows to emerging market economies.     

Oil price shocks and their transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting economy: A VAR analysis informed by a DSGE model

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks and the oil shock transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting country, Canada. We use a structural VAR with sign restrictions that comes from a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to jointly identify oil price, domestic supply and U.S. and domestic monetary policy shocks. This identification strategy not only controls for reverse causality from the Canadian and U.S. macroeconomic conditions to the real oil prices, but more importantly, it also allows for contemporaneous interactions between the Canadian and U.S. variables. We find that oil shocks have a stimulative effect on Canadian aggregate demand, appreciate the Canadian dollar, improve the terms of trade and reduce real wages. Foreign disturbances, including innovations in oil prices and the U.S. interest rate, have a significant influence on Canadian economic activities. Our counterfactual analysis indicates that the reaction of the U.S. interest rate as an indirect transmission channel for oil price shocks plays a moderate role in explaining the real exchange rate and inflation, but has negligible impacts on the Canadian output and interest rate.     

Monetary Policy and Price Responsiveness to Aggregate Shocks under Rational Inattention

This paper studies a general equilibrium model that is consistent with recent empirical evidence showing that the U.S. price level and inflation are much more responsive to aggregate technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks. Specifically, we show that the fact that aggregate technology shocks are more volatile than monetary policy shocks induces firms to pay more attention to the former than to the latter. However, most important, this work adds to the literature by analytically showing how monetary policy feedback rules affect the incentives faced by firms in allocating attention. A policy rule responding more actively to inflation fluctuations induces firms to pay relatively more attention to more volatile shocks, helping to rationalize the observed behavior of prices in response to technology and monetary policy shocks.     

Optimal monetary policy with imperfect common knowledge

This paper determines optimal nominal demand policy in a flexible price economy in which firms pay limited attention to aggregate variables. Firms’ inattentiveness gives rise to idiosyncratic information errors and imperfect common knowledge about the shocks hitting the economy. This is shown to have strong implications for optimal nominal demand policy. In particular, if firms’ prices are strategic complements and economic shocks display little persistence, monetary policy has strong real effects, making it optimal to stabilize the output gap. Weak complementarities or sufficient shock persistence, however, cause price level stabilization to become increasingly optimal. With persistent shocks, optimal monetary policy shifts from output gap stabilization in initial periods following the shock to price level stabilization in later periods, potentially rationalizing the medium-term approach to price stability adopted by some central banks.     

The Structural Dynamics of U.S. Output and Inflation: What Explains the Changes?

We examine the dynamics of U.S. output and inflation using a structural time-varying coefficients vector autoregression. There are changes in the volatility of both variables and in the persistence of inflation, but variations are statistically insignificant. Technology shocks explain changes in output volatility; real demand disturbances variations in the persistence and volatility of inflation. We detect important time variations in the transmission of technology shocks to output and demand shocks to inflation and significant changes in the variance of technology and of monetary policy shocks.     

Local and spillover shocks in implied market volatility: evidence for the U.S. and Germany

The occurrence and the transmission of large shocks in international equity markets is of essential interest to the study of market integration and financial crises. To this aim, implied market volatility allows to monitor ex ante risk expectations in different markets. We investigate the behavior of implied market volatility indices for the U.S. and Germany under a straightforward mean reversion model that allows for Poisson jumps. Our empirical findings for daily data in the period 1992 to 2002 provide evidence of significant positive jumps, i.e. situations of market stress with positive unexpected changes in ex ante risk assessments. Jump events are mostly country-specific with some evidence of volatility spillover. Analysis of public information around jump dates indicates two basic categories of events. First, crisis events occurring under spillover shocks. Second, information release events which include three subcategories, namely—worries about as well as actual—unexpected releases concerning U.S. monetary policy, macroeconomic data and corporate profits. Additionally, foreign exchange market movements may cause volatility shocks.     

Sources of Fluctuations in Islamic,U.S., EU,and Asia Equity Markets: The Roles of Economic Uncertainty,Interest Rates,and Stock Indexes

This article analyzes the economic and financial sources of fluctuations among the U.S. federal funds rates, the U.S. economic policy uncertainty, and the indices of the U.S., European, Asian, and Islamic stock markets. The impulse response analysis shows that the U.S. economic policy uncertainty shocks have significant and negative effects unanimously on the U.S., European, Asian, and Islamic stock markets. A contractionary monetary policy shock, in terms of a higher federal funds rate, has also a statistically significant and negative effect on all of the stock markets. The variance decomposition results indicate that the Islamic stock index is mainly affected by the U.S. stock index shock, thus negating its dichotomy hypothesis. The U.S. economic uncertainty shock explains an important portion of fluctuations for all four stock indices. The degree of synchronization between the EU stock market and other markets has weakened after the U.S. financial crisis.     

U.S. Monetary Policy Surprises and International Securitized Real Estate Markets

This paper examines the impact of U.S. monetary policy surprises on securitized real estate markets in 18 countries. The policy surprises are measured by both the surprise changes to the target federal funds rate (the target factor) and surprises in the future direction of the Federal Reserve monetary policy (the path factor). The results show that most international securitized real estate markets have significantly positive responses to surprise decrease in current or future expected federal funds rates, though such responses vary greatly across countries. Also, while the U.S. securitized real estate market reacts mainly to the target factor, foreign securitized real estate markets react to the path factor. Furthermore, we find that the cross-country variation in the response to the target factor is correlated with the country’s exchange rate regime and its degree of real economic and particularly financial integration, while the cross-country variation in the response to the path factor is mainly related to the country’s degree of financial integration.     

中国货币政策对股票市场影响的再考察

本文运用DAG方法、VAR模型和马尔科夫转换模型考察了货币政策对股市价格水平的影响,结果表明中短期内货币政策对股票市场价格水平存在影响显著,并表现出较强的非对称效应。股市低迷期的紧缩性货币政策会进一步降低股市收益率,减小股市从熊市转入牛市的概率;相反,股市繁荣期的紧缩性货币政策将增加股市从牛市转入熊市的概率。     

House Price Booms,Current Account Deficits,and Low Interest Rates

Domestic factors, such as credit and preference shocks, can explain the negative correlation between house prices and the current account in the U.S. and several other countries before the recent crisis. These shocks, however, cannot account for the fall of world real interest rates observed in the data. Expansionary monetary policy shocks in the U.S., coupled with exchange rate pegs to the dollar in emerging economies, are crucial to understanding the evolution of the real interest rate. Yet, monetary policy factors play virtually no role for house prices and the current account.     

Monetary policy in emerging markets: Can liability dollarization explain contractionary devaluations?

In emerging markets, external debt is denominated almost entirely in large, developed country currencies such as the U.S. dollar. This liability dollarization offers a channel through which exchange rate variation can lead to business cycle instability. When firms' assets are denominated in domestic currency and liabilities are denominated in foreign currency, an exchange rate depreciation worsens firms' balance sheets, which leads to higher capital costs and contractions in capital spending. To illustrate this, I construct a quantitative, sticky price, small open economy model in which a monetary policy induced devaluation leads to a persistent contraction in output. In this model, fixed exchange rates offer greater stability than an interest rule that targets inflation.     

What Accounts for the Changes in U.S. Fiscal Policy Transmission?

Using vector autoregressions on U.S. time series for 1957–79 and 1983–2004, we find government spending shocks to have stronger effects on output, consumption, and wages in the earlier period. We try to account for this observation within a DSGE model featuring price rigidities and limited asset market participation. Specifically, we estimate the structural parameters of the model for both periods by matching impulse responses. Model‐based counterfactual experiments suggest that most of the changes in fiscal policy transmission are accounted for by increased asset market participation and the more active monetary policy of the Volcker–Greenspan period.     

Transmission of shocks from cross-listed markets to the return and volatility of domestic stocks

This paper examines the transmission of information from German and the U.S. markets to domestic markets using daily price and volume data of 264 stocks from 26 countries that are traded in their home country and cross-listed outside their home market as depository receipts (DRs); in the German market as Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) and in the U.S. as American Depository Receipts (ADRs). We identify days with significant news arrivals in a market through minimum thresholds for both significant absolute price change and trading volume. DR returns and volatilities are affected by the shocks in the markets where they are cross-listed controlling for domestic shocks. Contemporaneous and/or lagged shocks to the cross-listed markets are transmitted to domestic stock returns and volatilities. South American DRs are affected mostly by U.S. shocks, while Eastern European DRs show greater reaction to the German shocks.     

Market States and the Effect on Equity REIT Returns due to Changes in Monetary Policy Stance

This study investigates the effect of changes in monetary policy on US equity real estate investment trust (EREIT) returns in lower and higher return ranges during bull, bear, and volatile stock market states using quantile regression. Results show that EREIT returns are sensitive to changes in monetary policy at different EREIT return ranges in different market states. During bull markets, changes in monetary policy have a significant negative impact on EREIT when investors have lower expectations of real estate price increases, but are not effective when investors have higher expectations of real estate price increases. During volatile and bear markets, EREIT returns are not sensitive to changes in monetary policy stance. Results also show that EREIT returns respond positively to stock returns in various states and conditions.