Evaluating the Macroeconomic Effects of the ECB's Unconventional Monetary Policies

We quantify the macroeconomic effects of the European Central Bank's unconventional monetary policies using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model which includes a set of shadow interest rates. Extracted from the yield curve, these shadow rates provide unconstrained measures of the overall stance of monetary policy. Counterfactual analyses show that, without unconventional measures, the euro area would have suffered (i) a substantial loss of output since the Great Recession and (ii) a period of deflation from mid‐2015 to early 2017. Specifically, year‐on‐year inflation and GDP growth would have been on average about 0.61% and 1.09% below their actual levels over the period 2014Q1–17Q2, respectively.     

The Credit Channel at the Zero Lower Bound through the Lens of Equity Prices

This study examines the impact of unconventional monetary policies on the stock market when the short‐term nominal interest rate is stuck at the zero lower bound (ZLB). Unconventional monetary policies appear to have significant effects on stock prices and the effects differ across stocks. In agreement with existing credit channel theories, I find that firms subject to financial constraints react more strongly to unconventional monetary policy shocks [especially large‐scale asset purchases (LSAPs)] than do less constrained firms. These results imply that the credit channel is as important as the interest rate channel in the transmission of unconventional monetary policies at the ZLB.     

Effects of Monetary and Macroprudential Policies—Evidence from Four Inflation Targeting Economies

We examine the effects of monetary and macroprudential policies in the Asia‐Pacific region, where many inflation targeting economies have adopted macroprudential policies in order to safeguard financial stability. Using structural panel vector autoregressions that identify both monetary and macroprudential policy actions, we show that tighter macroprudential policies used to contain credit growth also have a significant negative impact on macroeconomic aggregates such as real GDP and the price level. The similar effects of monetary and macroprudential policies may suggest a complementary use of the two policies at normal times. However, they could also create challenges for policymakers, especially during times when low inflation coincides with buoyant credit growth.     

非传统货币政策的退出指标和时机选择

应对金融危机的非传统货币政策实施以来,其退出问题日益成为国际关注的焦点。本文从货币政策传导机制理论出发,分析了危机状态下传统货币政策传导如何受阻,非传统货币政策如何影响受阻环节的市场因素来修复传导机制。本文以此为依据,构建了选择非传统货币政策退出时机的指标体系,针对不同操作手段、操作目标选取相应的金融市场指标和宏观经济指标。在此基础上本文分析了这些指标在政策实施前后的表现,并探讨美国、英国和欧元区国家等主要发达经济体非传统货币政策退出的时机选择。     

Fiscal and monetary policies and the cost of sudden stops

This article investigates the effects of monetary and fiscal policies on output growth during sudden-stop balance of payments crisis in emerging markets and developing countries. Sudden stops in capital flows, and subsequent deep recessions, are a frequent occurrence in these countries but there is no professional consensus, and little systematic empirical evidence, shedding light on the macroeconomic policy mix most likely to limit output losses during these episodes. To address this issue, we investigate 83 sudden-stop crisis in 66 countries using a baseline empirical model to control for the various determinants of output losses during sudden stops. We measure the marginal effects of policy on output losses, and find strong evidence that monetary tightening (rise in the discount rate or unsterilized rise in international reserves) and discretionary fiscal contraction are significantly correlated with larger output losses following a sudden stop. Fiscal expansion is associated with smaller output losses following a sudden stop, but monetary expansion has no discernable effect. The macroeconomic policy mix associated with the least output loss during a sudden-stop financial crisis is a discretionary fiscal expansion combined with a neutral monetary policy.     

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on transmission of monetary policy to financial markets

This study uses event-study methodology to estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the transmission of monetary policy to financial markets, based on a sample of 37 countries with severe pandemics. Financial markets include government bond, stock, exchange rate and credit default swap markets. The results suggest that the emergence of pandemic has weakened the transmission of monetary policy to financial markets to a more significant degree. During our sample period following the outbreak of pandemic, neither conventional nor unconventional monetary policies have significant effects on all four of the financial markets. Of course, the unconventional monetary policies are slightly more effective as they can affect the stock and exchange rate markets to some extent. Therefore, in the post-pandemic period, if the monetary policy is used to stimulate financial markets, stronger policy adjustments, or other macro policies such as fiscal policies, may be needed to achieve the desired effect     

对中央银行非常规政策退出的几点思考

当前，随着全球经济复苏态势的不断显现，关于非常规货币政策的有序退出也逐步提上了各国央行的议事日程。该文对于非常规货币政策的概念、类别，以及金融危机以来美日欧等主要经济体所采取的非常规政策进行了梳理，在此基础上对于非常规货币政策的效果评价，及非常规货币政策的退出时机、节奏和顺序等战略决策进行了相关探讨和思考。     

Corporate debt and unconventional monetary policy: The risk-taking channel with bond and loan contracts

We investigate the effects of unconventional monetary policies on corporate debt through the risk-taking channel using corporate bond and syndicated loan contracts from 2000 to 2016 in Japan. In this period, the policy rate remained fixed near the zero bound. Using the daily changes in the yield curve on monetary policy meeting days, we identify one call rate shock and two unconventional monetary policy shocks that do not affect short-term rates. We find that QE shocks, which move all medium-to-long-term rates, increase the maturity of debt contracts, especially for syndicated loans. In addition, such QE shocks decrease the size of corporate bonds with short maturity. On the other hand, QQE shocks, which raise medium-term rates and lower long-term rates, decrease the size of loans and corporate bonds with longer maturity. These effects imply the existence of the risk-taking channel of unconventional monetary policy: it stimulates investment in longer-maturity assets and decreases investment in assets with lower yields. Our findings show that unconventional policies affect debt contracts even in an extremely low interest rate environment.     

Fiscal and Monetary Policy Coordination,Macroeconomic Stability,and Sovereign Risk Premia

In standard macroeconomic models, equilibrium stability and uniqueness require monetary policy to actively target inflation and fiscal policy to ensure long‐run debt sustainability. We show analytically that these requirements change, and depend on the cyclicality of fiscal policy, when government debt is risky. In that case, budget deficits raise interest rates and crowd out consumption. Consequently, countercyclical fiscal policies reduce the parameter space supporting stable and unique equilibria and are feasible only if complemented with more aggressive debt consolidation and/or active monetary policy. Stability is more easily achieved, however, under procyclical fiscal policies.     

The impact of monetary policy on corporate bonds under regime shifts

We study the effects of a conventional monetary expansion, quantitative easing, and the maturity extension program on corporate bond yields using impulse response functions obtained from flexible models with regimes. Using a three-state Markov switching model with time-homogeneous vector autoregressive (VAR) coefficients that emerges from a systematic model specification search, we find that unconventional policies may have been generally expected to decrease both corporate yields and spreads. However, even though the sign of the responses is the one desired by policymakers, the size of the estimated effects depends on the assumptions regarding the decline in long-term Treasury yields caused by unconventional policies, on which considerable uncertainty remains. Further tests based on yield spreads and a variable that measures inflation expectations show that, in the crisis regime, unconventional monetary policies do not produce any perverse effects on expected inflation. These results prove robust to adopting a framework that allows VAR coefficients to break, to imposing coefficient restrictions that increase parsimony, and to a range of different ordering schemes that identify shocks in alternative ways.     

Nominal Interest Rates and the News

This paper provides new estimates of the impact of monetary policy actions and macroeconomic news on the term structure of nominal interest rates. The key novelty is to parsimoniously capture the impact of news on all interest rates using a simple no‐arbitrage model. The different types of news are analyzed in a common framework by recognizing their heterogeneity, which allows for a systematic comparison of their effects. This approach leads to novel empirical findings. First, monetary policy causes a substantial amount of volatility in both short‐term and long‐term interest rates. Second, macroeconomic data surprises have small and mostly insignificant effects on the long end of the term structure. Third, the term‐structure response to macroeconomic news is consistent with considerable interest‐rate smoothing by the Federal Reserve. Fourth, monetary policy surprises are multidimensional while macroeconomic surprises are one‐dimensional.     

各国央行非常规货币政策综述

美国次贷危机爆发以来,全球金融系统和实体经济遭遇了严重冲击,为了有效缓解负面冲击,各国央行纷纷推出各种宽松性货币政策,但在实际应用中,传统货币政策不能有效克制危机,美联储等央行纷纷求助于量化宽松等新型非常规货币政策。目前来看,非常规货币政策产生了积极影响,美国等经济体实现了就业的改善、金融系统的稳定和经济增长的复苏。为全面了解货币政策,本文系统归纳了美联储等央行采取的各类非常规货币政策,探讨了非常规货币政策的实施途径及效能得失,并总结了美联储采取非常规货币政策的主要经验。     

The interest rate effects of government bond purchases away from the lower bound

I analyze the recent experience of unconventional monetary policy in Sweden to study the interest rate transmission mechanisms of government bond purchases when interest rates are away from the lower bound. Using dynamic term structure models and event study regressions I find that government bond purchases have important portfolio balance and signaling effects. The signaling channel operates mainly by lowering short-rate expectations in the intermediate segment of the yield curve, while the portfolio balance channel is effective in lowering longer maturity term premia. In addition, I find that target interest rate policy and government bond purchases operate in different segments of the yield curve. This suggests that a combination of the two policies can be used to lower interest rates across the whole maturity spectrum, making monetary policy more expansionary.     

A Note of Caution on Shadow Rate Estimates

Shadow short rate (SSR) estimates are generated regressors proposed as a proxy for policy interest rates during unconventional monetary policy (UMP) periods. However, using the Wu and Xia (2016) shadow/lower-bound model, I show that SSR estimates can be sensitive to minor choices in their estimation. Used subsequently in a small macroeconomic model, those sensitivities lead to wide variations in the inferred effects of UMP on inflation and unemployment outcomes. Therefore, it should not be presumed that any SSR series will necessarily be quantitatively useful. Vetting SSR series allows appropriate SSR series to be retained within the suite of UMP indicators.     

货币政策能够兼顾“稳增长”与“稳杠杆”双重目标吗？——基于不同杠杆环境的比较

在经济发展新阶段,货币政策如何更好地兼顾“稳增长”与“稳杠杆”双重目标是需要研究的重要问题。为此,本文构建了一个含有高杠杆特征的动态一般均衡模型进行理论分析,并在此基础上利用状态依存的局部投影方法进行实证检验。研究发现,正常时期与高杠杆时期货币政策效果显著不同。正常时期,面对经济下行压力,宽松货币政策冲击能够较好地促进经济扩张并保证宏观杠杆率稳定,从而兼顾“稳增长”与“稳杠杆”。在高杠杆时期,宽松货币政策的“稳增长”效果显著弱于正常时期,而且还会推高宏观杠杆率,从而也难以实现“稳杠杆”目标。原因在于,高杠杆下更多的负债主体因偿债压力陷入“借新还旧”状态中,阻塞了货币政策的有效传导,降低了政策调控效率。     

The Interaction between Capital Requirements and Monetary Policy

The interaction between capital requirements and monetary policy is assessed by means of simple rules in a dynamic general equilibrium model featuring a banking sector. In “normal” times, when economic dynamics are driven by supply shocks, an active use of capital requirements generates modest benefits in terms of volatility of the target variables compared to the case in which only the central bank carries out stabilization policies. The lack of cooperation between the two policymakers may result in excessive volatility of the monetary policy rate and capital requirements. The benefits of introducing capital requirements become sizeable when financial shocks, which affect the supply of loans, are important drivers of economic dynamics; the availability of capital requirements as a policy tool yields a significant gain in terms of macroeconomic stabilization, regardless of the type of interaction between monetary and capital requirements policies.     

Designing domestic institutions for international monetary policy cooperation: A Utopia?

In a wide variety of international macroeconomic models monetary policy cooperation is optimal, non-cooperative policies are inefficient, but optimal policies can be attained non-cooperatively by optimal design of domestic institutions/contracts. We show that given endogenous institutional design, inefficiencies of non-cooperation cannot and will not be eliminated. We model the delegation stage explicitly and show that subgame perfect, credible contracts (chosen by governments based on individual rationality) are non-zero, but are different from optimal contracts and hence lead to inefficient equilibria. Optimal contracts require cooperation at the delegation stage, which is inconsistent with the advocated non-cooperative nature of the solution. A general solution method for credible contracts and an example from international monetary policy cooperation are considered. Our results feature delegation as an equilibrium phenomenon, explain inefficiencies of existing delegation schemes and hint to a potentially stronger role for supranational authorities in international policy coordination.     

The spillovers,interactions, and (un)intended consequences of monetary and regulatory policies

Have bank regulatory policies and unconventional monetary policies—and any possible interactions—been a factor behind the recent “deglobalisation” in cross-border bank lending? To test this hypothesis, we use bank-level data from the UK—a country at the heart of the global financial system. Our results suggest that increases in microprudential capital requirements tend to reduce international bank lending and some forms of unconventional monetary policy can amplify this effect. Specifically, the UK׳s Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) significantly amplified the effects of increased capital requirements on cross-border lending. Quantitative easing did not appear to have a similar effect and countries with stronger prudential capital regulations were partially insulated against the effects of these changes in UK policy. We find that this interaction between microprudential regulations and the FLS can explain roughly 30% of the contraction in aggregate UK cross-border bank lending between mid-2012 and end-2013, corresponding to around 10% of the global contraction in cross-border lending. This suggests that unconventional monetary policy designed to support domestic lending can have the unintended consequence of reducing foreign lending.     

Monetary policy,bond returns and debt dynamics

Using the government׳s intertemporal budget constraint, we quantify the contribution of returns paid on the U.S. government׳s debt portfolio to the evolution of the debt-to-GDP ratio. We show that announcements of unconventional monetary policy measures by the Federal Reserve between 2008.IV and 2012, as a part of macroeconomic stabilization, were associated with a sizable increase in returns and debt-to-GDP ratios and contributed to fiscal imbalances. We use the Federal Reserve׳s portfolio composition as a proxy for unconventional monetary policy measures and show that it is significantly related to future bond returns and fiscal balances.