Financial development and economic growth in a microfounded small open economy model

The global financial crisis since 2008 revived the debate on whether or not and to what extent financial development contributes to economic growth. This paper reviews different theoretical schools of thought and empirical findings on this nexus, building on which we aim to develop a unified, microfounded model in a small open economy setting to accommodate various theoretical possibilities and empirical observations. The model is then calibrated to match some well-documented stylized facts. Numerical simulations show that, in the long run, the welfare-maximizing level of financial develop is lower than the growth-maximizing level. In the short run, the price channel (through world interest rate) dominates the quantity-channel (through financial productivity), suggesting a vital role of international cooperation in tackling systemic risk of the global financial system.     

通胀—增长权衡和中国菲利普斯曲线的平坦化

近年来发达经济体出现了菲利普斯曲线平坦化现象,但有关中国的研究尚缺乏共识。本文基于实证和理论分析,系统研究了中国菲利普斯曲线的平坦化问题。首先,结合货币政策冲击和月度SVAR框架,发现通胀的响应程度在2010年后大幅下降。由于证据显示总需求曲线并未平坦化,因此通胀响应弱化可解读为菲利普斯曲线的平坦化。数据显示,菲利普斯曲线平坦化与生产率增长放缓同时发生,因此,本文在标准DSGE模型中引入纵向内生增长渠道,该渠道基于研发投入和知识资本积累,从而使生产率内生于经济周期。研究发现:(1)内生增长渠道放大了需求冲击对产出的影响,但缩小了需求冲击对通胀的影响;(2)内生增长渠道改变通胀和增长之间的替代关系,但不改变边际成本向通胀的传导。分段估计显示,2010年后,通胀和增长的关系弱化是边际成本传导变弱和内生增长渠道变强共同作用的结果。本文认为,由于菲利普斯曲线的平坦化,中央银行应继续坚持稳增长和就业优先战略,关注但不必过于担心由此引发的通胀压力。     

U.S. Monetary Regimes and Optimal Monetary Policy in the Euro Area

Monetary policy in the United States has been documented to have switched from reacting weakly to inflation fluctuations during the 1970s, to fighting inflation aggressively from the early 1980s onward. In this paper, I analyze the impact of the U.S. monetary policy regime switches on the Eurozone. I construct a New Keynesian two‐country model where foreign (U.S.) monetary policy switches regimes over time. I estimate the model for the U.S. and the Euro Area using quarterly data and find that the United States has switched between those two regimes, in line with existing evidence. I show that foreign regime switches affect home (Eurozone) inflation and output volatility and their responses to shocks, substantially, as long as the home central bank commits to a time‐invariant interest rate rule reacting to domestic conditions only. Optimal policy in the home country instead requires that the home central bank reacts strongly to domestic producer‐price inflation and to international variables, such as imported goods relative prices. In fact, I show that currency misalignments and relative prices play a crucial role in the transmission of foreign monetary policy regime switches internationally. Interestingly, I show that only marginal gains arise for the Euro Area when the European Central Bank (ECB) adjusts its policy according to the monetary regime in the United States. Thus, a simple time‐invariant monetary policy rule with a strong reaction to Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation and relative prices is enough to counteract the effects of monetary policy switches in the United States.     

Solvability of perturbation solutions in DSGE models

We prove that the undetermined Taylor series coefficients of local approximations to the policy function of arbitrary order in a wide class of discrete time dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are solvable by standard DSGE perturbation methods under regularity and saddle point stability assumptions on first order approximations. Extending the approach to nonstationary models, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for solvability, as well as an example in the neoclassical growth model where solvability fails. Finally, we eliminate the assumption of solvability needed for the local existence theorem of perturbation solutions, complete the proof that the policy function is invariant to first order changes in risk, and attribute the loss of numerical accuracy in progressively higher order terms to the compounding of errors from the first order transition matrix.     

Modeling and Measuring Economic Reality: Reply to the Reviews

To begin with, we'd like to express our appreciation to our three commentators for their thoughtful and helpful reviews. Like the founders of the subject, we believe, and our reviewers seem to agree, that structural econometrics has the potential to enable us to develop serious working models of how different economies actually operate, and also to tell us something about the changing patterns of their growth and transformation. But both we and our reviewers agree that there is a great deal wrong with the way econometrics is practiced today.     

Macroeconomic impacts of fiscal policy shocks in the UK: A DSGE analysis

This paper develops and estimates a new-Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the analysis of fiscal policy in the UK. We find that government consumption and investment yield the highest GDP multipliers in the short-run, whereas capital income tax and public investment have dominating effect on GDP in the long-run. When nominal interest rate is at the zero lower bound, consumption taxes and public consumption and investment are found to be the most effective fiscal instruments throughout the analysed horizon, and capital and labour income taxes are established to be the least effective. The paper also shows that the effectiveness of fiscal policy decreases in a small open-economy scenario and that nominal rigidities improve effectiveness of public spending and consumption taxes, whereas decrease that of income taxes.     

The importance of firing costs and the Hosios condition in search models with endogenous job destruction

We construct a DSGE search model with endogenous job destruction, incorporating wage rigidities, firing costs and unemployment benefit. We investigate the most important factors in matching the model’s cyclical properties with empirical data, particularly those of job creation rates (JCR) and job destruction rates (JDR). Firing costs assist significantly in explaining the procyclicality of JCR, the negative correlation of JCR and JDR, and the persistence of vacancies. They also decrease the counter-cyclicality of job turnover. We also postulate that the Hosios condition helps explain the negative correlation of JCR and JDR and vacancies’ persistence. Varying wage rigidities and unemployment income, however, do not improve the results.     

Macroprudential policy and imbalances in the euro area

Since its creation the euro area suffered from imbalances between its core and peripheral members. This paper checks whether macroprudential policy applied to the peripheral countries could contribute to providing more macroeconomic stability in this region. To this end we build a two-economy macrofinancial model and simulate the effects of macroprudential policy (regulating the loan-to-value ratio) when the core and the periphery are exposed to asymmetric shocks. We find that macroprudential policy is able to substantially lower the amplitude of credit and output fluctuations in the periphery. However, for the policy to be effective, it should be decentralized. Very similar conclusions hold when welfare is considered as the optimality criterion.     

Growth and real business cycles in Vietnam and the Asean-5. Does the trend shock matter?

We examine Vietnam’s economy in comparison with its closest trade partners. We show that capital accumulation has been the primary growth engine since the start of its transition to the pro-market economy in 1986 – the Doi Moi. We also show that the cyclical behavior of its macro aggregates is similar to that of its ASEAN-5 peers and other developing countries. We extend the standard small open economy RBC model by considering habit persistence and government consumption, which allows a close match of the moments of the growth variables. At the business cycle frequency, transitory productivity shocks account for approximately one-half of Vietnam’s output variance, while country risk and non-transitory productivity shocks account to close to one-fifth each. Regarding the Solow residual’s volatility, we find that the trend component merely accounts for 12 % of this variance in Vietnam, while in Thailand it is only 6 %. These findings refute the “the cycle is the trend” hypothesis in Aguiar and Gopinath (2007) and align with the hypotheses in García-Cicco et al. (2010) and Rhee (2017), where the stationary component is overwhelmingly dominant. We claim that technological progress and productivity-enhancing measures are fundamental for Vietnam’s economy to sustain high growth.     

DSGE forecasts of the lost recovery

The years following the Great Recession were challenging for forecasters. Unlike other deep downturns, this recession was not followed by a swift recovery, but instead generated a sizable and persistent output gap that was not accompanied by deflation as a traditional Phillips curve relationship would have predicted. Moreover, the zero lower bound and unconventional monetary policy generated an unprecedented policy environment. We document the actual real-time forecasting performance of the New York Fed dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model during this period and explain the results using the pseudo real-time forecasting performance results from a battery of DSGE models. We find the New York Fed DSGE model’s forecasting accuracy to be comparable to that of private forecasters, and notably better for output growth than the median forecasts from the FOMC’s Summary of Economic Projections. The model’s financial frictions were key in obtaining these results, as they implied a slow recovery following the financial crisis.