Optimal simple rules for the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy

Stabilization policy involves joint monetary and fiscal rules. We develop a model enabling us to characterize systematic simple monetary and fiscal policy over the business cycle. We principally focus on the following question. What are the key properties of the joint simple rule governing the conduct of systematic stabilization policy? We find that conducting stabilization policy incorporates not only a set of monetary policy choices governed by the so-called ‘Taylor principle’ but also fiscal policy that gives considerable force to automatic stabilizers. Recent US and UK monetary and fiscal choices seem broadly consistent with this model. This result is found to be robust to a number of alternate modeling strategies.     

Confident expectations, rational expectations and the optimal conduct of monetary policy

Under what conditions central banks can afford to deviate from announced targets without losing their reputation is analyzed. For this, the public must have something like ‘confident expectations' vis-a-vis monetary policy and central banks have to behave accordingly. The paper shows that it can be rational for the public and welfare-increasing for the society to retain ‘confident expectations' instead of switching to rational expectations, when central banks have gained long-run reputation. At the end of the paper, alternative optimal money supply rules are compared in a dynamic optimization framework. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.     

Politicians, deficits, and monetary policy in the U.S. revisited

This paper reconsiders the evidence regarding the existence of executive and congressional influences on monetary policy in the U.S. Results regarding the source of the federal deficit (cyclical or structural) provide evidence that structural deficits occurring under Democratic presidential administrations have a significant impact on money growth rates, but those occurring under their Republican counterparts may not. Although the evidence regarding cyclical deficits is statistically weaker, their more limited influence on monetary growth rates appears to be similar regardless of whether they occur under Democratic or Republican presidents. This contrasts with previous research which suggests that cyclical deficits influence monetary growth rates under Democratic administrations while structural deficits generated a similar monetary response regardless of which party held the presidency.     

Distortionary fiscal policy and monetary policy goals

We reconsider the role of an inflation conservative central banker in a setting with distortionary taxation. To do so, we assume monetary and fiscal policy are decided by independent authorities that do not abide to past commitments. If the two authorities make policy decisions simultaneously, inflation conservatism causes fiscal overspending. But if fiscal policy is determined before monetary policy, inflation conservatism imposes fiscal discipline. These results clarify that in our setting the value of inflation conservatism depends crucially on the timing of policy decisions.     

Bank diversification and monetary policy

Using bank-level data in Asia, we examine the relationship between the effectiveness of monetary policy and the business diversification of banks. We find that bank diversification enhances the effect of monetary policy.     

Animal spirits and monetary policy

I develop a behavioral macroeconomic model in which agents have cognitive limitations. As a result, they use simple but biased rules (heuristics) to forecast future output and inflation. Although the rules are biased, agents learn from their mistakes in an adaptive way. This model produces endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism (??animal spirits??) that are generated by the correlation of biased beliefs. I identify the conditions under which animal spirits arise. I contrast the dynamics of this model with a stylized DSGE-version of the model and I study the implications for monetary policies. I find that strict inflation targeting is suboptimal because it gives more scope for waves of optimism and pessimism to emerge thereby destabilizing output and inflation.     

Endogenous monetary policy and the liquidity effect

We compare the transmission mechanism of exogenous and endogenous monetary policies in a calibrated small open economy model with nominal and real rigidities. Under an exogenous monetary policy rule it takes implausible values of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution and the price adjustment costs to generate the liquidity and overshooting effects. Endogenous rules with strong feedback to inflation and output help to reproduce the response of the nominal interest and exchange rates to unanticipated monetary policy shocks that characterize the transmission mechanism of standard sticky price models. The liquidty and overshooting effects are always obtained when the model is augmented with a Taylor interest rate rule.JEL Classification: E32, E43Javier Andrés acknowledges support of CICYT grant SEC2002-0026. We thank the comments of two anonymous referees and the editor, Jordi Caballé, to an earlier version of the paper. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the view of the Banco de España.     

Theory and practice of monetary policy

Summary. We consider an optimally managed renewable resource with stochastic non-concave growth function. We characterize the conditions under which the optimal policy leads to global extinction, global conservation and the existence of a safe standard of conservation. Our conditions are specified in terms of the economic and ecological primitives of the model: the biological growth function, the welfare function, the distribution of shocks and the discount rate. Our results indicate that, unlike deterministic models, extinction and conservation in stochastic models are not determined by a simple comparison of the growth rate and the discount rate; the welfare function plays an important role.Received: 20 October 2004, Revised: 28 February 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: D90, O11, O41, Q32.Santanu Roy: Correspondence toResearch on this paper was completed when the second author visited Cornell University in July, 2003. We thank the Center for Analytic Economics and the Department of Economics at Cornell University for making this research visit possible. The current version has gained considerably from the comments made by an anonymous referee.     

Labor immobility and the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in a monetary union

It is believed that a common monetary policy in a monetary union will have identical effects on different countries as long as these countries have identical fundamentals. We show that, when there is specialization in production, the terms of trade react to the shock. The transmission mechanism of a monetary shock has in this case an additional channel, the terms of trade. This is the case even if state contingent assets can be traded across countries. For a reasonable parametrization, the differential on the transmission across countries is quantitatively significant when compared with the effect on the union's aggregates. Monetary shocks create cycles with higher volatility in “poor” countries than in “richer” ones.     

浅析稳健的货币政策

2011年12月举行的中共中央政治局会议定调2012年继续实行稳健的货币政策。理解稳健的货币政策,分析其实行效果已成为当务之急。归纳了稳健货币政策的演化史,分析了该货币政策的特征,并总结了其实行效果与面临的挑战。稳健货币政策的运行方式是逆向操作的相机抉择。该货币政策难以对CPI进行精确的控制,难以有效抑制经济过快发展。为提高货币政策的实施效果,央行应当增加基准利率调整频率,并减少对央行票据的依赖。     

Erratic monetary policy and price variability

This paper examines the effect of erratic monetary policy on individual behavior, as well as the aggregate economy. It is demonstrated that an increase in erratic monetary policy causes an increase in demand for inventories by individuals. This behavior by individuals in turn leads to a higher variability of the price level, as well as a higher price level in the steady state of the aggregate economy.     

Optimal monetary policy and economic growth

A question at the center of many analyses of optimal monetary policy is, why do central banks never implement the Friedman rule? To the list of answers to this question, we add neoclassical production (specifically, the Tobin effect) as one possible explanation. To that end, we study an overlapping generations economy with capital where limited communication and stochastic relocation create an endogenous transactions role for fiat money. We assume a production function with a knowledge externality (Romer style) that nests economies with endogenous growth (AK form) and those with no long-run growth (the Diamond model). The Tobin effect is shown to be always operative. Under CRRA preferences, a mild degree of social increasing returns is sufficient (but not necessary) for some positive inflation to dominate zero inflation and for the Friedman rule to be sub-optimal, irrespective of the degree of risk aversion.     

Federal fiscal transfer rules in monetary unions

This paper considers simple rules for federal fiscal transfers that automatically redistribute funds among member states of a monetary union to counteract adverse idiosyncratic shocks. The transfer rules target regional differences in nominal GDP, consumption spending, labor income, and fiscal deficits. Targeting regional fiscal deficits is the only rule that reduces consumption fluctuations and that promotes interregional consumption risk sharing, but the overall welfare effect is negative. In contrast, targeting regional differences in labor income yields the largest welfare gains, but it also yields the largest fluctuations in consumption and real GDP. It is demonstrated that the welfare gains primarily stem from reducing the allocative inefficiency of input factors caused by nominal rigidities. The optimal transfer rule essentially implies a combination of consumption spending and labor income targeting, and it primarily targets the allocative inefficiency of factor inputs at the cost of lower interregional consumption risk sharing.     

Optimal information acquisition and monetary policy

I study optimal monetary policy with an expectational AS curve and private agents who optimally choose their amount of information pertinent to predicting policy. Shocks with time-varying variance (ARCH) induce interesting information acquisition (IA) dynamics; optimal IA affects optimal policy and vice versa. Under discretion, IA dynamics cause time-varying effectiveness of policy because of the expectational AS curve; policy may be rendered completely ineffective. In policy game equilibrium, a fall in the shock’s variance typically induces less IA and raises welfare. In one exceptional case the opposite occurs, a result which does not require implausible unstable equilibria. An agent becoming informed increases the endogenous component of economic volatility; IA therefore has a negative externality. Under commitment policy’s effectiveness is again time-varying, but policy is never completely ineffective: commitment enables the central bank to credibly limit policy’s volatility; this limits private agents’ incentive to become informed, so limits expectation-induced policy neutrality.     

Household's preferences and monetary policy inertia

Interest rates set by central banks puzzlingly move with a certain inertia. We show that household's preferences can be important determinants of the optimal interest rate inertia due to their impact on the efficiency of the monetary policy transmission mechanism.     

Competition among banks and the pass-through of monetary policy

This paper introduces monopolistically competitive financial intermediaries into the New Keynesian DSGE setting. Modelling bank market power explicitly contributes to understanding two empirical facts: (i) The short-run transmission of changes in money market rates to bank retail rates is far from complete and heterogeneous. (ii) Stiffer competition among commercial banks implies that loan rates correlate more tightly with the policy rate. In my model, the degree of monopolistic competition in the banking sector has a sizeable impact on the pass-through of changes in the policy rate. In particular, a more competitive market for bank credit amplifies the efficiency of monetary policy.