Responding to a Monetary Superpower: Investigating the Behavioral Spillovers of U.S. Monetary Policy

Between 2002 and 2006, the Federal Reserve set interest rates significantly below the rates suggested by well-known monetary policy rules. There is a growing body of research suggesting that this helped fuel an excess of liquidity in the U.S. that contributed to the 2008 worldwide financial crash. It is less well known that a number of other central banks also lowered interest rates during this period. An important question, then, is what role the Federal Reserve played in influencing other central banks to alter their own monetary policies, which could have magnified the Fed’s actions in creating global liquidity. This paper addresses the issue by showing how spillovers in central bank behavior occur in theoretical rational expectations models. It then establishes empirically how U.S. monetary policy actions affect the actions of other major central banks, particularly in terms of interest rates and currency interventions. The models and data suggest that the U.S. lowering its policy rate, either in general or in reference to a monetary policy rule, influences other central banks to lower their own policy rates and intervene in currency markets, even when controlling for worldwide macroeconomic trends. It thus appears that U.S. actions were a factor in the worldwide lowering of interest rates and the increase in currency reserves in the early 2000s that may have contributed to the subsequent global liquidity boom.     

中国国债利率期限结构突变与动因分析——基于无套利宏观金融模型的视角

已有研究表明中国宏观经济和金融市场近20年来表现出区制转换和非线性特征,在此背景下国债市场是否也存在结构性变化,将关系到利率模型的稳定性和经济政策的效果。文章基于未知间断点的结构突变方法实证检验2002年到2015年间中国国债利率期限结构,并通过把新凯恩斯动态一般均衡框架嵌入仿射无套利期限结构模型中,解释突变的宏观动因。结果认为,受2005年金融市场一系列重大改革的累积和联动影响,中国国债利率期限结构于2005年11月发生了显著的结构变化;间断后由于市场风险水平降低,货币政策波动性减小,所以利率偏离预期假说的程度锐减;与货币政策相关的斜率因子风险价格的减小是突变的关键动因。     

贸易摩擦背景下关税与货币政策反制策略研究

通过将贸易品美元定价约束、外汇噪声交易和关税反制等特征融入两国DSGE模型,文章对贸易摩擦背景下美国进口关税冲击的传导渠道以及中国的关税反制策略与货币应对政策有效性等问题进行了数值分析。研究发现,关税反制措施能够有效地对冲美国加征进口关税对中国实际产出、消费和净出口的消极影响,并有助于抑制人民币实际汇率贬值。若进一步搭配将出口品关税纳入利率调控框架的积极货币政策,对于经济扩张与保持汇率稳定都更加有效。但从长期社会福利角度看,积极货币政策对美国经济也具有明显的正向溢出作用,关税反制则会产生显著的福利转移效应,不采取任何关税与货币应对政策将使中国遭受最大的福利损失。因此,基于"打击最大化、自损最小化"原则,中国应对美国采取坚决有力的关税反击,同时保持货币政策相对中性、克制,以期实现"以战促和"的战略目标。     

International parity relationships between the USA and Japan

Based on multivariate cointegration analysis we show that key parity conditions between the USA and Japan do not hold as stationary relations and that this is related to the nonstationarity of the real exchange rate. The latter seems almost exclusively to be related to similar nonstationary movements in interest rates. We obtain strong empirical results suggesting a reversal of the standard linkages, as predicted by the term structure of interest rates and the Fisher condition, between short and long interest rates and interest rates and inflation. Our findings may be important for the conduct of monetary policy, which is usually thought to be transmitted through short-term interest rates. Altogether, the empirical results suggest that it is agents’ behavior in the foreign exchange market, rather than in the goods market, which is crucial for the determination of the exchange rate.     

20世纪90年代美国货币政策及对我国目前的启示

1993～2000年的美国和目前的中国都出现了高增长、低通胀的局面,一般认为美联储的货币政策为之作出很大贡献。本文在借鉴的基础上就我国目前在高增长、低通胀下的货币政策的几个主要问题提出建议。     

A regime-switching analysis of pass-through

We empirically investigate how various economic factors affect the changes in the pricing policies of exporters, in particular changes in the exchange rate pass-through. Assuming exporters set prices following either a high or a low pass-through pricing policy, and assuming that the transition probabilities between these pricing policies depend on market concentration, exporting country??s market share and monetary stability, we estimate a Markov regime-switching model, using data we have collected on imported cars to the United States. Our findings show that the ??low pass-through?? regime is characterized by: lower exchange rate pass-through, low response to misalignments in the firm??s relative price, low volatility of exogenous shocks, and higher duration. When we decompose the changes in the pass-through in our sample, we find that monetary stability has been the most important factor behind the decline in the pass-through. Monetary stability explains more than 50% of the decline in the exchange rate pass-through, while country market share and market concentration explain about 25 and 10%, respectively.     

International spillovers of U.S. monetary uncertainty and equity market volatility to China’s stock markets

Due to the global economy that is currently being increasingly integrated and liberalized, the cross-country transmission of U.S. monetary policy surprises has become a critical issue attracting scholarly attention. This research thus extends the existing literature by assessing the causal linkages among U.S. monetary policy uncertainty (USMPU), equity market volatility, and China’s stock price index over the period from January 1994 to August 2021. We apply Granger causality in quantile analysis to explore the relationships in each quantile of the distribution in a comprehensible manner. The results indicate that equity market volatility and China’s stock price dynamics play little role in affecting USMPU. We also find that only greater changes in both positive monetary policy uncertainty and stock prices lead to changes in equity market volatility. Furthermore, fluctuations in monetary policy uncertainty and equity market volatility in the United States Granger-cause China’s stock prices. Knowing such causality results could prevent market participants from adopting a one-size-fits-all strategy.     

An empirical analysis on the effects of the inflation targeting framework on monetary policy in South Africa

This article examines the impact of the adoption of an Inflation Targeting (IT) framework in 2000 on the conduct of South Africa’s monetary policy. Taylor rule analysis is used to test empirically whether the implementation of IT in South Africa can be shown to have impacted on the conduct of monetary policy. In particular, the article analyses whether the implementation of the IT framework yields the expected changes when comparing the conduct of monetary policy pre and post the adoption of the IT framework. Thereafter, an analysis of term structure of interest rates, which serve as a proxy variable for market expectations, is used to test whether South Africa’s IT framework has resulted in more predictability and transparency in monetary policy conduct. Lastly, the article analyses the impact of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, the so‐called Great Recession, on the predictability and transparency of monetary policy in South Africa.     

U.S. Monetary Policy: A View from Macro Theory

We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to address two questions about U.S. monetary policy: 1) Can monetary policy elevate output when it is below potential? and 2) Is the zero lower bound a trap? The model’s answer to the first question is yes it can, but the effect is only temporary and probably not welfare enhancing. The answer to the second question is more complicated because it depends on policy. It also depends on whether it is the inflation rate or the real interest rate that will adjust over the longer run if the policy rate is held near zero for an extended period. We use the Fisher equation to analyze possible outcomes for situations where the central bank has promised to keep the interest rate near zero for an extended period.     

An empirical analysis of the unit labor cost-product price relation in the U.S. economy

This article tests for cointegration between unit labor costs and the level of product prices in four sectors of the U.S. economy: the aggregate business sector, the nonfinancial corporate sector, durable manufacturing, and nondurable manufacturing. A finding of cointegration for most specifications supports the existence of long-run labor market equilibrium for producers and suggests estimation of error-correction models to examine the dynamic relationships. In every sector except nondurable manufacturing, error-correction model estimates indicate there is a mutual feedback relationship between unit labor costs and prices. Controlling for deviations from full employment, oil price shocks, and the Nixon wage and price controls, the results also provide evidence of significant nominal wage indexation in U.S. labor markets. Throughout the economy there appears to exist both effective neoclassical wage and price adjustment mechanisms to maintain labor market equilibrium and short-run rigidities which may contribute to deviations from full employment outcomes.     

Will monetary policy affect energy security? Evidence from Asian countries

This paper uses the System Generalized Moments (SYS-GMM) method to empirically analyze the data of 16 Asian countries from 2000 to 2019, and finds the impact of monetary policy on energy security. We conclude that the real interest rate, total reserve and exchange rate all have a positive impact on energy security, that is, when these three indicators decline, the risk of energy security increases, this reminds policymakers to pay close attention to the trend of energy security when implementing loose monetary policy. In addition, we also found that the relationship between monetary policy and energy security increased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, and the more developed the economy is, the more likely it is to encounter energy security challenges brought about by changes in monetary policy. Overall, our evidences provide useful experience for the literature related to energy security.     

Specific Factors and International Monetary Policy Coordination

The consequences of intersectoral factor immobility for optimal monetary policy are examined in a “New Open Economy Macroeconomics” framework. When labor cannot be reallocated between tradable and nontradable goods production, this rigidity generates a welfare loss, which increases as the sectors become more different. When prices are predetermined, the model becomes a monetary “specific factor” model. Intersectoral factor immobility complicates the optimal monetary policy problem by creating a tradeoff between stabilizing tradable and nontradable sector labor. When labor is mobile between sectors, policy coordination can significantly reduce labor volatility. When it is not mobile, coordination results in less volatility in tradable sector labor, but increased nontradable sector labor volatility.     

Impact of RMB Appreciation on Trade and Labor Markets of China and the USA： A Multi-country Comparative General Equilibrium Model

Since the recent economic crisis, the undervaluation of China's exchange rate has been a focus in the debate on the global policy mix. Using a non‐competitive input–output table, we establish a comparative‐static general equilibrium model to simulate the impact of real exchange rate changes on Sino–US trade and labor markets. The simulation shows that the impacts of a 10‐percent RMB revaluation on the trade surplus of China and the labor market of the USA are more modest than is generally perceived, and the negative impact on the output of the non‐processing industry in China is more significant than that on the processing industry. The Sino–US trade imbalance will continue to deteriorate, China's non‐processing trade surplus will decline and the processing trade will increase, with the combined effect being small. For the USA, labor‐intensive goods imported from China will shift to different Asian countries instead of transferring back to the US market. The simulation results indicate that the impacts of an RMB revaluation on both Chinese and US labor markets would be limited.     

后危机时代美国货币政策的走势——兼论资产价格与货币政策操作规则

次贷危机使人们认识到,美联储货币政策操作失误难辞其咎。在全球化日益加深和美元为核心的国际货币体系下,美国不断下调利率的扩张性货币政策效应没有像过去那样迅速反映在商品价格上,而是主要表现为资产价格的攀升。由于美联储货币政策操作遵循了"泰勒规则"——把CPI当作最主要的监控对象,致使美联储错过了适时调整货币政策最佳的时机,导致美国信用扩张过度、资产泡沫,特别是房产泡沫不断升级。资产价格的上升最终会通过"财富效应"、"托宾q效应"、"金融加速器效应"等逐渐传导到商品价格上,随着石油等大宗商品价格的持续攀升,美联储开始急速提高利率,最终引发了次贷危机的爆发。后危机时代,美国的资产价格开始了迅速的回升,美联储应该吸取货币政策调整滞后的教训,适时地退出刺激,避免资产价格迅速上升和通货膨胀对经济复苏带来的不利影响。     

资本充足率、存款准备金率与货币政策银行信贷传导——基于银行业市场结构的分析

基于垄断竞争的银行业市场结构,研究银行在受到资本充足率和存款准备金率双重约束条件下,在面对货币政策冲击的情况下所做出的最优信贷决策行为。通过构造贷款市场总体均衡模型,得出以下结论:当银行满足资本充足率和存款准备金率要求时,货币政策的银行信贷传导渠道表现出有效性;而当贷款市场中的银行不能满足资本充足率或存款准备金率要求时,货币政策的银行信贷传导渠道则表现出无效性。     

经济政策不确定性视角下宏观杠杆的调控效应及其策略选择

新常态下保证宏观杠杆稳步下降是供给侧结构性改革的重要任务之一。以中国经济政策不确定性为门限变量,构建了包括经济政策不确定性、宏观经济政策以及宏观杠杆在内的门限结构向量自回归(T-SVAR)模型,研究高低两种政策不确定性区制下我国需求端货币政策与财政政策以及供给端金融改革政策对宏观杠杆的调控效应。结果显示,三种政策均存在明显的门限效应且在中长期内均出现逆转,区别在于,虽然货币政策对宏观杠杆的短期作用效果最为显著,但当政策不确定性水平快速攀升时,其调控效果会略微降低,而此时财政政策和金融供给侧结构性改革能有效平抑过高的杠杆率增速,且在长期依旧保持一定的调控效果。因此,央行在对宏观杠杆进行调控时应依据各政策调控效应的阶段性特征进行搭配使用,同时通过推进资本市场基础性制度改革,优化融资结构,为实现宏观政策调控效果的最大化奠定基础。     

What happened to the world's potential growth after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis?

This paper provides estimates of potential growth for 52 economies in 2000–2018. We follow Borio et al.’s (2014, 2017) methodology, which takes into account the relationship between financial factors and the output gap. We find that the world's potential growth declined from an average of 3.0% in 2000–2007 to 2.6% in 2010–2018. Potential growth peaked before the crisis at 3.4% in 2006. The trough was in 2009 at 2.3%. Potential growth started recovering in 2010 and reached 2.9% in 2018. Decomposing the 0.4 percentage points decline between 2000–2007 and 2010–2018 by economy, we find that high-income Europe contributed 0.34 percentage points. The decline in potential growth in the United States contributed 0.24 percentage points, while the decline in Japan contributed just 0.07 percentage points. China's potential growth and that of Asia and the Pacific also fell, but their contributions to the change in the world's potential growth were positive, 0.33 percentage points and 0.11 percentage points, respectively. The other economies contributed 0.19 percentage points to the decline. Decomposing the sources of the decline into the contributions of labor force growth and labor productivity growth, the former declined by 0.55 percentage points, while labor productivity growth increased by 0.15 percentage points.     

新冠疫情全球扩散对中国开放经济和世界经济的影响

在巩固新冠肺炎疫情防控成效的同时,中国经济在努力复工复产复市。因疫情防控导致境内外交通运输联系不同程度被阻断,商品运输成本提高、交货日期延长,中间品与劳动力供应不足,中国进出口贸易和国际直接投资增长面临很大压力。中国企业复工复产受到全球价值链运行态势影响,疫情全球扩散正在引发全球范围内经济结构、财政政策、货币政策、贸易政策调整。疫情在全球范围扩散,使企业经营压力上升,造成金融恐慌并引起全球经济深度衰退的可能性增加;为抗击疫情增加财政补贴和实施宽松货币政策,增加了各国财政负担,带来全球范围内的通货膨胀压力加大;部分国家试图借口疫情防控,发动新的贸易摩擦的可能性增加。     

国际贸易中计价货币选择的决定因素研究——基于微观视角的局部均衡分析

在既有的基于微观视角的包含两币的局部均衡模型中引入交易货币,发现国际贸易中计价货币选择的决定因素依次为:卖方市场结构、出口品差异化程度、出口国所占目标市场份额、其他出口商的计价策略和汇率的稳定性.在同质性商品的国际贸易中,计价货币的非同质性会导致货币垄断计价.其中,进口方货币的垄断计价地位较为稳定,出口方货币垄断计价情...     

Regaining China's Resource Reallocative Efficiency to Boost Growth

The structural changes that the Chinese economy has been experiencing since its working-age population began to decline pose challenges for its further growth. First, as it loses its comparative advantage in labor-intensive activities, the share of manufacturing in its GDP has shrunk. Second, unproductive enterprises that are reluctant to exit the market tend to seek policy protection, which leads to the immobility of resource allocation. Third, the reallocation of the labor force from the highly productive manufacturing sector to the low-productivity service sector leads to the degradation of resource allocation. The inadequate exploitation of the potential of resource reallocation implies that the decline in manufacturing is premature. It is therefore important to combine market competition policy, industrial policy, and social protection policy to stabilize the development of manufacturing.