Monetary policy,bond risk premia,and the economy

Within an affine model of the term structure of interest rates, where bond yields get driven by observable and unobservable macroeconomic factors, parameter restrictions help identify the effects of monetary policy and other structural disturbances on output, inflation, and interest rates and decompose movements in long-term rates into terms attributable to changing expected future short rates versus risk premia. When estimated, the model highlights a broad range of channels through which monetary policy affects risk premia and the economy, risk premia affect monetary policy and the economy, and the economy affects monetary policy and risk premia.     

Monetary policy and regional availability of debt financing

The relative availability of bond and bank financing should affect the firm's external financing and investment decisions. We define a measure that proxies for the regional borrowing inflexibility to substitute between bank and bond financing: “debt inflexibility”. Debt inflexibility tilts the firm's financial structure towards equity and reduces investment. The impact is stronger during the period of tight monetary policy, particularly for smaller firms and firms without banking relationships. Debt inflexibility increases the sensitivity of cash holdings to cash flows, reduces the likelihood of dividend payment and makes the firm more likely to pay equity in mergers and acquisitions.     

Monetary policy with signal extraction from the bond market

Monetary policy is conducted in an environment of uncertainty. This paper presents a model where the central bank uses real time data from the bond market together with standard macroeconomic indicators to infer the current state of the economy more efficiently, while taking into account that its own actions influence the bond market and therefore what it observes. That the central bank uses the information in the term structure to set policy creates a link between the bond market and the macroeconomy that is novel to the literature. The estimated model suggests that there is some information in US yields of maturities of less than 1 year that can help the Federal Reserve to identify shocks to the economy on a timely basis.     

Nominal rigidities,asset returns,and monetary policy

Asset-return implications of nominal price and wage rigidities are analyzed in general equilibrium. Nominal rigidities, combined with permanent productivity shocks, increase expected excess returns on production claims. This is mainly explained by consumption dynamics driven by rigidity-induced changes in employment and markups. An interest-rate monetary policy rule affects asset returns. Stronger (weaker) rule responses to inflation (output) increase expected excess returns. Policy shocks substantially increase asset-return volatility. Price rigidity heterogeneity produces cross-sectoral differences in expected returns. The model matches important macroeconomic moments and the Sharpe ratio of stock returns, but only captures a small fraction of the observed equity premium.     

Financial conditions,macroeconomic factors and disaggregated bond excess returns

Bond excess returns can be predicted by macro factors, however, large parts remain still unexplained. We apply a novel term structure model to decompose bond excess returns into expected excess returns (risk premia) and the innovation part. In order to explore these risk premia and innovations, we complement macro variables by financial condition variables as possible determinants of bond excess returns. We find that the expected part of bond excess returns is driven by macro factors, whereas innovations seem to be mainly influenced by financial conditions, before and after the financial crisis. Thus, financial conditions, such as financial stress, deserve attention when analyzing bond excess returns.     

Banking deregulation,macroeconomic dynamics and monetary policy

We assess the effects of increased bank competition on macroeconomic and lending dynamics and on the transmission of monetary policy. Applying panel local projections to state-level data, we, in a first step, investigate the dynamic effects of fiercer bank competition induced by deregulation allowing geographical expansion of banks across state borders in the 1980s and early-1990s. We allow for possible adjustments before the new laws became effective due to potential anticipation effects. Our findings suggest that these events were anticipated and that they temporarily increased economic activity as well as business and consumer lending. We also find a permanent increase in real estate lending and house prices. In a second step, we show that the impact of monetary policy on economic activity, house prices and lending tended to become stronger after interstate banking deregulation.     

Monetary policy and the cyclicality of risk

A dynamic general equilibrium model to study the relationship between monetary policy and movements in risk is developed. Variation in risk arises because households face fixed costs of transferring cash across financial accounts, implying that some households rebalance their portfolios infrequently. Accordingly, prices for risky assets respond sharply to aggregate shocks because only a relatively small subset of consumers are available to absorb these shocks. The model can account for both the mean and the volatility of returns on equity and the risk-free rate and generates a decline in the equity premium following an unanticipated easing of monetary policy.     

Monetary Shocks and REIT Returns

We investigate the influence of unanticipated changes in US monetary policy on Equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT’s). Although a number of studies have investigated the issue of interest rate changes, the effect of unanticipated changes has not previously been addressed in terms of possible effects on both REIT’s returns and volatility. The results show a strong response in both the first and second moments of REIT returns to unexpected policy rate changes. The results for the impact of the shock on both mean and volatility of returns is consistent with results from studies addressing broader equity markets. However, we find evidence both against behavioral changes in volatility coincident to US monetary policy decisions and asymmetric responses to the monetary policy shock.

Monetary versus fiscal policy in India: an SVAR analysis

Conventionally, the policymakers relied on three policy alternatives to manage business cycles – debt-financed government spending, debt-financed tax rebate and interest rate. While the first two are fiscal policy instruments, the latter is a monetary policy instrument. This paper aims to capture interactions among Indian monetary and fiscal policy actions, and the impact of such policy actions on select macroeconomic variables for the period 1990Q1–2011Q4. The policy actions are identified using the sign restrictions approach combined with magnitude restrictions in a Structural Vector Autoregression framework, and interpreted using impulse responses and variance decomposition. The results show that Indian monetary policy responds to tax rebate shocks and spending shocks differently. In the case of a tax rebate shock, Indian monetary policy responds by reducing interest rates thereby accommodating fiscal expansion. On the opposite, monetary policy seems not to accommodate expenditure shocks. Interestingly, the monetary policy shock is accompanied by a fiscal expansion that threatens the credibility of the central bank actions, thus indicating fiscal policy dominance. A comparison of the efficacy of the policies suggests that the interest rate is more effective in stimulating output. Out of the two fiscal policy instruments analysed, the tax rebate seems to be the better option for stimulating output considering the output-debt trade-off.     

Institutional arrangements and debt financing

I find that institutional arrangements have an impact on the real economy by affecting firms’ choice between private and public debt and the subsequent financing costs. Using new debt issued by firms in 26 non-US countries, I find, after controlling for firm characteristics predicted by debt agency and information asymmetry theories, that the level of financial market development, the efficiency of bankruptcy procedure, the integrity and enforceability of laws, and the transparency of financial information have significant impacts not only on firms’ debt choice and yield to maturity in domestic debt market, but also their issuance choice in the international debt market.     

Monetary policy and stock valuation: structural VAR identification and size effects

This paper examines the relationship between the US monetary policy and stock valuation using a structural VAR framework that allows for the simultaneous interaction between the federal funds rate and stock market developments based on the assumption of long-run monetary neutrality. The results confirm a strong, negative and significant monetary policy tightening effect on real stock prices. Furthermore, we provide evidence consistent with a delayed response of small stocks to monetary policy shocks relative to large stocks.     

Monetary policy matters: Evidence from new shocks data

The evidence suggests that monetary policy post 1988 became more forward-looking, invalidating the identifying assumptions in conventional methods of measuring monetary policy's effects, leading to spurious and unlikely results for this period. We propose a new identification scheme that uses factors extracted from Fed Funds futures to measure exogenous changes in policy. Using this shock series in a VAR, we recover the contractionary effect of monetary tightening on output. Moreover, we find that as much as half of the variability in output was driven by monetary policy shocks, and that there is a mild price puzzle.     

A 10-year retrospective on the determinants of Russian stock returns

We study factors influencing returns at the Russian stock market from 1995 to 2004, putting emphasis on how these evolved over time. We find that the relationship is highly unstable and this instability is not confined to financial crises alone. Most computed statistics exhibit constant ups and downs, but there has been recently a sharp rise in explainability of stock returns. Domestic factors have been playing a gradually diminishing role, while the importance of international factors has been increasing. In recent years, the effect of oil prices and foreign exchange rates has diminished, the impact of US stock prices and international and domestic interest rates has increased, while the influence of monetary aggregates such as gold reserves and credit balances has fallen to practically zero.     

Monetary policy and the twin crises

After presenting a brief overview of the recent financial crisis and the European debt crisis that followed in its wake, this paper goes on discuss monetary policy in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Euro bloc prior to and during the course of the two crises. The paper presents historical evidence for the three areas on the relationships linking the volatilities of output, inflation and monetary growth. In all three these relations are strongly positive. There is, therefore, no tradeoff between inflation and output volatility; the two move up and down together. Both, moreover, move up and down with the volatility of monetary growth. Viewed from this perspective, the increased volatilities of money supplies and the monetary base in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Euro bloc over the last half decade pose problems.     

Equity returns,bond returns,and the equity premium in the German capital market

This article reviews the empirical evidence for equity returns, bond returns, and the equity premium in the German capital market for the period from 1870 to 1995. Taken together, the studies reviewed provide convincing evidence that over longer investment periods, average equity returns have been higher than average bond returns. These excess returns, however, have been highly volatile and negative in many years, illustrating the higher risk of equity investments. Moreover, market timing had a major positive or negative impact on overall returns. Despite the historical evidence of a substantial equity premium there is still little equity investment by German households.     

股票价格、货币政策和宏观经济波动

本文对包含股票价格在内的新凯恩斯模型的结构方程进行估计,分析了股票价格和货币政策与宏观经济波动之间的关系,认为股票价格与宏观经济波动密切相连,货币政策调整可以平滑经济波动。在此基础上,比较了不同的货币政策规则的宏观调控效果,得到的结论是,将股票价格波动纳入货币政策的调控范围会改善货币政策效果,有助于稳定宏观经济。     

Stock market reactions to monetary policy surprises under uncertainty

This article investigates how uncertainty impacts the effect of monetary policy surprises on stock returns. Using high-frequency US data, we demonstrate that stock markets respond more aggressively to monetary policy surprises during periods of high uncertainty. We also show that uncertainty asymmetrically influences the transmission of positive and negative monetary policy surprises to stock market prices. The amplifying effect of uncertainty is found to be stronger for expansionary shocks than for contractionary shocks. Our robustness analysis confirms that financial uncertainty has a significant role in shaping the influence of monetary policy on the stock market.     

Correlations between stock returns and bond returns: income and substitution effects

We attempt to better understand the varying correlations between stock and bond returns across countries and over sample periods using international data. The observation is that there are two forces that affect the correlation between stock and bond returns. The force that drives a positive correlation is identified as the income effect. The force that drives a negative correlation is identified as the substitution effect. In combination, the two effects help determine the actual correlation between stock and bond returns. We contribute to the literature by proposing an empirical method, the structural vector autoregression (VAR) identification method, to identify the two—income and substitution—effects and to measure the relative importance of the two effects that determine the actual net relation between the two asset returns. We further provide some evidence that the income and substitution effects are related to, among other things, the size of the financial market, the growth and volatility (risk) of the economy, and the business cycle over time. In addition, the framework of the income and substitution effects helps us better understand the automatic stabilizing effects of the dynamic optimal asset allocation during business cycles.