Are Central Bank Preferences Asymmetric? A Comment

A recent paper by Ruge-Murcia (2004) on asymmetric central bank objectives provides a new perspective on the policy roots of inflation in developed economies. More precisely, the paper demonstrates that if the distribution of the supply shocks is normal, then the reduced-form solution for inflation implies a positive (or negative) relation between average inflation and the variance of shocks. We argue that the evidence offered in support of this hypothesis suffers from lack of identification because Phillips curve nonlinearity combined with quadratic central bank preferences yield the same reduced-form solution for inflation. If so, estimating reduced form for inflation will not be able to discriminate between these models. Yet they have quite different implications for policy. Other, structural, evidence is needed.     

Financial imbalances and gradualism

In the last years, in the major OECD economies, while inflation has become lower and more stable, episodes of financial instability and large cycles in asset prices have shown up with (often) non-negligible effects on economic activity. These facts should call for a larger concern with financial imbalances by the central bank. Adapting the model by Caplin and Leahy (1996)—where a central bank, which is uncertain about the state of the economy and its reaction to policy, seeks an optimal search strategy to influence private agents' responses—by substituting the central bank's price stability objective with a financial stability one, we find that the monetary authority should follow a less aggressive policy than the one suggested by the original model. However, initial conditions play a crucial role in determining the degree of gradualism by the policy maker with the policy becoming more and more aggressive as the initial interest rate shrinks.     

Data uncertainty and the role of money as an information variable for monetary policy

In this study, we perform a quantitative assessment of the role of money as an indicator variable for monetary policy in the euro area. We document the magnitude of revisions to euro area-wide data on output, prices, and money, and find that monetary aggregates have a potentially significant role in providing information about current real output. We then proceed to analyze the information content of money in a forward-looking model in which monetary policy is optimally determined subject to incomplete information about the true state of the economy. We show that monetary aggregates may have substantial information content in an environment with high variability of output measurement errors, low variability of money demand shocks, and a strong contemporaneous linkage between money demand and real output. As a practical matter, however, we conclude that money has fairly limited information content as an indicator of contemporaneous aggregate demand in the euro area.     

A small estimated euro area model with rational expectations and nominal rigidities

We estimate a small model of the euro area to be used for evaluating alternative monetary policy strategies. Starting with the relationship between output and inflation we compare the fit of the nominal wage contracting model due to Taylor (J. Political Econom. 88 (1980) 1) and the relative real wage contracting model proposed by Buiter and Jewitt (The Manchester School 49 (1981) 211; reprinted in Buiter (Ed.), Macroeconomic Theory and Stabilization Policy, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1989) and estimated with U.S. data by Fuhrer and Moore (Quart. J. Econom. 110 (1995) 127). While Fuhrer and Moore reject nominal contracts in favor of relative contracts, which induce more inflation persistence, we find that both specifications fit euro area data reasonably well. When considering France, Germany and Italy separately, however, we find that nominal contracts fit German data better, while the relative contracting model does well with respect to formerly high inflation countries such as France and Italy. We close the model by estimating an aggregate demand relationship and investigate the implications of nominal versus relative contracts for the inflation-output variability tradeoff when monetary policy follows Taylor's rule.     

Commitment or discretion? An empirical investigation of monetary policy preferences in China

This paper offers a first attempt to estimate the policy preferences of China’s central bank by confronting a small-scale microfounded New Keynesian model in which monetary policy is described by commitment or discretion with the Chinese macroeconomic data over the period from 1992Q2 to 2017Q4. Bayesian model comparison reveals that the data favor discretionary monetary policy. Estimates of the loss function weights under both cases show that the leading policy goal is price stability, followed by output stability and then interest rate smoothing. Finally, through counterfactual analyses we assess how macroeconomic outcomes might improve, had the Chinese central bank been able to commit. These findings shed new light on the opaque Chinese monetary policy, and are robust to subsample analysis.     

The Limits of Transparency

This paper probes the limits of transparency in monetary policymaking along two dimensions: feasibility and desirability. It argues that, due to limited knowledge about the economy, even central banks (CBs) that are considered champions of openness are not very clear about their measurement of the output gap and about their beliefs regarding the effect of policy on inflationary expectations. Consequently, feasibility constraints on transparency are more serious than stylized models of the transmission mechanism would imply. In addition, no CB has made clear statements about its objective function, including in particular the relative weight on output versus inflation stabilization, the policy discount factor and the shape of losses from the inflation and the output gaps over the possible ranges of realizations of those variables.
The paper also argues that there is a trade-off between full transparency and full utilization of information in setting policy and that excessive transparency may facilitate the exertion of political pressures on the CB.
The last section of the paper abstracts from feasibility constraints and discusses the desirable levels of openness in various areas of the policymaking process. It is argued that the strongest case against immediate transparency arises when the CB has private information about problems within segments of the financial system. Premature release of information may, in such a case, destroy efficient risk-sharing arrangements and long-term investments by triggering a run on the financial system. This is illustrated within the context of the classic Diamond–Dybvig model of bank runs. The paper also probes the desirable levels of transparency in other areas of the policymaking process like the bank's objective function, the bank's output target, forecasts of economic shocks, disagreements within the CB board and the publication of CB interest-rate forecasts.     

The inflation bias when the central bank targets the natural rate of unemployment

This paper studies the proposition that an inflation bias can arise in a setup where a central banker with asymmetric preferences targets the natural unemployment rate. Preferences are asymmetric in the sense that positive unemployment deviations from the natural rate are weighted more (or less) severely than negative deviations in the central banker's loss function. The bias is proportional to the conditional variance of unemployment. The time-series predictions of the model are evaluated using data from G7 countries. Econometric estimates support the prediction that the conditional variance of unemployment and the rate of inflation are positively related.     

Anchored or de-anchored? That is the question

Using a variety of approaches, this paper shows that long-term inflation expectations have de-anchored from the ECB’s inflation aim. The long-term expectations reported in the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters have not regained the levels that prevailed before the 2013-14 disinflation. Long-term expectations have also become sensitive to short-term expectations and to negative surprises to inflation. Forecasters who participated in most of the survey rounds were highly sensitive to short-term developments in inflation.     

Bubble-free policy feedback rules

We consider a broad class of linear dynamic stochastic rational-expectations models made of a finite number N of structural equations for N+1 endogenous variables and to be closed by one policy feedback rule. We design, for any model of this class and any stationary VARMA solution of that model, a “bubble-free” policy feedback rule ensuring that this solution is not only the unique stationary solution of the closed model, but also its unique solution. We apply these results to locally linearisable models of the monetary transmission mechanism and obtain interest-rate rules that not only ensure the local determinacy of the targeted equilibrium in the neighbourhood of the steady state considered, but also prevent the economy from gradually leaving this neighbourhood.     

Barro-Gordon revisited: Reputational equilibria with inferential expectations

We incorporate inferential expectations into the Barro-Gordon model (Barro and Gordon, 1983a) of time inconsistency and consider reputational equilibria. The range of sustainable equilibria shrinks as the private sector becomes more belief-conservative.