The impact of economic news on expected changes in monetary policy

Asset prices may react to news through changes in expected monetary policy. We examine whether economic news directly affects expected changes in monetary policy, measured by changes in federal funds rate futures prices. Because these prices depend on monthly averages of the effective funds rate, the timing of FOMC meetings relative to news announcements is important and we derive a method of weighting the news that incorporates this timing. We find that the market raises (lowers) its expected change in the funds rate target after news that inflation was higher (lower) than expected or employment was stronger (weaker) than expected.     

基于资产价格影响的货币政策非对称性效应研究

利用NK-SVAR模型就我国货币政策的非对称性效应进行研究,结果表明,紧缩性货币政策的效果比较明显,而扩张性货币政策效果较弱.货币冲击的紧缩效应强于扩张效应,这表明抑制经济的过快增长时紧缩性的货币政策效果显著,但扩张性货币政策无法摆脱经济的恶性衰退.     

Unconventional monetary policy announcements and information shocks in the U.S.

We study unconventional policy shocks and information shocks associated with central bank announcements in the U.S. While unconventional policy shocks capture the direct influence of announced monetary policy actions, information shocks are associated with central bank information conveyed with the announcement. To disentangle these two types of shocks, we impose sign restrictions on high frequency changes in interest rates and stock prices around announcements. We find that information shocks lead to persistent declines in the 10-year government bond yield, whereas the actual unconventional policy shock induces only small interest rate responses. We also find that expansionary output effects of unconventional monetary policy are to some extent counteracted by the information shock.     

我国资产价格波动与货币政策关系研究

随着金融自由化的逐步推进,资本市场存量日益增大.这既体现了金融深化程度的提高,又意味着货币供应与国民经济主要指标之间稳定性的弱化.资产价格对货币政策的制订和执行会产生深刻的影响.其中股价、房价等资产价格在货币政策传导机制中扮演的角色越来越重要.本文从实证角度出发,通过构建VAR模型检验我国资产价格对货币政策的反应以及资产价格对货币政策目标的影响,发现资产价格、货币政策及货币政策目标间存在长期协整关系,资产价格对产出有正向冲击作用,股市显著影响通货膨胀,但房地产市场对通货膨胀推动作用不明显,资产价格受货币政策的冲击影响显著,其中股市对货币政策冲击的反应明显大于房地产市场.     

货币政策对资产价格冲击效果透视

文章在VECM模型的基础上,运用脉冲响应方法分析了股票市场在低迷时期和膨胀时期对不同货币政策冲击响应的效果。结果表明:货币政策可以有效地调节资产价格,在资产价格低迷阶段,用利率调节具有相对持久和明显的作用,金融机构贷款也在推动股票价格上涨中起到了一定的作用;在资产价格膨胀阶段,利率可在一定时期内起到微调作用,控制货币供应量可对价格泡沫的控制起到即时效果。     

Pass-through in United States beef cattle prices: a test of Ricardian rent theory

Feeder cattle are fattened to become fed live cattle 6 months later, and the feeder cattle stock is fixed in the short-run. Efficiency in competitive markets suggests feeder cattle prices should fully reflect feed prices and information on future fed cattle prices. Employing a long time series (1979–2004) of feeder cattle futures, live cattle futures, and local corn prices, we test whether complete pass-through occurs. For fed cattle futures prices, we find about 93% of complete pass-through to present feeder cattle prices. The corresponding negative effect of a corn price increase is about 87% of complete pass-through. In contrast with imperfectly competitive agricultural land rental markets, the results support the hypothesis of Ricardian rent extraction by the scarce asset owner in feeder cattle markets.     

House Prices and Stock Prices: Different Roles in the US Monetary Transmission Mechanism*

We analyze the role of house prices and stock prices in the monetary‐policy transmission mechanism in the US, using a structural vector autoregressive model. If we allow the interest rate and asset prices to react simultaneously to news, we find different roles for house prices and stock prices in the monetary transmission mechanism. Following a contractionary monetary‐policy shock, stock prices fall immediately, while the response in house prices is more gradual. Regarding the systematic response in monetary policy, stock prices play a more important role than house prices. As a consequence, house prices contribute more than stock prices to fluctuations in gross domestic product and inflation.     

Monetary policy and stock price dynamics with limited asset market participation

We study a New-Keynesian DSGE model subject to limited asset market participation (LAMP) and assess whether monetary policy should respond to stock prices for what concerns the determinacy and the learnability (E-stability) of the Rational Expectations Equilibrium (REE). We find that interest rate rules granting a positive response to stock prices facilitate both the determinacy and the E-stability of the fundamental REE when the degree of LAMP is sufficiently large to generate an inverted aggregate demand channel of monetary policy transmission. Moreover, according to our analysis, policy rules responding to stock prices appear to perform better than more standard rules responding to output with respect to both equilibrium determinacy and aggregate welfare.     

The Impact of Monetary Surprises on Australian Financial Futures Markets: An Insight into Cash Rate Target Announcements

This paper investigates the impact of unanticipated Australian monetary policy changes on AUD/USD exchange rate futures, and 3‐year and 10‐year Australian Treasury bond futures, during the period from January 1997 to April 2010. Our study contributes to the literature by using both the 30‐day and the 90‐day bank accepted bill (BAB) rates to disentangle the unexpected surprise component of monetary policy changes from overall cash rate target changes in the Australian money market, and by concurrently modelling the effects of monetary surprises and other key macroeconomic announcements in Australia. The empirical results suggest that the 30‐day BAB rate is the best proxy for the expected monetary policy actions. We find that the effect of monetary surprises on the volatility of the 3‐ and 10‐year bond future instruments is significant and persistent. We have also documented a strong monetary policy effect on the mean returns of the exchange rate futures, indicating that unexpected monetary policy adjustments have a significant impact on the level of the exchange rate movements rather than on the volatility of the FX futures market.     

Stock Market Responses Under Quantitative Easing: State Dependence and Transparency in Monetary Policy

This paper evaluates the effects of unconventional monetary policies adopted by the Bank of Japan from the year 2001 to 2006. A new measure is proposed to identify a nontraditional monetary policy shock from policy packages under the zero lower bound of short‐term nominal interest rates during the quantitative easing period, using data on intraday 3‐month Euroyen futures rates. We find that stock markets do not react to a policy surprise in an expected manner and negatively respond to a monetary easing surprise. Moreover, we find an asymmetric response during a boom and a recession and a nonlinear reaction because of increasing uncertainty concerning future inflation dynamics and the enhancement of monetary policy transparency. Our result suggests that it is difficult to implement unconventional monetary policy to manage agents’ expectations and a ‘lean against the wind’ policy to prevent asset bubbles, particularly at the zero bound.     

Tobin's Q channel and monetary policy rules under incomplete exchange rate pass-through

This paper focuses on the role of the Tobin's Q channel in a two-country framework in which exporting firms set their prices on the basis of local currency pricing. Incomplete exchange rate pass-through significantly affects the Tobin's Q channel in each country compared with the case of complete exchange rate pass-through. We explore whether different specifications of monetary policy enhance social welfare. Regardless of the degree of home bias, a monetary policy rule that stabilizes domestic asset prices attains preferable outcomes to several alternative policy rules considered in our analysis. Notably, there are large gains from employing a domestic asset price rule when the home bias is large. A monetary policy rule that stabilizes the asset prices of both countries results in worse outcomes. Our simulation results suggest that stabilizing asset prices is important in an open economy with incomplete exchange rate pass-through.     

Asymmetric response to monetary policy surprises at the long-end of the yield curve

This paper investigates the responsiveness of asset markets to monetary policy path revisions. Using federal funds futures contracts to extract near-term path revisions, we find that the responsiveness of longer term Treasury securities to path revisions is significantly asymmetric, the magnitude of which increases during tightenings and decreases during easings. These findings blend nicely with the earlier literature that documents asymmetric effects of monetary policy on output.     

Stochastic and structural fiscal policy in a monetary stationary economy

In the framework of a monetary asset pricing model which is simple enough to generate closed form formulae for equilibrium price functions the interactions between output, fiscal policy, and asset markets is investigated. With money yielding liquidity services in the exchange process real stock prices are negatively correlated with anticipated (stochastic) fiscal policy changes, while the impact of unanticipated (structural) fiscal policy on the stock market depends qualitatively on the ‘business cycle’ of the economy. It is shown that the monetary character of the economy, more precisely the role of money in the exchange process, is critical for the relationship between fiscal policy and real share prices. Moreover, while contingent fiscal policy measures may be successful in stabilizing the real interest rate on money they are incapable of achieving a stable term structure of the real rate on stocks. In contrast, uncontingently higher public expenditures generally promote the volatility of the real rates on financial assets.     

Financial market effects of FOMC projections

I examine the impact of the forecasts released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in the Summary of Economic Projections over the period of April 2011 through March 2019. I find that changes in the median FOMC federal funds rate forecast did impact asset prices, but forecasts of output and inflation did not have any effect, which may be surprising based on the literature regarding the “Fed information effect” channel. Further, the dispersion in the federal funds rate forecast does not affect asset prices though it does impact the degree of uncertainty regarding future monetary policy. Finally, I find that most of forward guidance can be summarized through the change in the median federal funds rate forecast for the end of the following year.     

Cross-country evidence on the relation between stock prices and the current account

This article explores the relation between stock prices and the current account for 17 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 1980–2007. A panel Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model is used to compare the effects of stock price shocks to those originating from monetary policy and exchange rates. While monetary policy shocks have little effects, shocks to stock prices and exchange rates have sizeable effects. A 10% contraction in stock prices improves the current account by 0.3% after 2 years. Hence a channel – in addition to the traditional exchange rate channel – is found through which external balance for an OECD country with a current account imbalance can be restored.     

货币政策工具对资产价格动态冲击的识别检验

文章以不同的货币政策手段在资产价格波动的不同阶段所表现出的作用效果为出发点,通过SVAR模型,识别出不同货币政策工具的单独动态冲击,并分别分析了膨胀阶段和低迷阶段的资产价格对货币政策冲击响应的程度,以解决针对不同阶段资产价格波动的货币政策调控手段和时机的选择问题。结果表明,货币政策对资产价格的作用具有有效性,在价格膨胀阶段可在一定时期内采取利率手段对资产价格波动进行微调,当出现价格泡沫时控制货币供应量会收到即时效果;而在资产价格低迷阶段,以利率调节资产价格具有明显和相对持久的作用。     

货币政策与金融资产价格

( 1 )货币政策对金融资产价格 (特别是股票价格 )有影响 ,当投资的上升引起原材料和劳动力价格上涨时 ,扩张性货币政策的长期结果是同时引起商品物价水平和股票价格的上升 ;当投资具有规模经济效应或可以使劳动生产率显著提高时 ,扩张性货币政策的长期结果是股价的上升和物价水平的下降。因此 ,货币数量与通货膨胀的关系不仅取决于商品和服务的价格 ,而且在一定意义上取决于股市。 ( 2 )无论股市财富效应大小 ,通过货币政策刺激股票市场拉动需求的做法在长期都是不可靠的。当股市价格偏离稳态已经越来越远时 ,经济运行将是不安全的。     

Empirical research on monetary policy,asset prices and inflation: an analysis based on provincial panel data in China

In this article, we investigate the dynamic correlations among monetary policy, asset prices and inflation and assess the regional effects of monetary policy in China for the period October 2007 to July 2013. We focus on the interdependencies among monetary policy and asset price fluctuations by using the Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate as the preferred variable for analysing monetary policy movement. In particular, we apply a vector autoregressive model in a panel setting, which allows researchers to examine variations over time or across individual regions. The empirical results presented herein indicate that monetary policy reacts actively to asset prices, although it is still shown to be ineffective. In addition, we find that asset prices display some regional differences in their response to an unexpected monetary policy shock.     

Should monetary policy respond to asset price misalignments?

This paper analyses the relationship between monetary policy and asset prices using a structural rational expectations open economy model that allows for the effect of asset prices and exchange rates on aggregate demand. We assume that asset prices and exchange rates follow a partial adjustment mechanism whereas they are positively affected by past changes, thus allowing for ‘momentum trading’, while at the same time we allow for reversion towards fundamentals. We then conduct stochastic simulations using two alternative monetary policy rules, inflation-forecast targeting and the standard Taylor rule. The results indicate that, under both rules, interest rate setting that takes into account asset price misalignments leads to lower overall macroeconomic volatility, as measured by the postulated loss function of the central bank.     

The impact of the ECB's conventional and unconventional monetary policies on stock markets

Using an event study method, we examine how stock markets respond to the policies of the European Central Bank during 1999–2015. We use market prices of futures (government bonds) to identify surprises in (un)conventional monetary policy. Our results suggest that especially unconventional monetary policy surprises affect the EURO STOXX 50 index. We also find evidence for the credit channel, notably for unconventional monetary policy surprises. Our results also suggest that value and past loser stocks show a larger reaction to monetary policy surprises. These results are confirmed if identification of monetary policy surprises is based on the Rigobon–Sack heteroscedasticity approach.