美联储复合型宽松货币政策的实践及正常化

在由次贷危机引发的全球金融海啸中,美国金融体系和实体经济都遭受了巨大的冲击。一段时期内,流动性短缺和信贷可得性急剧下降且循环往复,诸多系统重要性金融机构面临破产或申请救助,房地产市场降至冰点,失业率迅速攀高至两位数,宏观经济陷入负增长,美国甚至面临再次陷入"大萧条"的风险。针对危机中金融体系和实体经济的复杂"病灶",关联储在强化传统货币政策工具应用的同时,实施了大量的非常规货币政策,最终取得了显著的成效。本文详细地梳理和评价了自危机以来美联储所实施的"复合型"宽松货币政策及其综合"疗效",包括了对系统重要性金融机构的直接和间接救助、常规价格型货币政策工具的应用、非常规数量型货币政策工具的应用等等。本文还探讨了美联储货币政策正常化的现实和理论基础,指出今年稍后时间美联储或将首次提高联邦基金利率,并在未来的三年内逐步提高至使中期通胀达到2%左右的名义利率水平。     

On the Effectiveness of the Federal Reserve's Margin Requirement

A portfolio-theoretic model of the optimal margin account is developed. It is argued that the Federal Reserve's goal in setting the margin requirement is to influence investor equity ratios. Using the average equity ratio as the dependent variable and the arguments of the model as independent variables, an empirical model is estimated. It is concluded that the margin requirement is an effective regulatory tool.     

Nowcasting and the Taylor Rule

Actual federal funds rates in the U.S. have, at times, deviated from the recommendations of a simple Taylor rule. This paper proposes a “nowcasting” Taylor rule that preserves the form of the Taylor rule but encompasses realistic assumptions on information observable to policymakers. Because contemporaneous inflation rates and output gaps are not observable at the time policy is set, policymakers must form “nowcasts.” The optimal nowcast will depend, in part, on forecast uncertainty whenever policymakers have asymmetric costs to over‐ and underpredicting inflation and output. Empirical evidence shows that actual policy rates are consistent with those recommended by a nowcasting Taylor rule.     

金融危机前后的美联储货币政策调控方式演变

2008年国际金融危机前后,美联储的货币政策调控方式发生了明显变化.从金融危机之前准备金短缺下的公开市场操作调控转变为金融危机之后准备金充裕下的利率走廊与公开市场操作相结合的调控方式.本文详细分析了危机前后美联储货币政策调控方式的变化情况,这对于理解和预测未来美联储货币政策调控具有重要意义.     

基于开放型泰勒规则和贝叶斯模型平均方法预测人民币汇率的实证分析

文章选取13个解释变量,运用贝叶斯模型平均方法建立动态模型,筛选出对人民币汇率影响最大的自变量以及模型进行回归分析,进而预测人民币汇率。研究支持了近期市场主流观点,即美元指数、汇率风险溢价、中美利率差额等对近期人民币汇率影响较大,并发现外汇占款等其他影响较大的因素。文章建议将人民币回归预测结果与汇率期权执行价格相结合,引导企业坚持"风险中性",专心专注主营业务。     

美联储加息进程开启与退出对中国资本流出的时变影响研究

基于M-F-D模型和国际货币溢出效应理论,分析美联储加息进程的开启与退出对中国资本流出的影响,选取利率、汇率、资产价格渠道,建立TVP-VAR模型分析美联储加息进程对中国资本流出的影响。结果表明,美联储加息进程对中国的资本流出具有正向的溢出效应,美联储退出加息进程的溢出效应更具有持续性,其通过利率渠道的溢出效应也更为明显;利率、资产价格与资本流出量具有同向变动趋向,汇率渠道与资本流出量具有反向变动趋向。根据研究结果,提出针对性的政策建议以应对美联储退出加息进程对中国资本流出产生的影响。     

The Causality Effects of the Federal Reserve's Monetary Policy on U.S. and Eurodollar Interest Rates

Previous studies argue that U.S. interest rates will become more sensitive to changes in eurodollar rates as international financial-market integration increases. However, the empirical results of these studies are suspect because they select their subperiods in an ad hoc manner and ignore the different trading hours of the U.S. and London markets. This study adjusts for the markets' different trading hours and uses Goldfeld and Quandt's switching regression technique to show that the causal relation between U.S. CD rates and eurodollar rates is impacted by the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. Because the latest subperiod exhibits uni-directional causality (i.e., U.S. interest rates cause changes in eurodollar rates), the results cast doubt on the implicit assumption made in the literature that interest-rate causality is only affected by increasing levels of financial-market integration.     

泰勒规则及其在中国货币政策中的适应性

本文介绍泰勒规则的基本模型及其理论扩展,对泰勒规则的理论与操作进行评述,并结合中国实际,展望泰勒规则在中国的应用前景.文章认为,泰勒规则反映了近年来西方国家货币政策实践的本质,能够作为货币政策操作的理论依据和参考基准.就中国而言,由于利率市场化进程的滞后和货币政策传导机制的低效性,泰勒规则的实施还有一定困难.不过,随着利率市场化机制的形成与利率弹性的增大,利率有可能比货币供应量更适宜作为中国货币政策的中介目标.     

The Impact of the Federal Reserve's Large‐Scale Asset Purchase Programs on Corporate Credit Risk

Estimating the effect of Federal Reserve's announcements of Large‐Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) programs on corporate credit risk is complicated by the simultaneity of policy decisions and movements in prices of risky financial assets, as well as by the fact that both interest rates of assets targeted by the programs and indicators of credit risk reacted to other common shocks during the recent financial crisis. This paper employs a heteroskedasticity‐based approach to estimate the structural coefficient measuring the sensitivity of market‐based indicators of corporate credit risk to declines in the benchmark market interest rates prompted by the LSAP announcements. The results indicate that the LSAP announcements led to a significant reduction in the cost of insuring against default risk—as measured by the CDX indexes—for both investment‐ and speculative‐grade corporate credits. While the unconventional policy measures employed by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy have substantially lowered the overall level of credit risk in the economy, the LSAP announcements appear to have had no measurable effect on credit risk in the financial intermediary sector.     

Nominal GDP Targeting and the Taylor Rule on an Even Playing Field

Some economists advocate nominal GDP targeting as an alternative to the Taylor Rule. These arguments are largely based on the idea that nominal GDP targeting would require less knowledge on the part of policymakers than a traditional Taylor Rule. In particular, a nominal GDP targeting rule would not require real-time knowledge of the output gap. We examine the importance of this claim by amending a standard New Keynesian model to assume that the central bank has imperfect information about the output gap and therefore must forecast the output gap based on previous information. Forecast errors by the central bank can then potentially induce unanticipated changes in the short-term nominal interest rate, distinct from a standard monetary policy shock. We show that forecast errors of the output gap by the Federal Reserve can account for up to 13% of the fluctuations in the output gap. In addition, our simulations imply that a nominal GDP targeting rule would produce lower volatility in both inflation and the output gap in comparison with the Taylor Rule under imperfect information.     

“泰勒规则”与我国货币政策中介目标

伴随着金融创新和金融自由化，美国货币由“单一规则”转向“泰勒规则”，由货币总量调控转向利率调控；我国货币政策中介目标确定为“两量”“两率”，还应随着国债市场的完善，把国债利率纳入其中。     

Loss Sharing Rules for Bank Holding Companies: An Assessment of the Federal Reserve's Source‐of‐Strength Policy and the FDIC's Cross Guarantee Authority

In this article, we critically examine two policies designed to protect the deposit insurance funds—the Federal Reserve Board's source‐of‐strength policy and the FDIC's cross‐guarantee authority. We discuss why each of the policies was adopted and how effective each has been in practice since its implementation. We then evaluate the future application and usefulness of the two policies in light of the structural changes that have resulted from industry consolidation and the financial modernization of the 1990s.     

A Micro Model of the Federal Funds Market

This paper demonstrates that valuable insights into the determination of Federal funds rates can be gained through modeling the micro-decisions of market participants. Fed fund demand functions are derived for different bank valuation functions and several implications are discussed. Specifically, it is: (i) possible to rationalize the observation that large banks are net purchasers and small banks net sellers of Fed funds; (ii) to explain the positive spread of Fed funds rates over other short-term money market rates; and (iii) to link the size of this spread to the Federal Reserve's underlying monetary policy strategy.     

A sociological investigation of the U.S.A. mandate for replacement cost disclosures

A sociological framework is used to assess the role of corporate management in the process of establishing accounting policy. The mandate by the SEC in the U.S.A. for replacement cost disclosures is considered from this perspective. A content analysis of the general comments section of a sample of replacement cost footnotes is used to study empirically management's reaction to the disclosure requirement. Interpretation of the findings are made within the context of the sociological framework to gain insight into the process of obtaining acceptance of change in financial reporting practices.     

Initial evidence on the market impact of the XBRL mandate

In 2009, the SEC mandated that financial statements be filed using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The SEC contends that this new search-facilitating technology will reduce informational barriers that separate smaller, less-sophisticated investors from larger, more-sophisticated investors, thereby reducing information asymmetry. However, if some larger investors can leverage their superior resources and abilities to garner greater benefits from XBRL than smaller investors, information asymmetry is likely to increase. Using a difference-in-difference design, we find evidence of higher abnormal bid-ask spreads for XBRL adopting firms around 10-K filings in the year after the mandate, consistent with increased concerns of adverse selection. We also find a reduction in abnormal liquidity and a decrease in abnormal trading volume, particularly for small trades. Additional analyses suggest, however, that these effects may be declining somewhat in more recent years. Collectively, our evidence suggests that a reduction in investors’ data aggregation costs may not have served its intended purpose of leveling the informational playing field, at least during the initial years after mandatory adoption.     

Government Spending and the Taylor Principle

This paper explores how government size affects the scope for equilibrium indeterminacy in a New Keynesian economy, where part of the population live hand-to-mouth. The main result is that a higher level of public consumption is likely to generate indeterminacy and render the Taylor principle insufficient as criterion for equilibrium uniqueness. This holds even though fiscal policy serves to reduce swings in current income. Only if government consumption is a substitute for private consumption, will it narrow the scope for indeterminacy. Hence monetary policy should be conducted with an eye to the amount and composition of government consumption.     

Taylor rules and the term structure

The expectations model of the term structure has been subjected to numerous empirical tests and almost invariably rejected, with the failure generally attributed to systematic expectations errors or to shifts in risk premia. Rules for monetary policy designed along the lines of Taylor [1993. Discretion versus policy rules in practice. Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 39, 195-214] specify that the central bank adjusts short-term yields in response to deviations of inflation and output gaps from target level. Such rules give a good empirical account of the behavior of the short-term interest rate. Combining the Taylor rule and expectations theory, it is possible to generate—along lines pioneered by Campbell and Shiller [1987. Cointegration and tests of present value models. Journal of Political Economy 95, 1062-1088]—a series of theoretical long-term interest rates. When such theoretical rates are calculated for the US over 1980-2004, considerable support for the expectations theory emerges.     

Congress and the Federal Reserve

We examine legislative activity to determine when Congress threatens the Fed and whether this pressure affects monetary policy. By the late‐1980s Congress shifted from threatening when unemployment was high to threatening when inflation was high. We use the Romer and Romer monetary shocks to isolate changes in the federal funds rate that cannot be explained by economic conditions and ask whether these shocks respond to pressure. In the 1970s, the Fed responded to bills credibly threatening Fed powers by lowering the federal funds target below that prescribed by current and forecast economic conditions. However, this accommodation ceased in the mid‐1980s.     

Inflationary bias of the Federal Reserve System: A bureaucratic perspective

The Federal Reserve System does not receive a budget from Congress, but instead, finances its operation from interest payments on its government security portfolio. This peculiar financing arrangement provides the foundation for a bureaucratic model of Federal Reserve official behavior. The empirical section tests the bureaucratic model by analysing the Fed's expenditure record since 1947 and its policy actions during periods of ‘constitutional’ revision.     

A Bayesian Approach to the Construction and Comparison of Alternative House Price Indices

Several repeat-sales models have been advanced over the years for estimating real estate price indices. This article proposes a general model which incorporates earlier works as special cases and compares the alternative repeat-sales models using posterior odds ratios as criteria. While the existing literature estimates the real estate indices from the sampling point of view, in this article indices are constructed and then compared using a Bayesian approach. In general, the two-error term models outperform the one-error models. The model with a nontemporal component proposed by Goetzmann and Spiegel is found to be superior in three out of four cities. There is a significant discrepancy among the returns and indices obtained from different models.