Central bank communication and exchange rate volatility: a GARCH analysis

We examine the effects of the Czech National Bank communication, macroeconomic news and interest rate differential on exchange rate volatility using generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model. Our results suggest that central bank communication has a calming effect on exchange rate volatility. The timing of central bank communication seems to matter, too, as financial markets respond more to the communication before the policy meetings than after them. Next, macroeconomic news releases are found to reduce exchange rate volatility, while interest rate differential seems to increase it.     

Words that shake traders : The stock market's reaction to central bank communication in real time

This paper investigates the effects of Federal Reserve's decisions and statements on U.S. stock and volatility indices (Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ 100, S&P 500, and VIX) using a high-frequency event-study analysis. I find that both the surprise component of policy actions and official communication have statistically significant and economically relevant effects on equity indices, with statements having a much greater explanatory power of the reaction of stock prices to monetary policy. For instance, around 90% of the explainable variation in S&P 500 is due to the surprise component of Fed's statements. This paper also shows that equity indices tend to incorporate FOMC monetary surprises within 40 min from the announcement release. Finally, I find that these results are robust along several dimensions. In particular, I consider different estimators, such as the Generalized Empirical Likelihood, and I extend the sample to include the recent period of heightened financial stress. This sensitivity analysis corroborates that central bank communication about its future policy intentions is a key driver of stock returns.     

S&P 500 implied volatility and monetary policy announcements

While many studies have investigated the link between macroeconomic events and equity market volatility, few have considered the impact on option implied volatilities. Given the recent focus on trading in implied volatility, in the context of the S&P 500 VIX index, this paper examines how the VIX index behaves around US monetary policy announcements. It is revealed that the VIX index falls significantly on the day of Federal Open Market Committee meetings.     

Impact of the federal open market committee's meetings and scheduled macroeconomic news on stock market uncertainty

This study investigates the impact of the scheduled Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings and the scheduled macroeconomic news releases on stock market uncertainty. For that purpose, the behavior of the implied volatility of the S&P100 index (VIX) is investigated around the FOMC meeting days and around the employment, producer price index (PPI), and consumer price index (CPI) reports. The results support the hypothesis that implied volatility increases prior to the scheduled news and drops after the announcement. The results reveal that investors regard the FOMC meetings as highly significant for valuing stocks as hypothesized. Of the macroeconomic news releases, the employment report has the largest impact on uncertainty, whereas investors regard the information content of the PPI and CPI together as significant.     

Identifying the effects of a lender of last resort on financial markets: Lessons from the founding of the fed

We use the founding of the Federal Reserve to identify the effects of a lender of last resort. We examine stock return and interest rate volatility during September and October, when markets were vulnerable because of financial stringency from the harvest. Stock volatility fell by 40% and interest rate volatility by more than 70% following the monetary regime change. The drop is insignificant if major panic years are omitted from the analysis, however. Because business cycle downturns occurred in the same year as financial crises, our results suggest that the existence of the Federal Reserve reduced liquidity risk.     

Communication by Central Bank Committee Members: Different Strategies, Same Effectiveness?

The paper assesses the communication strategies of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank and their effectiveness. We find that the effectiveness of communication is not independent from the decision-making process. The paper shows that the Federal Reserve has been pursuing a highly individualistic communication strategy amid a collegial approach to decision making, while the Bank of England is using a collegial communication strategy and highly individualistic decision making. The European Central Bank (ECB) has chosen a collegial approach both in its communication and in its decision making. Assessing these strategies, we find that predictability of policy decisions and the responsiveness of financial markets to communication are equally good for the Federal Reserve and the ECB. This suggests that there may not be a single best approach to designing a central bank communication strategy.     

Comparing U.S. and European market volatility responses to interest rate policy announcements

We examine the responses of U.S. (VIX) and German (VDAX) implied volatility indices to the announcement of interest rate policy decisions by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). We present new findings that indicate that VDAX declines on FOMC meeting days, a result that holds for nearly all announcement types. VDAX declines on ECB meeting days in which there is a negative rate surprise, or no surprise, and is unrelated to ECB meeting days otherwise. We confirm prior findings that VIX declines on FOMC meetings days regardless of the content of the meeting, but we also find that VIX is unrelated to ECB announcements. Results from our structural VAR analysis indicate that VIX (VDAX) responses to FOMC decisions are related to risk aversion (uncertainty). Taken collectively, our results indicate a prominent position for the FOMC in determining implied volatility levels worldwide.     

Has the Economy Become More Predictable? Changes in Greenbook Forecast Accuracy

Several researchers have recently documented large reductions in economic volatility. But a more important question may be whether the economy has become more predictable. Using forecasts from the Federal Reserve Greenbooks, I find that inflation and output have become more predictable, though the results for output are somewhat mixed. The reductions in unpredictability (if any) are significantly smaller than reductions in volatility. Associated with this, the predictable component of fluctuations in output and inflation has virtually disappeared.     

Monetary policy signaling and movements in the term structure of interest rates

This paper examines how various monetary policy signals such as repo rate changes, inflation reports, speeches, and minutes from monetary policy meetings affect the term structure of interest rates. We find that unexpected movements in the short end of the yield curve are mainly driven by unexpected changes in the repo rate. However, published inflation reports and speeches also have some impact on short rates. Speeches are found to be a more important determinant for the longer end of the term structure. Our conclusion is that central bank communication is an essential part of the conduct of monetary policy.     

Noise traders, excess volatility, and a securities transactions tax

Proponents of a securities transactions tax have suggested that such a tax may reduce stock return volatility. The argument is that, to the extent that short-term speculative trading volume is the source of excess volatility, a tax that reduces such volume will reduce volatility. In the context of a simple general equilibrium model, it is shown that this partial equilibrium argument is misleading and in large part incorrect. In the absence of a tax, the model generates equilibria in which the risky asset's price exhibits excess volatility and agents engage in excess trading activity owing to the presence of destabilizing noise traders. Within the context of the model, it is shown that, although a transactions tax can reduce the volatility of the risky asset's price, the reduction in price volatility is accompanied by a fall in the asset's price as agents discount the future tax liability associated with risky asset ownership. Consequently, although price volatility may decrease slightly, the fall in equilibrium prices more than compensates, and the volatiltiy of risky asset returns unambiguously increases with the level of the transactions tax.Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve SystemThe conclusions herein are those of the author and do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve Board or any of the Federal Reserve Banks.     

Understanding the inventory cycle

Careful examination of aggregate data from the U.S. and other OECD countries reveals that production and inventory behavior exhibit paradoxical features: (1) Inventory investment is strongly countercyclical at very high frequencies (e.g., 2-3 quarters per cycle); it is procyclical only at relatively low-cyclical frequencies such as the business-cycle frequencies (e.g., 8-40 quarters per cycle). (2) Production is less volatile than sales around the high frequencies; it is more volatile than sales only around business-cycle or lower frequencies. (3) Unlike capital investment or GDP, the bulk of the variance of inventory investment is concentrated around high frequencies rather than around business-cycle frequencies. These features of production and inventory behavior at the low and high frequencies provide a litmus test for inventory theories. This paper shows that the stockout-avoidance theory [Kahn, J., 1987. Inventories and the volatility of production. American Economic Review 77, 667-679.] has much better potential than other competing theories for explaining the seemingly paradoxical features of inventory fluctuations observed at different cyclical frequencies. My analysis suggests that demand shocks are the main source of the business cycle.     

The Taylor Rule and “Opportunistic” Monetary Policy

We investigate the possibility that the Taylor rule should be formulated as a threshold process such that the Federal Reserve acts more aggressively in some circumstances than in others. It seems reasonable that the Federal Reserve would act more aggressively when inflation is high than when it is low. Similarly, it might be expected that the Federal Reserve responds more to a negative than a positive output gap. Although these specifications receive some empirical support, we find that a modified threshold model that is consistent with “opportunistic” monetary policy makes significant progress toward explaining Federal Reserve behavior.     

Do FOMC minutes matter to markets? An intraday analysis of FOMC minutes releases on individual equity volatility and returns

This paper examines the 2006 to 2007 time period to determine the extent to which the release of the Federal Reserve minutes affects equity volatility and returns for 2832 individual firms. Using intraday data, we find that equity returns are essentially unaffected by FOMC minutes releases. We do find evidence of volatility effects, in that conditional volatility is lower prior to the minutes release and higher after the minutes release on release days, relative to a “control” day one week prior to the release date. These differences manifest at the 2:00–2:05 pm interval, and generally dissipate within 15 min. Consistent with previous literature, we also find evidence of both industry-specific and firm size effects in our data. Finally, we see that volatility is higher (lower) when the minutes are released after the Federal Reserve engages in restrictive (expansionary) monetary policy. Our results are robust to a variety of different definitions of the “control” dates, as well as differing industry definitions.     

异质预期条件下中央银行沟通对人民币汇率波动的影响

在外汇市场交易者预期异质性的假设条件下,以2005年7月至2015年12月中国人民银行沟通频数和人民币汇率数据为样本,采用异质预期汇率模型考察中央银行沟通对人民币汇率波动的总体影响。研究发现：在异质预期条件下,中央银行沟通通过信息机制和协调机制影响外汇市场交易者的异质预期,从而对人民币汇率波动产生较为显著的影响,但由于我国外汇交易者预期向基本面预期转换的发生概率小于技术分析交易者预期,中央银行沟通对人民币汇率波动的平稳作用效力受到一定的局限。     

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.     

Central Bank Actions and Words: The Intraday Effects of FOMC Policy Communications on Individual Equity Volatility and Returns

We compare intraday impacts of the release of Federal Reserve decision announcements and of Federal Open Market Committee minutes between 2004 and 2015 on 1,997 equity return and volatility series. We find that returns are unresponsive to either news release, but conditional volatility increases for both, manifesting immediately after each information release, and persisting for 30 minutes post‐announcement. These effects are larger for decisions than for minutes. On stratifying firms by trading intensity, we find most “high trading intensity” firms respond to these announcements, while “low trading intensity” firms are less affected. Our results show that traders respond, albeit differently, to both sets of information releases.     

美联储百年沧桑:目标、框架与可信度

在美联储成立百年之际,现任美联储主席伯南克系统回顾了过去100年中美联储在政策目标、政策框架、可信度和沟通方面的变革。成立初期,美联储以维护金融稳定为目标的政策框架主要受实质票据学说和金本位制度的影响。大萧条时期,促进就业和价格稳定逐渐成为美联储的新目标。大通胀和大通缩时期,获得货币政策独立性的美联储控制通胀的能力逐步成熟。大稳健时期,货币政策目标和框架更加清晰,货币政策透明度逐渐提高。金融危机以来,维持金融稳定上升到与货币政策同等重要的位置,货币政策透明度明显改善,预期管理日益重要。未来,中央银行的理念和实践还将不断变革。     

The impact of central bank digital currency variation on firm's implied volatility

The paper investigates whether a firm's implied volatility is affected by the volatility of central bank digital currencies. Our sample covers 2853 listed companies in the United States from 2014 to 2018. First, we find the variation of central bank digital currency has a positive impact on a firm’s implied volatility. Second, the healthier firms’ conditions can reduce the relationship between central bank digital currency variation and a firm’s implied volatility. Third, the positive relation between central bank digital currency and firm’s implied volatility still exists in investment-grade, speculative-grade, and unrated firms. Finally, to eliminate the endogeneity problem, we adopt simultaneous equation models (SEM) and find our results are still robust after excluding endogenous concerns. Our research provides a reminder for corporate managers and new implications for policymakers.     

Exchange Rates and FOMC Days

Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting days provide a natural laboratory for exploring the effects of policy uncertainty and learning on exchange rate determination. A reasonable hypothesis is that the meeting outcomes are price-relevant public information associated with a switch to an "informed-trading state." Evidence is provided by intradaily exchange rates for 10 FOMC meetings. A particularly interesting finding is that the informed-trading regime tends to emerge during the time that the FOMC meets. An extensive search of public news indicates that the informed trading cannot be explained as the response to public information.