Optimal monetary policy: distribution efficiency versus production efficiency

This paper investigates the trade‐off between distribution effect and production effect of monetary policy when there exist unobservable idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. In the absence of risk‐sharing arrangements such as a credit market, monetary policy serves to provide ex post insurance to smooth consumption. Specifically, issuing interest‐bearing bonds restores credit transactions on money through bond‐money exchanges. Such a policy has a positive distribution effect, but the resulting inflation hampers production efficiency. It is demonstrated that the trade‐off between distribution efficiency gain and production efficiency loss would result in net welfare enhancement if consumers are relative‐risk‐averse enough.     

DEBT NONNEUTRALITY,POLICY INTERACTIONS,AND MACROECONOMIC STABILITY*

We study the consequences of nonneutrality of government debt for macroeconomic stabilization policy in a sticky‐price model. Ricardian equivalence fails because debt has a negative impact on its rate of return and on private savings, which is induced by assuming transaction services of bonds. Under aggressive monetary policy regimes, macroeconomic fluctuations tend to be stabilized if nominal budget deficits are low. A smooth debt path limits inflation expectations, such that inflation variances can be reduced. Under a balanced budget policy, the central bank's output gap–inflation volatility trade‐off is improved relative to an environment where debt is neutral.     

Inside and outside fiat money, gains to trade, and IS-LM

Summary. We build a one-period general equilibrium model with money. Equilibrium exists, and fiat money has positive value, as long as the ratio of outside money to inside money is less than the gains to trade available at autarky. We show that the nominal effects of government fiscal and monetary policy can be completely described by a diagram identical in form to the IS-LM curves introduced by Hicks to describe Keynes' general theory. IS-LM analysis is thus not incompatible with full market clearing, multiple commodities, and heterogeneous households. We show that as the government deficit approaches a finite threshold, hyperinflation sets in (prices converge to infinity and real trade collapses). At the other extreme, if the government surplus is too large, the economy enters a liquidity trap in which nominal GNP sinks and monetary policy is ineffectual. Received: January 2, 2002; revised version: April 8, 2002 Correspondence to: P. Dubey     

NOMINAL BONDS AND INTEREST RATES*

In this article, I integrate the microfoundation of monetary theory with the model of limited participation to analyze the competition between nominal bonds and money. The market for government nominal bonds is centralized and Walrasian, whereas the goods market is modeled as random matches. The government imposes a legal restriction that requires all government goods to be purchased with money but not with bonds. By contrast, private agents can exchange between themselves with both money and bonds. I show that an arbitrarily small legal restriction is sufficient to prevent matured bonds from being a medium of exchange. I also analyze the effects of monetary policy with and without the legal restriction. Some of those effects differ significantly from traditional monetary models.     

REPRESENTATIVE ECONOMIC AGENT,PROPENSITIES TO SAVE,AND MONEY DEMAND STABILITY

In simple‐sum aggregate money demand studies, long‐run elasticities and the propensities of individuals to save are presumed to be equal and can be depicted by those of the representative economic agent. This study uses panel data to test this hypothesis within the theoretical framework of the inventory‐theoretic transactions approach and finds it fails to hold. At the microeconomic level, money demand functions are not homogeneous, and the impacts of monetary policies on economic activities of households are not as stable as those suggested in aggregate money demand studies.     

房价波动、调控政策立场估计及其影响效应研究--基于1998-2014年数据的实证分析

调控政策对房价的反应、立场和影响效应是政府政策设计的重要依据,2007年底金融危机爆发后,调控政策和房价波动都发生了显著变化。文章以2008年为界,构建了三个房价和政策变量的月度时间序列样本：1998-2007年、2008-2014年和1998-2014年,在此基础上,对2008年前后调控政策的反应、立场和影响效应进行了实证分析。结果表明：(1)实际贷款利率和货币供应量在2008年前后对目标变量的反应是交错变化的,货币供应量对房价的反应与假定相反,货币政策并未对房价做出充分反应,而财政和土地政策表现出了较好的反应结果。(2)货币供应量对房价波动的影响最大,是房价持续上涨的重要原因,2008年以来,固定资产投资的影响非常显著,脉冲响应分析发现利率只能在短期内对房价产生负向影响,除土地政策外,货币和财政政策皆会在长期内对房价产生稳定影响。文章的研究为推进房价政策调控和房地产市场健康稳定发展提供了可靠的经验支持。     

Effects of monetary and government spending policy on economic inequality

Using detailed micro-level income and expenditure data, we study the effects of monetary and government spending policy shocks on income and expenditure inequality in the US from 1990 to 2018. We find that expansionary monetary and government spending policy shocks systematically decrease income, disposable income and expenditure inequality. There is evidence of time variation on the effects and monetary policy and transfer payment shocks. Various impulse responses suggest that the impacts of the policy shocks increase during and after the Great Recession. The responses of income and expenditures of households at different percentiles suggest that expansionary monetary and government spending policy have a larger positive impact on households with low income and expenditures relative to those at the top of the distribution. We do not find evidence of the significant impact of Quantitative Easing policies on income inequality, however, expenditure inequality appear to increase due to the policies.     

INCOMPLETE FINANCIAL MARKETS,IRREVERSIBILITY OF INVESTMENTS AND FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY INSTRUMENTS*

In this paper, we analyse the use of fiscal and monetary instruments to improve long‐run welfare when productive investment is irreversible and uncollateralizable and there is no insurance. Only fiat money or government issued bonds provide self‐insurance. We demonstrate that an increase in precautionary savings reduces irreversible productive investment. Hence, subsidies to promote productive but irreversible investment should be financed in such a way that they do not reduce insurance capability. When lump‐sum subsidies are high, a consumption tax is likely to be more redistributive and thus more consumption smoothing than are the other sets of instruments analysed in our model.     

FINANCIAL MARKET INTEGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLE VOLATILITY IN A MONETARY UNION

This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium two‐country sticky‐price model to analyze the implications of financial market integration for the propagation of asymmetric productivity and government spending shocks in a monetary union. Financial market integration has a small effect on the propagation of these shocks if households can only trade in risk‐free bonds. However, financial market integration has a more substantial effect on the propagation of these shocks in a monetary union with a complete market for state‐contingent claims. This result indicates that it may be important to account for threshold effects in empirical analyses of the impact of financial market integration on business cycle volatility in a monetary union.     

MODELLING DEMAND FOR BROAD MONEY IN AUSTRALIA*

The existence of a valid long‐run money demand function is still important for the conduct of monetary policy. It is argued that previous work on the demand for money in Australia has not been very satisfactory in a number of ways. This paper examines the long‐ and short‐run determinants of the demand for broad money employing the Johansen cointegration technique. Using quarterly data for the period 1976:3–2002:2, this paper finds, inter alia, that the demand for broad money is cointegrated with real income, the rate of return on 10‐year Treasury bonds, the cash rate and inflation. It appears that a disequilibrium in the demand for money can affect the efficacy of interest rate policy in the long run via its impact on future output growth and output gap.     

现行国际货币体系与我国货币供给内生性

基于后凯恩斯主义的内生货币供给理论,本文重点从基础货币的角度分析了我国货币供给的内生性,主要结论是:1994年以前,"对金融机构债权"项目的变动是导致我国基础货币投放具有内生性的主要原因,而从1994年开始特别是在2002年以后,则由"国外资产净额"项目即外汇占款的增加主导了我国基础货币的被动投放.进而影响了中央银行对货币供应量的控制能力,使我国货币政策的传导在起点上就缺乏有效性.在现行的国际货币体系下,为减轻货币内生性带来的影响、提高货币政策的有效性,我国应加速人民币国际化进程和建立更具弹性的汇率制度.     

Financial innovations and the future of monetary policy in Nigeria

This paper examines the implications of financial innovations on Nigeria’s monetary policy, using: trend analysis, error correction mechanism, and a structural model estimated with generalized method of moments. The study found that financial innovation improves the interest rate channel of monetary policy transmission, and the efficiency of the financial system. However, it increases the output gap and adds an element of uncertainty in the monetary policy environment as it increases the cost of implementing monetary policy and impinges on the potency of the operating target through its impact on the stability of the money multiplier, money velocity, and demand for money.     

The effectiveness of monetary policy in steering money market rates during the financial crisis

The financial crisis has deeply affected money markets and thus, potentially, the proper functioning of the interest rate channel of monetary policy transmission. Therefore, we analyze the effectiveness of monetary policy in steering euro area money market rates by looking at (i) the predictability of money market rates on the basis of monetary policy expectations and (ii) the impact of extraordinary central bank measures on money market rates. We find that during the crisis money market rates up to 12 months still respond to revisions in the expected path of future rates, even though to a lesser extent than before August 2007. We attribute part of the loss in monetary policy effectiveness to money market rates being driven by higher liquidity premia and increased uncertainty about future interest rates. Our results also indicate that the ECB’s non-standard monetary policy measures as of October 2008 were effective in addressing the disruptions in the euro area money market. In fact, our estimates suggest that non-standard monetary policy measures helped to lower Euribor rates by more than 80 basis points. These findings show that central banks have effective tools at hand to conduct monetary policy in times of crises.     

Economic Uncertainty,Monetary Uncertainty,and the Demand for Money: Evidence From Asian Countries

In 1984 Nobel Lauriat Milton Friedman claimed that the decline in velocity of money or an increase in the demand for money was due to volatility of money supply. Another study argued that if monetary volatility could impact the demand for money, so can output volatility (as a measure of economic uncertainty). Both measures of uncertainty can cause people to reallocate their assets between cash and real assets that are less risky. If public become more cautious about the future, they will hold more cash today. However, if they chose to hedge against uncertain prices, they may hold more real assets and less cash. These two hypotheses are tested for Asian countries using bounds testing approach. While both measures are found to have short‐run significant effects on the demand for money in almost all countries, the short‐run effects last into the long run in half of the countries. Furthermore, we find positive and negative effects of both measures which are in line with previous research related to a few developed countries.     

Mobile money,risk sharing,and educational investment: Panel evidence from rural Uganda

We examine the impact of the rapidly expanding mobile banking service “mobile money” on rural households' ability to smooth investment in schooling after a negative shock. We find that a negative shock induces a 9.3‐percentage point decrease in per school‐age child educational expenditure for households who do not use mobile money compared to an 8.3‐percentage point decrease for households that have adopted mobile money. The underlying mechanism is an increase in remittance receipt and the diversity of senders owing to the reduction in transactions cost provided by mobile money. We show that our results are robust to alternative mechanisms. We use the expansion in mobile money agent network as an exogenous variation in access to mobile money.     

The Effects of Macroeconomic Policy with a Disparity in Price Elasticity Between Private‐ and Public‐ Sector Demands

We introduce a disparity in price elasticity between government demand and consumption demand into a simple money‐in‐the‐utility‐function model. This extension demonstrates that the effect of fiscal policies on production may be positive, negative, or neutral depending on the disparity in price elasticity between sectors. Because the effect of an increase in nominal money supply with constant nominal government expenditure is the opposite to that of a fiscal policy, a fiscal policy financed by seigniorage can have positive, negative, or no effects depending on parameter values. Moreover, the effect of simultaneous implementation of expansionary–contractionary policies depends on how they are combined.     

Unconventional monetary policy and household debt: The role of cash-flow effects

We study the transmission of conventional and unconventional monetary policy shocks via the loan market, distinguishing between adjustable- and fixed-rate mortgages (ARMs and FRMs, respectively) and focusing on the relative importance of the income channel. Under ARMs, a conventional monetary policy shock implies a temporary cash-flow effect leading to a redistribution between savers and borrowers, a feature that is weaker, but more persistent, under FRMs. Also, an easing via unconventional operations – modelled as a shift in households’ preferences that reduces the term premium on long-term loan rates – has an expansionary effect on output and inflation, although more muted than the one recorded via a conventional monetary policy shock. In the former case, we find a modest contribution of cash-flow effect to the dynamics of consumption.     

The Effectiveness of Nontraditional Monetary Policy: The Case of Japan

The effectiveness of nontraditional monetary policy is controversial, at least in Japan. Making use of data from the quantitative easing monetary policy period, this paper presents statistical evidence on the effectiveness of nontraditional monetary policy. We demonstrate empirically that the quantitative easing monetary policy adopted by the Bank of Japan for the period from March 2001 to March 2006 had a stimulating effect on investment and production, at least through Tobin's q channel. We also provide a simple operational model in which an injection of base money lowers the interest rate on bonds, reduces the required rate of returns from capital stocks and depreciates the value of the domestic currency.     

Growth and welfare effects of monetary policy with endogenous fertility

This paper investigates the economic growth and social welfare implications of monetary policy in an endogenous growth model with endogenous fertility. We show that, in the money-in-the-utility-function framework, endogenous fertility governs the validity of money superneutrality, the transitional dynamics of an anticipated monetary policy, and the optimal monetary policy. Along a balanced growth path, monetary growth increases fertility and reduces the economic growth rate if consumption and real balances are complements or are independent. However, monetary expansion may decrease fertility and increase economic growth if consumption and real balances are substitutes. Generally speaking, the superneutrality of money does not hold in the presence of endogenous fertility. More importantly, with endogenous fertility, the Friedman (1969) rule is no longer a welfare-maximizing monetary policy. We also show that an anticipated inflation induces the transitional dynamics of fertility and the economic growth rate even though the intertemporal elasticity of substitution equals unity. This differs from the conventional notion in the existing literature.     

中国货币需求:资产价格及政策含义

货币需求是被理论界和政策制定者长期关注的重要理论和实践问题,是货币政策决策的一个重要参考变量。货币需求的长期均衡和短期均衡关系反映了收入水平、利率、消费价格水平以及资产价格水平和货币需求之间的重要关系。这些关系也是确定货币政策时所需要考虑的重要内容。本文对中国的长期货币需求和短期货币需求1985~2010年年度数据进行了协整和误差修正模型分析。结果发现:资产价格(房地产价格水平)对货币数量在长期和短期都有着十分重要的影响;利率水平在长期仍是货币需求的重要影响因素;消费价格的长期货币需求弹性较低,短期和货币需求没有关系;当货币数量失衡时,向长期均衡进行调整的速度很慢。由此,中国的货币政策在中介指标、操作指标以及货币政策工具等方面都需要做出适当的调整。