Activist monetary policy and exchange-rate overshooting: The Deutsche mark/dollar rate

After a decade of generalized floating, it is clear that bilateral exchange rates exhibit more variability than the economic aggregates—relative prices, incomes, and money supplies—which generally comprise the fundamentals of theories of exchange-rate determination. Dornbusch's overshooting hypothesis is the best known explanation of this phenomenon. This paper shows that accommodative monetary policy (with respect to prices) has the potential to cause the economy to switch from exchange rate overshooting to undershooting. Using constrained maximum likelihood methods, the model is estimated for Germany and the United States. The results provide strong evidence in support of the overshooting hypothesis for the Deutsche mark/dollar exchange rate.     

Principles of fiscal and monetary policy

This paper describes a complete and internally consistent set of principles for the conduct of a welfare-maximizing fiscal and monetary policy. Issues of time-consistency that arise in applying these principles to actual economics are also discussed.     

Optimal fiscal and monetary policy with sticky prices

In this paper I consider the role of state-contingent inflation as a fiscal shock absorber in an economy with nominal rigidities. I study the Ramsey equilibrium in a monetary model with distortionary taxation, nominal non-state-contingent debt, and sticky prices. With sticky prices, the Ramsey planner must balance the shock absorbing benefits of state-contingent inflation against the associated resource misallocation costs. For government spending processes resembling post-war experience, introducing sticky prices generates striking departures in optimal policy from the case with flexible prices. For even small degrees of price rigidity, optimal policy displays very little volatility in inflation. Tax rates display greater volatility compared to the model with flexible prices. With sticky prices, tax rates and real government debt exhibit behavior similar to a random walk. For government spending processes resembling periods of intermittent war and peace, optimal policy displays extreme inflation volatility even when the degree of price rigidity is large. As the variability in government spending increases, smoothing tax distortions across states of nature becomes increasingly important, and the shock absorber role of inflation is accentuated.     

On the joint determination of fiscal and monetary policy

The conduct of fiscal and monetary policy absent commitment depends on the interaction between the objective of smoothing distortions intertemporally and a time-consistency problem. When net nominal government obligations are positive, both fiscal and monetary policies are distortionary and the choice of debt depends on how the anticipated response in future monetary policy affects the current demand for money and bonds. There exists a unique steady state with positive net nominal government obligations, which is stable and time-consistent. For any initial level of debt, the welfare loss due to lack of commitment is small.     

Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital

This paper is concerned with the structure and time-consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital. In a dynamic context, optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare-maximizing way. For a barter economy, our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure, an optimal policy, if one exists, is time-consistent. In a monetary economy, the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an ‘inflation tax’, and we find that time-consistency does not carry over. An optimal ‘inflation tax’ requires commitment by ‘rules’ in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes. The reason time-consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should, from a welfare-maximizing point of view, always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of ‘capital levy’. This emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital.     

Coordination between monetary policy and fiscal policy for an inflation targeting emerging market

Several studies including Blanchard (2004) and Favero and Giavazzi (2004) imply that in emerging market economies, a tight monetary policy within an inflation-targeting framework could actually increase the price level due to the lack of fiscal discipline and the associated high risk premium. We extend their arguments in two ways. First, we introduce a semi structural model with time-varying parameters, where the risk premium is ‘unobserved’ and it is derived within the system. Such an approach fits better with the volatile nature of emerging market economies by allowing us to track down the time-varying effects of macroeconomic dynamics on both the model-consistent risk premium and the other key variables. Second, we obtain impulse response functions and analyze the implications of a tight monetary policy on major macroeconomic variables. Taking the Turkish economy as our reference point, we find that the arguments of Blanchard (2004) and Favero and Giavazzi (2004) seem to be valid.     

Optimal monetary growth with accommodating fiscal policy in a small open economy

This paper emphasizes how the choice of the optimal monetary growth rate in a small open economy under perfect capital mobility depends upon the accommodating policy chosen to maintain the overall budget constraint in the economy. When this occurs through lump sum taxation, the optimal monetary growth rate is shown to be the ‘distorted’ Friedman monetary rule. If the adjustment occurs through the income tax rate, the optimal monetary growth rate involves a Phelps-type tradeoff between the income tax rate and the inflation tax rate. The framework is suited for analyzing optimal macroeconomic policy in general and the latter part of the paper considers an optimal monetary-fiscal package.     

Risk,uncertainty and monetary policy

The VIX, the stock market option-based implied volatility, strongly co-moves with measures of the monetary policy stance. When decomposing the VIX into two components, a proxy for risk aversion and expected stock market volatility (“uncertainty”), we find that a lax monetary policy decreases both risk aversion and uncertainty, with the former effect being stronger. The result holds in a structural vector autoregressive framework, controlling for business cycle movements and using a variety of identification schemes for the vector autoregression in general and monetary policy shocks in particular. The effect of monetary policy on risk aversion is also apparent in regressions using high frequency data.     

Trade integration, competition, and the decline in exchange-rate pass-through

Over the past 20 years, U.S. import prices have become less responsive to the exchange rate. We propose that a significant portion of this decline is a result of increased trade integration. To illustrate this effect, we develop an open economy DGE model featuring demand curves with variable elasticities so that a firm's pricing decision depends on its competitors’ prices. As a result, a foreign exporter finds it optimal to vary its markup in response to shocks that change the exchange rate, insulating import prices from exchange rate movements. With increased trade integration, exporters have become more responsive to the prices of their competitors, explaining a sizeable portion of the observed decline in the sensitivity of U.S import prices to the exchange rate.     

Money, banking, and monetary policy

An important function of banks is to issue liabilities, like demand deposits, that are relatively safe and liquid. We introduce a risk of theft and a safe-keeping role for banks into modern monetary theory. This provides a general equilibrium framework for analyzing banking in historical and contemporary contexts. The model can generate the concurrent circulation of cash and bank liabilities as media of exchange, or inside and outside money. It also yields novel policy implications. For example, negative nominal interest rates are feasible, and for some parameters optimal; for other parameters, strictly positive nominal rates are optimal.     

Macroprudential policy transmission and interaction with fiscal and monetary policy in an emerging economy: a DSGE model for Brazil

We investigate the transmission of macroprudential (MaP) instruments in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where foreign capital flows interact with financial frictions and banks are exposed to different sources of credit default risk. The model is estimated for Brazil with Bayesian techniques. We compute optimal combinations of simple MaP, fiscal and monetary policy rules that can react to the business and/or the financial cycle. We find that the gains from implementing a cyclical fiscal policy are only significant if MaP policy countercyclically reacts to the financial cycle. Optimal fiscal policy is countercyclical in the business cycle.     

从区域货币运行看跨境资金流动对货币政策的影响

该文介绍了近年来江苏省外向型经济发展与跨境资金流动的主要态势,梳理了跨境资金流动对区域货币供需影响的传导路径,并实证检验了跨境资金流动与区域货币供应的相关性。鉴于跨境资金流动对区域货币运行产生的影响,以及对本外币政策协调带来的挑战,文章提出了相应政策建议。     

Optimal simple and implementable monetary and fiscal rules

Welfare-maximizing monetary- and fiscal-policy rules are studied in a model with sticky prices, money, and distortionary taxation. The Ramsey-optimal policy is used as a point of comparison. The main findings are: the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest-rate rule plays a minor role for welfare. It matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium. Optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output. Interest-rate rules that feature a positive response to output can lead to significant welfare losses. The welfare gains from interest-rate smoothing are negligible. Optimal fiscal policy is passive. The optimal monetary and fiscal rule combination attains virtually the same level of welfare as the Ramsey-optimal policy.     

The fiscal dimension of a common monetary policy: results with a non-Ricardian global model

The paper studies the interaction of fiscal and monetary policy within an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Results suggest that, in a model in which bonds and money are counted as net wealth, an important source of cross-country heterogeneity in response to a common monetary shock is the differences in national economies' budgetary positions. In particular, we note that centralising seigniorage revenues may lead, in the long term, to wealth redistribution across countries. Although institutional arrangements such as the Stability Pact might not be necessary to ensure fiscal sustainability, its strict enforcement is shown to be associated with overall ever-lasting benefits. Transition to the new steady state is, however, likely to be remarkably costly for high-debt EMU countries. Finally, different degrees of efficiency characterising European credit markets do not seem to play a major role in explaining asymmetric responses.     

Banks,maturity transformation,and monetary policy

Banks engage in maturity transformation and the term premium compensates them for bearing the associated interest rate risk. Consistent with this view, I show that banks’ net interest margins and term premia have comoved in the United States over the last decades. On monetary policy announcement days, bank equity falls more sharply than nonbank equity following an increase in expected future short-term rates, but also responds more positively if term premia increase. These effects are reflected in bank cash-flows and amplified for banks with a larger maturity mismatch. The results reveal that banks are not immune to interest rate risk.     

Enhanced Debt Management: Solving the eurozone crisis by linking debt management with fiscal and monetary policy

Unconventional approaches to suit unusual circumstances have become acceptable in monetary policy, a formerly highly conservative discipline. In this paper it is argued that unconventional approaches should also be considered in sovereign debt management, in order to contribute to resolving the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. First, the Troika crisis lending to indebted sovereign borrowers in the eurozone is reviewed and compared with standard IMF post-crisis lending. The main difference and shortcoming is the unsustainable character of the eurozone approach, due to the omission of demand stimulation components. To address this and other shortcomings, the features of an ideal alternative funding tool are identified. It would solve the funding problems of affected sovereigns, help stabilise the banking system, but most of all stimulate domestic demand and hence end the vicious downward spiral. It is found that this funding method can be implemented as part of enhanced public debt management by each nation's debt management office.