House Prices and the Stance of Monetary Policy: The Case of Korea

Abstract

This paper is an empirical investigation on whether the Bank of Korea should respond to the housing price developments in conducting monetary policy. For that aim, we construct a small scale empirical model of the Korean economy, simulate the estimated model with a set of alternative monetary policy rules, and compare the stabilization performances of those rules. There turns out to be ample room for further stabilization of inflation and output, if the central bank shifts from the historically conducted monetary policy rule to the optimal rule. The stabilization gains under the optimal rule, however, are not attributable to additional policy indicators (such as housing price inflation) the optimal rule involves. Rather, the optimal rule improves upon the historical one because the former takes a quite different reaction scheme toward the historical policy indicators. Moreover, as long as the Bank of Korea maintains appropriate reactions to the historical policy indicators, housing price inflation does not contain much extra information for further stabilization     

从金融传导领域分析我国的货币政策传导机制

中央银行的货币政策引起实际经济变量的改变是通过货币政策传导机制实现的。而货币政策的传导机制包括金融传导领域和经济传导领域。其中金融传导是中央银行与金融中介相互影响和相互作用的过程。文章着重通过对金融传导领域中的执行主体、传导中介、市场基础和调节杠杆进行分析,来研究我国的货币政策传导机制。     

我国CPI重回2时代背景下的货币政策调整

2012年我国再度迎来CPI的2时代,证明在2012年我国的通货膨胀水平开始回落。然而由于短期的季节性原因和长期国际国内环境的制约,在未来的一段时期内仍然存在着高通货膨胀预期。我国应该抓住此次通货膨胀走低的机会,同时也要审慎考虑高通货膨胀率的预期,与时俱进,根据上一阶段的货币政策执行情况审时度势,调整我国货币政策的实施重点。以经济增长为首要目标,配合适度的通货膨胀容忍度,采取调控存款准备金率、改革利率制度、优化信贷支持结构等措施,促进宏观经济又好又快发展。     

Openness to Trade and the Potency of Monetary Policy: How Strong is the Relationship?

Economic theory suggests that an economy's openness to international trade reduces the ability of monetary policy to affect output. Using quarterly data from the 1960:1–1993:4 period for a set of eight countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S.A.), this article's empirical results support this theoretical prediction: the more open the economy, the smaller the output effects of a given change in the money supply. This finding, robust across all the different specifications and estimation methods examined, has straightforward implications for stabilization policy. Moreover, it suggests that an economy's net benefit from joining a monetary union is increasing with the economy's openness to foreign trade.     

Why is Inflation in China a Monetary Phenomenon？

This paper proposes that inflation in China during the post‐reform era (1978 onwards) is always a monetary phenomenon. We construct a multivariate dynamic model based on Friedman's quantity theory of money and use the standard Granger causality test to show that money growth contains significant predictive power for inflation during the underlying period. The finding is robust to alternative measures of monetary aggregates and both closed and open economy frameworks. The baseline finding of the paper indicates that quantitative tools remain the most important policy instruments for China to manage its inflation effectively.     

Designing Fiscal Institutions in a Monetary Union

This article explores the policy and wealth consequences of alternative institutional arrangements through which fiscal policy interacts with monetary policy in a monetary union such as the EMU. The central issue of the article is the design of the appropriate monetary and fiscal institutions through a comparison of alternative arrangements to distribute power over monetary and fiscal authorities between the central authority of the union and the individual members of the union and evaluating their performance. The main results of this article reveal that delegation of the fiscal policy to a council of country representatives and the monetary policy to a council of governors is the appropriate institutional design to reduce inflation bias and better stabilize regional, idiosyncratic supply and demand shocks in a monetary union.     

财政政策与货币政策的动态搭配和组合模式

基于经济周期的不同阶段,从IS-LM曲线和供求理论的双重视角解析利用财政政策与货币政策对宏观经济进行调控的内在机理,揭示两类政策搭配组合的理论逻辑,分析制约财政政策与货币政策调控效应的现实因素。研究发现,财政政策与货币政策的搭配组合要根据经济发展的不同阶段进行动态供给,以满足经济周期不同阶段的需求,如此方能实现经济的稳定增长。现阶段,我国应采取"更加积极的财政政策与稳健适度的货币政策"这一政策组合。产品市场与货币市场对利率的弱敏感性使政策刺激经济的效果受到制约,因而两类政策不仅要在总量层面"对冲"经济增速减缓的压力,而且要在结构层面增强协调性。     

政策操作透明度下的货币政策传导机制研究

货币政策的有效性在很大程度上取决于货币政策传导机制的灵活畅通。通过增加货币政策的透明度,从而提高货币政策的可信性和有效性,成为当前各国中央银行关注的焦点。文章介绍了货币政策透明度的内涵,分析了增强货币政策透明度对提高货币政策传导机制的作用,并对改进我国货币政策透明度问题进行了探讨。     

The Influence of Electronic Money on Monetary Policy

The development of electronic money changes the traditional style of money supply and money circulation under the credit money system, thus weakens the power of the traditional monetary policy tools, affects the controllability and validity of monetary medial indexes, and puts forward the challenge to the independence of monetary policy of Central Bank at the same time.     

The Information Content of the Yield Curve for Monetary Policy: A Survey

The information content of the yield curve with respect to future inflation as well as future real economic activity is discussed. Both theoretical arguments and the empirical validity of these arguments are reviewed. The empirics favouring the yield curve as leading indicator for inflation is not found to be entirely convincing. The curve possesses information content, but it is difficult to empirically discriminate between the effects on real interest rates and future inflation. The yield spread is a stable leading indicator for future real economic activity, but there are several theoretical interpretations of this (positive) relationship, depending on the nature of shocks hitting the economy and the behaviour of prices in the economy. The proper reaction of monetary policy could differ among these interpretations. All in all, care should be taken in using the yield curve as information variable for monetary policy.     

Stock Prices, Output and the Monetary Regime

Should monetary policy react to stock prices? The answer depends on whether stock prices are good predictors of future economic activity. Using long annual time-series data for the G-7 countries, data going back over 150 years for some countries, we find that stock prices do not systematically predict output growth regardless of the monetary regime in effect. We also find no evidence of a nonlinear relationship between stock prices and output except during the gold standard, when stock price booms and busts had some predictive power for output growth volatility.     

日本货币金融政策的演变

日本战后至70年代初主要的货币政策是配合道奇的“超平衡预算”而采取的金融缓和政策。70年代至90年代初日本政府主要采用的是扩张性货币政策。长时期地维持较低的官定利率政策是日本产生“泡沫经济”的重要政策原因。进入90年代后，日本政府由于急于解决“泡沫经济”问题，又错误地使用了过猛的紧缩性货币政策，再加上对严重的“不良债权”问题解决不力，导致在经济增长方面出现“停滞”局面，在货币政策方面出现极端的“零利率政策”，日本政府不可避免地陷入了在经济衰退中同时面对政府宏观调控政策全面重建的“世纪难题”之中。     

地方政府赤字财政下的物价控制与货币政策选择

货币经济学的一个基本观点就是,紧缩的货币政策能够降低通货膨胀,而扩张性的货币政策能够导致通货膨胀。费德斯坦指出,没有充分考虑财政政策的影响,这是货币经济学的严重缺陷。因此,文章结合我国当前的财政政策,探讨了在地方政府赤字财政下,中央银行如何控制和治理通货膨胀。文章认为,在地方政府赤字财政下,如果政府通过银行融资具有优先权的话,紧缩的货币政策不仅不能够控制通货膨胀,反而加速了通货膨胀。     

金融税制与货币政策效应

金融税制是一国管理金融活动的有关税收的法律法规的总和。金融税制影响金融市场效率和各类金融活动主体的行为,通过利率传导机制和信贷配给传导机制对货币政策效应产生影响。为保证货币政策能顺利传导,我国目前应进一步完善针对金融市场的流转税和所得税制度,对商业银行不宜取消现行的营业税或急剧降低营业税税率,应针对不同业务细化和完善相关的流转税制度。     

未预期货币政策冲击与股票价格

货币政策影响股票价格的理论机制清晰确凿,实证检验的主要挑战是资本市场对货币政策冲击可能存在事先预期。基于货币政策公告后的国债收益率变动,文章识别了未被市场充分预期的货币政策冲击,并实证考察了 2000 年以来历次法定存款准备金率调整和贷款基准利率调整,发现未预期货币政策冲击对股票市场价格产生显著影响,1% 的未预期“降准”会引起上证指数和深证综指上涨 1.39% 和 1.415%,1% 的未预期“降息”会引起上证指数和深证综指上涨 0.662% 和 1.01%。     

Inflation Uncertainty and Monetary Policy in China

This paper uses a stochastic volatility model structural break tests with unknown point, and a counterfactual simulation method to discuss the significant decline in inflation uncertainty in China over 1978-2009. We attempt to quantify the contributions of better monetary policy and smaller structural shocks （including demand, supply and policy impacts） on the reduced inflation uncertainty. Empirical results in the present paper suggest that improved monetary policy accounts for only a small fraction of the reduction in inflation uncertainty from the pre-1997 period to the post-1997 period in China. The bulk of the significant moderation in inflation uncertainty arises from smaller shocks. This finding indicates that the quiescence of inflation in China over the past decade could well be followed by a return to a more turbulent inflation era. Therefore, the use of preemptive monetary policy to anchor inflationary expectations and keep moderate inflation uncertainty is warranted.     

Optimal Monetary Policy in China

Using the structural vector autoregression model, we estimate the current responses of monetary policy to contemporaneous shocks from macroeconomic variables. Our findings indicate that the People's Bank of China responded to inflation and output changes, but did not react to asset price fluctuations during the period from January 1997 to March 2010. The optimal monetary responses to exogenous shocks are also examined. It is revealed that using asset prices to formulate monetary policy would not help to improve monetary authorities' performance in lowering the volatilities of output growth and inflation while keeping output growth and inflation in their safety zones. The effectiveness of monetary policy and fiscal policy in reacting to external shocks is also discussed.     

货币政策作为经济杠杆调控的效率机制及其有效性

货币政策作为经济杠杆的调控效果很大程度上取决于其调控机制是否有效.文章在分析中国利率非市场化、金融市场存在缺陷、银行贷款对绝大多数企业是不可替代的资金来源的条件下,提出了一系列措施以加强货币政策对经济调控的有效性.     

Monetary Policy in the Industrial World: Reflections on some Basic Issues

Abstract

This paper is a general assessment of monetary policy in major OECD countries during the 1990s. Within a simple policy framework that combines money growth, nominal income, and an open economy IS-LM type Mundell-Fleming model, the paper discusses the major strands in the conduct of monetary policy in developed industrial economies. It throws light on such problems as “rules versus discretion”, management of exchange rates, the effect of monetary changes on income and prices, and the rupture of monetary policy with other instruments of economic policy that also affect the economy.     

资产证券化对美国货币政策信用传导渠道的影响研究

本文通过分析美国资产证券化发展前后时期货币政策的效率,证明了货币政策对宏观经济变量的影响程度确实在减弱,从而证明因资产证券化的发展,信用渠道在货币政策传导机制中的作用在弱化。