The effect of monetary policy shocks on stock prices accounting for endogeneity and omitted variable biases

A new high frequency data set is used to estimate the impact of the Fed on the level and volatility of stock prices while accounting for endogeneity and omitted variable biases and potential asymmetries. Results show that after addressing these issues, the effect of policy shocks on the level and volatility of stock returns is higher than previously reported. GARCH findings indicate that the volatility impact is tent-shaped, spiking during policy announcements and declining before and after the release. The level and conditional volatility of stock returns is found to respond asymmetrically to the type of policy shocks (timing versus future path of monetary policy) and the type of policy action (easing versus tightening).     

The impact of monetary policy shocks on stock prices: Evidence from Canada and the United States

Using structural VAR models with short-run restrictions appropriate for Canada and the United States, we empirically examine whether trade and financial market openness matter for the impact on and transmission to stock prices of monetary policy shocks. We find that, in Canada, the immediate response of stock prices to a domestic contractionary monetary policy shock is small and the dynamic response is brief, whereas in the United States, the immediate response of stock prices to a similar shock is relatively large and the dynamic response is relatively prolonged. We find that these differences are largely driven by differences in financial market openness and hence different dynamic responses of monetary policy shocks between the two countries that we model in this paper.     

World food prices and monetary policy

How should monetary policy respond to large fluctuations in world food prices? We study this question in an open economy model in which imported food has a larger weight in domestic consumption than abroad and international risk sharing can be imperfect. A key novelty is that the real exchange rate and the terms of trade can move in opposite directions in response to world food price shocks. This exacerbates the policy trade-off between stabilizing output prices vis a vis the real exchange rate, to an extent that depends on risk sharing and the price elasticity of exports. We characterize implications for dynamics, optimal monetary policy, and the relative performance of practical monetary rules. While CPI targeting and expected CPI targeting can dominate PPI targeting if international risk sharing is perfect, even seemingly mild departures from the latter make PPI targeting a winner.     

Money market microstructure and monetary policy: the Indian experience

Money market microstructure has recently started drawing attention in the empirical literature on financial markets of emerging market economies. In the Indian context, a GARCH(1, 1) model shows that policy instruments impact bid–ask spreads in the money market. Volatility of bid–ask spreads seems to be more persistent in the overnight market than in longer maturity segments. The results also suggest the dominance of policy interventions over the market microstructure across the term structure of the Indian money market. Unanticipated policy actions can delay mean reversion and, therefore, the return to stability.     

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.     

Bank opacity and the efficiency of stock prices

Prior research argues that the process of intermediation is opaque and produces uncertainty about the riskiness of banks, which may adversely affect the efficiency of bank stock prices. Using the Hou and Moskowitz (2005) measure of price delay, which captures the inefficiency of stock prices, we test for, and find evidence supporting the idea that opacity is positively associated with price delay. Bank stocks have markedly higher delay than similar non-bank stocks. This higher level of delay is driven, in part, by market-based measures of informational opacity as well as the asset composition of the bank's balance sheet. Combined, our findings suggest that bank opacity reduces the efficiency of financial markets.     

Money demand interest elasticity and monetary policy effectiveness

This paper provides a theoretical basis for discretionary monetary policies being less effective as money demand is more sensitive to interest rates and less effective in checking recession than inflation. It cites speed of response as an important dimension of effectiveness in the policies, arguing that lagged responses diminish effectiveness by increasing prospects for destabilizing performances. It then illustrates how responses can be less rapid as money demand is more sensitive to interest rates and, providing that money demand interest sensitivity exceeds a threshold value, less rapid when the economy is short of full employment.     

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.     

Dynamic linkages between monetary policy and the stock market

This paper examines the dynamic linkages between the federal funds rate and the stock market during the 1970–2004 period using the VAR methodology. We detected a disconnection between Fed actions and market responses in the 1990s relative to the 1970s and 1980s. Upon further analyses, we observed asymmetric effects of monetary policy actions on the stock market and that such actions were more turbulent during bear markets than bull markets. Overall, our results appear to suggest that there was consistent dynamic relationship between the conduct of monetary policy and the corresponding behavior by the stock market during the last three decades.     

Futures prices as risk-adjusted forecasts of monetary policy

Many researchers have used federal funds futures rates as measures of financial markets’ expectations of future monetary policy. However, to the extent that federal funds futures reflect risk premia, these measures require some adjustment. In this paper, we document that excess returns on federal funds futures have been positive on average and strongly countercyclical. In particular, excess returns are surprisingly well predicted by macroeconomic indicators such as employment growth and financial business-cycle indicators such as Treasury yield spreads and corporate bond spreads. Excess returns on eurodollar futures display similar patterns. We document that simply ignoring these risk premia significantly biases forecasts of the future path of monetary policy. We also show that risk premia matter for some futures-based measures of monetary policy shocks used in the literature.     

The impact of monetary policy on asset prices

Estimating the response of asset prices to changes in monetary policy is complicated by the endogeneity of policy decisions and the fact that both interest rates and asset prices react to numerous other variables. This paper develops a new estimator that is based on the heteroskedasticity that exists in high-frequency data. We show that the response of asset prices to changes in monetary policy can be identified based on the increase in the variance of policy shocks that occurs on days of FOMC meetings and of the Chairman's semi-annual monetary policy testimony to Congress. The identification approach employed requires a much weaker set of assumptions than needed under the “event-study” approach that is typically used in this context. The results indicate that an increase in short-term interest rates results in a decline in stock prices and in an upward shift in the yield curve that becomes smaller at longer maturities. The findings also suggest that the event-study estimates contain biases that make the estimated effects on stock prices appear too small and those on Treasury yields too large.     

货币政策为何及如何关注食品价格

食品价格是通货膨胀压力的灵敏反映指标,且由于食品部门供应价格弹性、存货缓冲能力、需求价格弹性和生产效率相对较低,产品同质化程度相对较高,食品价格的弹性明显高于非食品价格,加之在通货膨胀和经济周期过程中,食品部门具有需求顺周期和供给逆周期的特征,食品价格波动幅度往往远高于非食品价格,存在一定程度的超调。因此,文章建议货币政策应充分关注食品价格,同时适当提高对食品价格波幅的容忍程度。     

Private and public disclosures and the efficiency of stock prices

In this paper I examine the effects of private and public disclosures on the informational efficiency of stock prices. In addition to making a public announcement such as an earnings announcement, a public firm can make private disclosure to an analyst. If the analyst's relative information advantage is below a threshold level, private disclosure to the analyst leads to more efficient stock price. I demonstrate that the allocation of information across market participants is an important determinant of price efficiency. While accounting regulators often argue the need for equal access to information, the paper shows that there are conditions under which a limited amount of informational inequality may lead to more efficient stock prices.     

Money supply announcements and interest rates: Does monetary policy matter?

Most current explanations of the effect of money supply announcements on the rate of interest center on central bank policy. This paper analyzes a flexible price macroeconomic model where present and future monetary policy have no influence on either interest rates or real output, but monetary data signal information about real economic activity which influences both short- and long-term real rates of interest. The magnitude of the interest rate response is shown to depend on the difference in the income elasticities of currency and deposit demand and the relative size of monetary and real disturbances to the economy.     

Monetary policy and stock market dynamics across monetary regimes

This paper examines the dynamic linkages between monetary policy and the stock market during the three distinct monetary regimes of Burns, Volcker and Greenspan since the 1970s. Some major findings are the following. First, in the 1990s it appears that there was a disconnection between Federal Reserve actions (via the federal funds rate) and responses by the stock market. Second, the impact of inflation on the stock market did not surface as significant in the later parts of 1980s and the 1990s. And third, significant asymmetric effects of monetary policy on the stock markets were observed throughout each monetary regime but these were more pronounced during bear markets than bull markets. These results suggest that there was no consistent dynamic relationship between monetary policy and the stock market and that the nature of such dynamics was different in each of the three monetary regimes.     

Identifying the interdependence between US monetary policy and the stock market

We estimate the interdependence between US monetary policy and the S&P 500 using structural vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology. A solution is proposed to the simultaneity problem of identifying monetary and stock price shocks by using a combination of short-run and long-run restrictions that maintains the qualitative properties of a monetary policy shock found in the established literature [Christiano, L.J., Eichenbaum, M., Evans, C.L., 1999. Monetary policy shocks: what have we learned and to what end? In: Taylor, J.B., Woodford, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, vol. 1A. Elsevier, New York, pp. 65-148]. We find great interdependence between the interest rate setting and real stock prices. Real stock prices immediately fall by seven to nine percent due to a monetary policy shock that raises the federal funds rate by 100 basis points. A stock price shock increasing real stock prices by one percent leads to an increase in the interest rate of close to 4 basis points.     

House prices, consumption, and monetary policy: a financial accelerator approach

We consider a general equilibrium model with frictions in credit markets used by households. In our economy, houses provide housing services to consumers and serve as collateral to lower borrowing cost. We show that this amplifies and propagates the effect of monetary policy shocks on housing investment, house prices and consumption. We also consider the effect of a structural change in credit markets that lowers the transaction costs of additional borrowing against housing equity. We show that such a change would increase the effect of monetary policy shocks on consumption, but would decrease the effect on house prices and housing investment.     

Investor sentiment and the stock market’s reaction to monetary policy

This paper shows that monetary policy decisions have a significant effect on investor sentiment. The effect of monetary news on sentiment depends on market conditions (bull versus bear market). We also find that monetary policy actions in bear market periods have a larger effect on stocks that are more sensitive to changes in investor sentiment and credit market conditions. Overall, the results show that investor sentiment plays a significant role in the effect of monetary policy on the stock market.