China’s official rates and bond yields

Recent research shows that bond yields are influenced by monetary policy decisions. To learn how this works in a bond market that differs significantly from those in the US and Europe, we model Chinese bond yields using the one-year deposit interest rate as a state variable. We also include the spread between the one-year market interest rate and the one-year deposit interest rate as another factor. The model is developed in an affine framework and closed-form solutions are obtained. We then test the model empirically with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation procedure. The results show that the new model that incorporates the official rate in China characterizes the changing shape of the yield curve well.     

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.     

Bidding behavior in the longer term refinancing operations of the European Central Bank: Evidence from a panel sample selection model

This paper analyzes individual bidding data of the longer term refinancing operations (LTROs) of the European Central Bank. We investigate how banks’ bidding behavior is related to a series of exogenous variables including collateral costs, interest rate expectations, market volatility and to individual bank characteristics like country of origin, size, and experience. A specific feature of these auctions is that the number and composition of bidders varies over time. Therefore, we estimate panel sample selection models to control for a bank’s endogenous participation decision. We find that bidding strategies depend on the banks’ attributes. Yet, different bidding behavior generally does not translate into differences concerning bidder success. There is evidence for the winner’s curse effect in LTROs indicating a common value component in banks’ demand for longer term refinancing.     

Monetary Policy and Stock Prices in an Open Economy

This paper studies monetary policy in a two-country model where agents can invest their wealth in both stock and bond markets. In our economy the foreign country hosts the only active equity market where also residents of the home country can trade stocks of listed foreign firms. We show that, in order to achieve price stability, the Central Banks in both countries should grant a dedicated response to movements in stock prices driven by relative productivity shocks. Determinacy of rational expectations equilibria and approximation of the Wicksellian interest rate policy by simple monetary policy rules are also investigated.     

Rethinking monetary policy after the crisis

This lecture examines how the recent global financial crisis changes our thinking about how monetary policy should be conducted. It starts with a discussion of the science and practice of monetary policy before the crisis and then uses the lessons from the crisis to argue how the practice of monetary policy should be rethought along six dimensions: flexible inflation targeting, response to asset price bubbles, dichotomy between monetary policy and financial stability policy, risk management and gradualism, fiscal dominance, and forward guidance.     

Outsiders at the Bank of England's MPC

The monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Bank of England consists of five internal and four external members. We study the voting record and show that outsiders dissent more often than insiders and tend to prefer lower rates, especially during economic downturns. Moreover, dissents by outsiders help forecast future interest rate changes, in contrast to dissents by insiders. A model in which outsiders in contrast to insiders are "recession averse" and more uncertain regarding the appropriate level of interest rates replicates the observed voting pattern well.     

The learning cost of interest rate reversals

Many central banks in many time periods have sought to avoid interest rate reversals, but at present there is no good explanation of this phenomenon. Our analysis identifies a new learning cost associated with reversing the interest rate. In a standard monetary model with forward-looking expectations, data uncertainty and parameter uncertainty, a policy that frequently reverses the interest rate makes learning the key parameters of the model more difficult. Optimal monetary policy internalises this learning cost and therefore has a lower number of interest rate reversals.     

Monetary Policy in a Forward-Looking Input–Output Economy

This paper examines the implications for monetary policy of sticky prices in both final and intermediate goods in a New Keynesian model. Both optimal policy under commitment and discretionary policy under simple loss functions are studied. Household utility losses under alternative loss functions are compared; additionally, the robustness of policy performance to model and shock misperceptions and parameter uncertainty is examined. Targeting inflation in both consumer and intermediate goods performs better than targeting inflation in one sector; targeting price levels of both final and intermediate goods performs significantly better. Moreover, targeting price levels in both sectors yields superior robustness properties.     

Purdah—On the Rationale for Central Bank Silence around Policy Meetings

Many central banks share the practice of purdah , a guideline of abstaining from communication around policy meetings. Although seemingly contradicting the virtue of transparency by withholding information precisely when it is sought after intensely, it has been justified on grounds that such communication may create excessive market volatility. This paper assesses the purdah for the Federal Reserve and confirms that financial markets are substantially more sensitive to central bank communication around policy meetings. Short-term interest rates react three to four times more strongly in the purdah before Federal Open Market Committee meetings than otherwise, and volatility increases (compared to a reduction otherwise).     

Household Debt and Income Inequality, 1963–2003

I construct an economy with heterogeneous agents that mimics the time-series behavior of the earnings distribution in the United States from 1963 to 2003. Agents face aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and accumulate real and financial assets. I estimate the shocks that drive the model using data on income inequality, aggregate income, and measures of financial liberalization. I show how the model economy can replicate two empirical facts: the trend and cyclical behavior of household debt and the diverging patterns in consumption and wealth inequality over time. While business cycle fluctuations can account for the short-run changes in household debt, its prolonged rise of the 1980s and the 1990s can be quantitatively explained only by the concurrent increase in income inequality.     

The interbank market after the financial turmoil: Squeezing liquidity in a “lemons market” or asking liquidity “on tap”

After August 2007 the plumbing system that supplied banks with wholesale funding, the interbank market, failed because toxic assets obstructed the pipes. Banks were forced to squeeze liquidity in a “lemons market” or to ask for liquidity “on tap” from central banks. This paper disentangles the two components of the 3-month Euribor–Eonia swap spread, credit and liquidity risk and then evaluates the decomposition. The main finding is that credit risk increased before the key events of the crisis, while liquidity risk was mainly responsible for the subsequent increases in the Euribor spread and then reacted to the systemic responses of the central banks, especially in October 2008. Moreover, the level of the spread between May 2009 and February 2010 was influenced mainly by credit risk, suggesting that European banks were still in a “lemons market” and relied on liquidity “on tap” even before sovereign debt crisis unfolded in Europe.     

Overbidding in fixed rate tenders: The role of exposure risk

The fixed rate tender is one of the main procedures used by central banks in the implementation of their monetary policies. While academic research has largely dismissed the procedure owing to its tendency to encourage overbidding, central banks such as the ECB and the Bank of England have continued using it. We investigate this apparent conflict by considering an auction-theoretic setting with private information about declining marginal valuations. Since overbidding entails exposure risk, an equilibrium may exist even if bids are costless and the intended volume is pre-announced. In fact, the allotment quota may be strictly below one with certainty. Also with adaptive expectations, overbidding need not escalate. However, the resulting allocation is typically inefficient. Empirical proxies of exposure risk are significant in both euro and sterling operations. Our findings have implications, in particular, for the potential reintroduction of pro rata allotment in the main refinancing operations of the Eurosystem.     

Bidder behavior in central bank repo auctions: Evidence from the Bundesbank

For many central banks, repo auctions are the most important monetary policy instrument. This paper employs a unique data set of individual bids submitted in the repo auctions of the Bundesbank to analyze the determinants of banks’ bidding behavior and the empirical performance of repo auctions. We conduct a panel analysis to estimate how banks bidding is affected by various auction as well as bidder-specific factors including interest rate expectations, interest rate uncertainty, maturing allotment, reserve fulfillment and a bank’s size.     

Eyes on the prize: How did the fed respond to the stock market?

Since the stock market boom of the 1990s, many have suggested the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has adopted an unannounced policy goal of supporting equity values. This paper offers a new approach to disentangle the relationship between changes in equity values and monetary policy. Specifically, the paper distinguishes the FOMC's reaction to forecasts of traditional goal variables, which may depend on equity prices, from the FOMC's independent reaction to changes in equity prices. By using actual forward-looking variables examined by the FOMC before each action (the “Greenbook” forecasts), the authors find little evidence to support the proposition that the FOMC responds to stock values, except as filtered through a forecast of accepted monetary policy goal variables.     

A model in which monetary policy is about money

Optimal monetary policy is studied in a model with (i) heterogeneity in the degree to which different people are monitored (have publicly known histories); (ii) idiosyncratic shocks that give rise to heterogeneity in earning and spending realizations; and (iii) central-bank intervention in a “market” in claims or credit in which the participants are those who are heavily monitored. A special case of the model has everyone perfectly monitored. In that case, there is no role for money and no role for central-bank intervention. In the example displayed with imperfect monitoring, optimal intervention is not simple.     

Consumption Habits in a New Keynesian Business Cycle Model

Consumption habits have become an integral component in new Keynesian models. However, consumption habits can be modeled in a host of different ways and this diversity is reflected in the literature. I examine whether different approaches to modeling consumption habits have important implications for business cycle behavior. Using a standard New Keynesian business cycle model, I show that, to a first-order log-approximation, the consumption Euler equation associated with the additive functional form for habit formation encompasses the multiplicative function form. Empirically, I show that whether consumption habits are internal or external has little effect on the model's business cycle characteristics.     

Monetary policy transmission in vector autoregressions: A new approach using central bank communication

In this paper, we study the role played by central bank communication in monetary policy transmission. We employ the Swiss Economic Institute’s Monetary Policy Communicator to measure the future stance of the European Central Bank’s monetary policy. Our results indicate, first, that communication has an influence on inflation (expectations) similar to that of actual target rate changes. Communication also plays a noticeable role in the transmission of monetary policy to output. Consequently, future work on monetary policy transmission should incorporate both a short-term interest rate and a communication indicator. A second finding is that the monetary policy transmission mechanism changed during the financial crisis as the overall effect of monetary policy on (expected) inflation and output is weaker and of shorter duration during this period compared to the overall sample period.     

An exploration into Pigou's theory of cycles

This paper explores a theory of business cycles in which recessions and booms arise due to difficulties encountered by agents in properly forecasting the economy's future needs in terms of capital. The idea has a long history in the macroeconomic literature, as reflected by the work of Pigou (Industrial Fluctuation, MacMillan, London, 1926). The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we illustrate the type of general equilibrium structure that can give rise to such phenomena. Second, we examine the extent to which such a model can explain the observed pattern of U.S. recessions (frequency, depth) without relying on technological regress. We argue that such a model offer a framework for understanding elements of both the recent U.S. recession and of the Asia downturns of the late 1990s.     

Inflation ambiguity and the term structure of U.S. Government bonds

Variations in trend inflation are the main driver for variations in the nominal yield curve. According to empirical data, investors observe a set of empirical models that could all have generated the time-series for trend inflation. This set has been large and volatile during the 1970s and early 1980s and small during the 1990s. I show that log utility together with Knightian uncertainty about trend inflation can explain the term premium in U.S. Treasury bonds. The equilibrium has two inflation premiums, an inflation risk premium and a Knightian inflation ambiguity premium.     

The Impact of Central Bank Independence on Political Monetary Cycles in Advanced and Developing Nations

This paper examines the extent to which monetary policy is manipulated for political purposes during elections. We do not detect political monetary cycles in advanced countries or developing nations with independent central banks. We do find evidence, however, in developing countries that lack central bank independence. Furthermore, we find some evidence that these cycles are not caused by monetization of election-related fiscal expansions. This suggests that pressure by politicians on the central bank to exploit the Phillips curve may be an important factor in generating political monetary cycles.