Optimal versus realized policy rules in a regime-switching framework

In this paper we compare a deterministic model and a Markov switching model to analyze the behavior of the US economy and the Federal Reserve. We examine both optimal and empirical monetary policies for the US Federal Reserve between 1960 and 2008. We compare the optimal monetary policy to the actual interest rates and to the empirical reaction function. We also evaluate the sensitivity of the results to the preferences assigned to each objective. We find that there is no unique optimal solution that fits the Federal Reserve behavior over the entire period. The best fit to the actual interest rates is obtained by an optimal policy with preference switches following the rule: a high-volatility regime coincides with a priority on inflation alone while in a low-volatility regime there is equal policy priority on output stabilization and inflation.     

Financial market imperfections and monetary policy strategy

In a model with imperfect money, credit and reserve markets, we examine if an inflation-targeting central bank applying the funds rate operating procedure to indirectly control market interest rates also needs a monetary aggregate as policy instrument. We show that if private agents use information extracted from money and financial markets to form inflation expectations and if interest rate pass-through is incomplete, the central bank can use a narrow monetary aggregate and the discount interest rate as independent and complementary policy instruments to reinforce the credibility of its announcements and the role of inflation target as a nominal anchor for inflation expectations. This study shows how a monetary policy strategy combining inflation targeting and monetary targeting can be conceived to guarantee macroeconomic stability and the credibility of monetary policy. Friedman's k-percent money growth rule, which can generate dynamic instability, and two alternative stabilizing feedback monetary targeting rules are examined.     

On the feasibility of monetary union: Does it make sense to look for shocks symmetry across countries when none of the countries constitutes an optimum currency area?

Usually, a monetary union is not considered feasible between countries if the correlations of shocks are positive but weak. This may not be so if the country with the larger output gap converges to full-employment equilibrium faster than the country with the smaller gap. We argue that common monetary policy can be destabilizing when countries' responses to non-monetary shocks are perfectly symmetric with a correlation of 1 but exhibit differing investment sensitivities to the real interest rate. We use Canada, Mexico and the United States to test the feasibility of a monetary union by documenting whether: 1) gross investments in Canada and Mexico are equally responsive to the real fund rate, and 2) Canada and Mexico's output growth and inflation respond differently to US monetary policy shocks and oil price shocks. This approach implicitly dictates whether the shocks themselves are symmetric or asymmetric. Using quarterly data and SVAR methodology, we conducted two layers of analysis. We estimated SVARs for the periods 1970–2008, 1970–1990 and 1991–2008 to find that a monetary union is feasible between Canada and the US for the first two sample periods. For Canada and Mexico, we find similar responses of output growth to US monetary policy shocks. We conducted further robustness tests by estimating two identified VARs with common US variables and oil prices for Canada and Mexico to assess commonality in responses to shocks with the US. These results affirm that a monetary union is also feasible between Canada and the US.     

Global financial crisis as a phenomenon of stock market overshooting

Inspired by Dornbusch’s model of exchange rate overshooting we develop a theory of stock market behaviour and its impact on the real economy. The idea is that stock market prices overshoot and undershoot their long-run equilibrium values which are determined by the development in the real economy. The overshooting is triggered primarily by a loose monetary policy. With our model we explain the genesis of the global financial crisis (GFC) 2008/2009 primarily as the result of a loose monetary policy in the USA. Following the overshooting and crash in the stock market the real economy dropped into a recession. After modelling the interaction of three markets with different speed of adjustment—money, stocks and goods—for a closed economy we expand it to an open economy and lastly study the spillovers of a financial market crisis between countries (from a large to a small country) by introducing the transmission channels of external trade or cross-border financial transactions. A long-lasting monetary easing as exhibiting by the Fed and the ECB since 2007 and 2008, respectively could—according to our model—generate another boom-bust cycle.     

论股票市场对扩张性货币政策效力的影响及相应对策

面对我国20世纪90年代中期以来的通货紧缩状况，货币当局实施了一系列扩张性货币政策。由于我国股票市场在发展过程中的一些问题、银行体制上的缺陷以及宏观经济环境的影响等因素，股票市场并不能在货币政策和实体经济之间有效地发挥传导作用；货币政策本身也受到了股票市场发展的重要影响。为解决问题，应当在股票市场、企业投资环境和货币政策本身三个方面进行完善。     

Sectoral labor adjustment and monetary policy in a small open economy

This paper studies the welfare implications of sectoral labor adjustment cost in a two-sector small open economy model with sticky prices. We find that, when the economy faces external shocks, if monetary policy can stabilize the real economy, then sectoral labor market adjustment cost will lead to welfare loss. However, if monetary policy such as fixed exchange rates cannot stabilize real variables, then some degree of labor market friction will improve welfare instead and the gain will be significant. As a result, the welfare gap between flexible exchange rates and fixed exchange rates decreases with sectoral labor market friction. This is because the friction can offset some of the nominal rigidity and become a substitute for monetary policy to stabilize the real economy.     

The impact of monetary policy on housing market activity: An assessment using sign restrictions

Existing research demonstrates that housing, particularly residential investment, plays an important role in the transmission of monetary policy shocks to the overall economy. With this in mind, this paper investigates the relationship between monetary policy and housing market activity using a relatively new method for identifying monetary shocks. More specifically, a monetary policy shock is identified by explicitly imposing sign restrictions on impulse response vectors. The extra information from sign restrictions is important for new insights regarding the transmission of monetary policy to the housing sector – notably, the results indicate that residential investment is less sensitive to a contractionary shock than standard estimates with recursive restrictions. Given that the response of the housing sector using sign restrictions is smaller than other work using standard identification methods, the work indicates that further research is needed to examine whether other sectors of the economy may be less sensitive to monetary policy than previously thought.     

The Sovereign Yield Curve and the Macroeconomy in China

A dynamic Nelson–Siegel model is adopted to estimate three time‐varying factors of yield curves, the level, the slope and the curvature, and a vector autoregressive model is built to study interactions between macro variables and the yield curve. Results show that, first, money supply growth is a more effective instrument to curb inflation than the monetary policy interest rate; however, the central bank also adjusts the interest rate to stabilize money supply. Second, investment is an important measure to stimulate the Chinese economy, but it also pushes up money supply growth, which results in higher inflation. Third, the yield curve reacts significantly to innovations to investment growth and money supply growth. The segmentation of China's bond market hinders the efficient implementation of monetary policy, and the monetary policy transmission mechanism is still weak in China. Finally, interactions between the yield curve and the macroeconomy in China are nearly unidirectional. Macroeconomic variables reshape the yield curve, but direct adjustments of the yield curve do not significantly change macroeconomic variables. Due to the incomplete liberalization of financial markets, there exists a wide disjunction between the real economy and financial markets in China.     

Credit and inflation under borrower?s lack of commitment

In this paper we study the effects of monetary policy on privately supplied credit in model economies where money is needed for transaction purposes and agents who default on their loans cannot participate in the credit market but are allowed to accumulate money. In our deterministic benchmark economy where agents alternate in productivity, credit has the role of smoothing consumption. We show that deflation crowds out credit completely. The reason is that deflation increases the value of being excluded from the credit market and eliminates the incentive to repay loans. When inflation is positive but low, credit, consumption smoothing and welfare increase with inflation, until inflation reaches a threshold at which the allocation is efficient and money becomes superneutral.     

Distributional role of monetary policy under limited credit access

The paper explores the redistributive effects of a monetary policy shock in a limited participation framework with limited credit access. Expansionary monetary policy redistributes consumption from traders to non-traders. This redistribution is the largest when only financial market participants have a choice between multiple means of payments while non-participants do not. Welfare analysis reveals that the effectiveness of monetary policy on the economy is the greatest when all agents (financial market participants and nonparticipants) can choose from alternative means of payment in a financially segmented model. The model is calibrated to the US economy for quantitative analysis.     

House Prices and Stock Prices: Different Roles in the US Monetary Transmission Mechanism*

We analyze the role of house prices and stock prices in the monetary‐policy transmission mechanism in the US, using a structural vector autoregressive model. If we allow the interest rate and asset prices to react simultaneously to news, we find different roles for house prices and stock prices in the monetary transmission mechanism. Following a contractionary monetary‐policy shock, stock prices fall immediately, while the response in house prices is more gradual. Regarding the systematic response in monetary policy, stock prices play a more important role than house prices. As a consequence, house prices contribute more than stock prices to fluctuations in gross domestic product and inflation.     

Exchange rate fluctuations in an economy with noise traders

This paper analyzes the stability of the exchange rate in an economy with noise traders. Noise trading is restricted to agents investing in the domestic stock market. The agents pricing foreign exchange hold rational expectations. Monetary policy is affected by the behavior of investors in the domestic stock market and in turn affects fundamental stock evaluations as well as noise trading. We show that when monetary policy affects only fundamentalists bifurcation appears in the exchange rate. When monetary policy also affects noise trading, fixing the exchange rate or switching to a low money growth rule imply stock bubbles converge to zero.     

Market concentration, macroeconomic uncertainty and monetary policy

This paper studies the effect of market structure and macroeconomic uncertainty on the transmission of monetary policy. We motivate our analysis with a simple model which predicts that: (1) investment and production in more concentrated sectors are more affected by demand shocks and (2) high uncertainty makes investment and production more sensitive to demand shocks. The empirical analysis estimates the effect of monetary shocks on sectoral output for different sectors in the US using a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) approach. The results are generally consistent with the theoretical predictions.     

Monetary policy and the transmission of oil shocks

This paper provides evidence on the role played by monetary policy in the transmission of oil shocks to the US economy. We show that for the period since 1986, oil shocks have had a negative effect on stock returns, regardless of whether the oil shock is defined as the percentage change in the price of oil or a nonlinear transformation of that series. We then demonstrate that there is no relationship between the reaction of individual stock prices to oil shocks and to monetary policy shocks. This implies that oil shocks do have effects on the economy beyond their effect on monetary policy. We conclude that systematic monetary policy is not as effective as suggested in some previous studies.     

Dynamics of monetary policy spillover: The role of exchange rate regimes

In a time-varying framework, our study investigates the role of exchange rate regimes in explaining monetary policy spillover across a set of AEs and EMEs. We also investigate the channels contributing to the dynamism in the degree of such spillover. We find that the flexible exchange rate regime in the AEs insulates them against the spillover to a relatively larger extent as compared to the managed float regime in the EMEs. We also find that the spillover is strongly time-varying, being influenced by macroeconomic conditions in the centre economy. Risk-taking, portfolio rebalancing, and signaling channels are found to be significant in explaining the rise in spillover in the EMEs, but not in the AEs. The rise in the connectedness of interest rates in the AEs occurred only during the global financial crisis (2008–12), owing to their higher policy coordination with the US. This should not be misconstrued as monetary policy spillover.     

Collateral fluctuations in a monetary economy

This paper studies economy-wide fluctuations that occur endogenously in the presence of monetary and real assets. Using a standard monetary search model, we consider an economy in which agents can increase consumption, over and above what their liquid monetary asset holdings would allow, pledging real assets as collateral for monetary loans. It is shown that, if the liquidation value of real assets is below full market value, a stable cyclical equilibrium can emerge in consumption and capital around the unstable steady state. We also provide conditions for the existence of cycles of higher order, chaos and sunspot equilibria.     

货币政策对住宅商品房价格影响的区域差异——来自我国31省份的证据

我国房地产市场的发展演进与我国宏观经济走向有着密切的关系。由于我国不同地区间经济发展水平各异，经济运行特点有别，我国区域住宅商品房市场价格与宏观经济的联动关系以及对货币政策的反应效力均呈现出了明显差异。本文根据我国31省份的相关宏观数据，通过VAR/PVAR模型及统计学方法，研究发现了能够解释各区域住宅商品房价格趋势被持续维持的“正螺旋反馈机制”及货币政策的时滞效应。基于此，可将全国各省份的住宅商品房价格趋势的形成类型划分为货币政策主导型、经济增长主导型、混合主导型与房地产主导型。     

Financial market segmentation,stock market volatility and the role of monetary policy

We study a segmented financial markets model where only the agents who trade stocks encounter financial income risk. In such an economy, the welfare-maximizing monetary policy attains the novel role of redistributing the traders' financial market risk among all agents in the economy. In order to do that, optimal monetary policy reacts to financial market movements; it is expansionary in bad times for the financial markets and contractionary in good ones. In our quantitative exercise, a dividend shock generates different policy responses and consumption paths among the optimal and the 2% inflation targeting policy. The latter implies large distributional welfare losses and risk sharing losses of similar magnitude with those generated by business cycle fluctuations. In addition, the optimal monetary policy does not minimize stock price volatility and implies lower inflation volatility than other commonly used policies.     

Stock market response to monetary and fiscal policy shocks: Multi-country evidence

A Structural VAR model is employed to investigate the effects of monetary and fiscal policy shocks on stock market performance in Germany, UK and the US. A significant number of past studies have concentrated their attention on the relationship between monetary policy and stock market performance, yet only few on the effects of fiscal policy on stock markets. Even more we know little, if any, on the effects of fiscal and monetary policies on stock market performance when the two policies interact. This study aims to fill this void. Our results show that both fiscal and monetary policies influence the stock market, via either direct or indirect channels. More importantly, we find evidence that the interaction between the two policies is very important in explaining stock market developments. Thus, investors and analysts in their effort to understand the relationship between macroeconomic policies and stock market performance should consider fiscal and monetary policies in tandem rather than in isolation.     

Monetary Policy Announcements,Communication, and Stock Market Liquidity

Using the high‐quality intraday transaction data from 2001–2012, we investigate changes in stock market liquidity in response to the monetary policy announcements of the Bank of Korea (BOK). We find that liquidity impairment associated with informed trading occurs prior to the announcements but it disappears subsequent to the global financial crisis. In addition, liquidity impairment appears to become more severe with insufficient experts' predictability and accuracy rather than with policy rate change itself and unscheduled announcements. Finally, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements, changes in the Volatility Index (VIX), and trading by foreign investors play a limited role in explaining stock market liquidity changes. Overall, results indicate that central bank communication plays a significant role in reducing liquidity impairment by enhancing the predictability of policy actions, and therefore, mitigating information asymmetry.