Impact of firms׳ policies on Chinese industrial purchasers׳ ethical decision making

This article investigates the impact of firms׳ policies with respect to procurement, sales, and interfirm personal relationship (guanxi) on industrial purchasers׳ inclination to adopt gray procurement (a particular type of unethical behaviors in industrial purchasing) using data from industrial purchaser’s in China. The effect of a firm׳s purchasing policy on purchasers׳ behavioral intention towards gray procurement was, in addition to the direct effect, mediated by the purchasers׳ ethical judgment of the practice. The application of double standards (i.e., a firm forbids gray procurement by its own purchasers but tolerates its salespersons offering inducements to its customers׳ industrial purchasers) had both main effects and moderating effect on the purchasers׳ ethical judgment of the practice, which increases the purchasers׳ behavioral intention towards the practice. The two moderating effects of guanxi policy counteracted each other in direction, so jointly the effect of guanxi policy on the purchasers׳ intention may depend on the relative strength of the two moderating effects.     

Are rules and boundaries sufficient to limit harmful central bank discretion? Lessons from Europe

Marvin Goodfriend׳s (2014) insightful, informative and provocative work explains concisely and convincingly why the Fed needs rules and boundaries. This paper reviews the broader institutional design problem regarding the effectiveness of the central bank in practice and confirms the need for rules and boundaries. The framework proposed for improving the Fed incorporates key elements that have already been adopted in the European Union. The case of ELA provision by the ECB and the Central Bank of Cyprus to Marfin-Laiki Bank during the crisis, however, suggests that the existence of rules and boundaries may not be enough to limit harmful discretion. During a crisis, novel interpretations of the legal authority of the central bank may be introduced to create a grey area that might be exploited to justify harmful discretionary decisions even in the presence of rules and boundaries. This raises the question how to ensure that rules and boundaries are respected in practice.     

Rules for a lender of last resort: An historical perspective

The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 to be a lender of last resort. Paul Warburg, its principal architect had in mind that a U.S. central bank would follow Bagehot׳s strictures ‘to lend freely at a penalty rate’ in the face of a scramble for high powered money. Yet the Federal Reserve Act never spelled out how the Fed was supposed to act as an LLR. This omission came to the fore in the Great Contraction 1929 to 1933 when the Fed failed to prevent four banking panics which turned a serious recession into the Great Contraction. Reforms in the 1930s corrected some of the Fed׳s failures but clamped down on financial activity for 40 years. The financial crisis problem returned in the 1970s with financial liberalization. The Fed abandoned Bagehot׳s strictures and adopted the ‘Too big to fail’ doctrine and ‘creative ambiguity’. This policy shift contributed to moral hazard and created new threats to financial stability with the rise of the ‘shadow banking system’. The subprime mortgage crisis prompted the Fed to take unprecedented LLR activities which have opened up a Pandora׳s box of perils. The Fed has moved away from rules based policy in its LLR function.     

Fed Credit Policy: What is a Lender of Last Resort?

Discussions of the Fed׳s financial crisis lending – and its role as “Lender of Last Resort” more generally – often overlook the distinction between monetary policy and credit policy. Central bank actions constitute monetary policy if they alter the quantity of the bank׳s monetary liabilities, but constitute credit policy if they alter the composition of the bank׳s portfolio without affecting the outstanding amount of monetary liabilities. In the 19th century, Henry Thornton and Walter Bagehot advocated Lender of Last Resort policies as a means of expanding the money supply when the demand for money surged in a crisis. In contrast, the Fed׳s recent crisis lending for the most part left its outstanding monetary liabilities unaffected, and thus represented credit policy, not Lender of Last Resort activity. Credit allocation in a crisis is potentially costly because it affects market participants׳ beliefs about the likelihood of future central bank rescues, which in turn reduces their incentive to protect themselves against financial distress and thus exacerbates financial instability. Credible limits on credit policy thus are critical to central banks׳ core policy mission. One path to establishing such limits is to create “living wills” that detail how to resolve large, complex financial firms without government support.     

Learning a population distribution

This paper introduces a dynamic Bayesian game with an unknown population distribution. Players do not know the true population distribution and assess it based on their private observations using Bayes׳ rule. First, we show the existence and characterization of an equilibrium in which each player׳s strategy is a function not only of the player׳s type but also of experience. Second, we show that each player׳s initial belief about the population distribution converges almost surely to a “correct” belief.     

Optimal monetary policy in a new Keynesian model with animal spirits and financial markets

This article presents a macro-finance-interaction model that integrates a NKM with bounded rationality and an agent-based financial market model. We derive four interactive channels between the two sectors where two channels are strictly microfounded. We analyze the impact of the different channels on economic stability and derive optimal (conventional and unconventional) monetary policy rules. We find that coefficients of optimal Taylor rules do not significantly change if financial market stabilization becomes part of the central bank׳s objective function. Additionally, we show that rule-based, backward-looking monetary policy creates huge instabilities if expectations are boundedly rational. Our model is externally validated by showing that it generates fat tailed output growth rates.     

The dynamics of the leverage cycle

We present a simple agent-based model of a financial system composed of leveraged investors such as banks that invest in stocks and manage their risk using a Value-at-Risk constraint, based on historical observations of asset prices. The Value-at-Risk constraint implies that when perceived risk is low, leverage is high and vice versa; a phenomenon that has been dubbed pro-cyclical leverage. We show that this leads to endogenous irregular oscillations, in which gradual increases in stock prices and leverage are followed by drastic market collapses, i.e. a leverage cycle. This phenomenon is studied using simplified models that give a deeper understanding of the dynamics and the nature of the feedback loops and instabilities underlying the leverage cycle. We introduce a flexible leverage regulation policy in which it is possible to continuously tune from pro-cyclical to countercyclical leverage. When the policy is sufficiently countercyclical and bank risk is sufficiently low the endogenous oscillation disappears and prices go to a fixed point. While there is always a leverage ceiling above which the dynamics are unstable, countercyclical leverage policies can be used to raise the ceiling. We also study the impact on leverage cycles of direct, temporal control of the bank׳s riskiness via the bank׳s required Value-at-Risk quantile. Under such a rule the regulator relaxes the Value-at-Risk quantile following a negative stock price shock and tightens it following a positive shock. While such a policy rule can reduce the amplitude of leverage cycles, its effectiveness is highly dependent on the choice of parameters. Finally, we investigate fixed limits on leverage and show how they can control the leverage cycle.     

Competition,work rules and productivity

I develop a theory to explain why workers want restrictive work rules, those that induce wages to be paid for non-productive labor hours, and why competition reduces them. Work rules allow workers to maintain both high levels of employment and wages. They generate a fixed payment that transfers the firm׳s surplus to workers, which wages alone cannot do, making them robust to alternative modeling assumptions. Competition loosens work rules by reducing the firm׳s surplus, which increases productivity.     

Imperfect credibility and robust monetary policy

This paper studies the behavior of a central bank that seeks to conduct policy optimally while having imperfect credibility and harboring doubts about its model. Taking the Smets–Wouters model as the central bank׳s approximating model, the paper׳s main findings are as follows. First, a central bank׳s credibility can have large consequences for how policy responds to shocks. Second, central banks that have low credibility can benefit from a desire for robustness because this desire motivates the central bank to follow through on policy announcements that would otherwise not be time-consistent. Third, even relatively small departures from perfect credibility can produce important declines in policy performance. Fourth, the risk premium shock represents an important potential source of model misspecification. Finally, as a technical contribution, the paper develops a numerical procedure to solve the decision-problem facing an imperfectly credible policymaker that seeks robustness.     

Inferring monetary policy objectives with a partially observed state

Accounting for the uncertainty in real-time perceptions of the state of the economy is believed to be critical for monetary policy analysis. We investigate this claim through the lens of a New Keynesian model with optimal discretionary policy and partial information. Structural parameters are estimated using a data set that includes real-time and ex post revised observations spanning 1965–2010. In comparison to a standard complete information model, our estimates reveal that under partial information: (i) the Federal Reserve demonstrates a significant concern for stabilizing the output gap after 1979, (ii) the model׳s fit with revised data improves, and (iii) the tension between optimal and observed policy is smaller.     

The evolution of U.S. monetary policy: 2000–2007

A vector autoregression with time-varying parameters is used to characterize changes in Federal Reserve policy that occurred from 2000 through 2007 and describe how they affected the performance of the U.S. economy. Declining coefficients in the model׳s estimated policy rule point to a shift in the Fed׳s emphasis away from stabilizing inflation over this period. More importantly, however, the Fed held the federal funds rate persistently below the values prescribed by this rule. Under this more discretionary policy, inflation overshot its target and the funds rate followed a path reminiscent of the “stop-go” pattern that characterized Fed behavior prior to 1979.     

Should the monetary policy rule be different in a financial crisis?

This article reviews the finding that standard loss functions in output and inflation are higher during discretionary periods than in periods during which monetary policy is described by a rule, such as the Taylor rule. It shows that the finding is consistent with earlier research, but argues that we really do not know if the Taylor rule would have improved performance during the recent financial crisis. The article then considers modifications of policy rules to deal with changes in interest rate spreads, credit aggregates and banks׳ balance sheets.     

Knowledge flow in Technological Business Incubators: Evidence from Australia and Israel

The study of the contribution of incubators to economic growth started to gain momentum in the 1980s, following the growth of the incubation phenomenon. While acknowledging the challenge of evaluating incubators׳ outcomes, we shift the focus from incubators׳ performance to their internal processes, in particular, the interrelationships through which the incubator stakeholders share knowledge. The literature suggests that small new ventures tend to fail because they lack managerial experience and ability to raise capital in an early stage. Incubators are expected to overcome these obstacles by offering experienced monitoring skills and by enhancing access to capital at a firm׳s early stage. However, empirical results of incubators׳ ability to perform their role are often contradictory, making policy makers question their effectiveness. We provide evidence from Australian and Israeli incubators. Our findings suggest that collaborations between incubatees, graduated incubatees, and incubator management increase the incubatees׳ knowledge of technology and market in both countries. Collaboration between incubatees and incubator management also increase incubatees׳ financial knowledge and their likelihood of raising capital. We also found that universities played a modest role as a source of new ideas for incubatees, but a more important role in later stages of incubatees׳ new product development processes.     

In search for yield? Survey-based evidence on bank risk taking

Monetary policy can have an impact on economic and financial stability through the risk taking of banks. Falling interest rates might induce investment into risky activities. This paper provides evidence on the link between monetary policy and bank risk taking. We use a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) for the US for the period 1997–2008. Besides standard macroeconomic indicators, we include factors summarizing information provided in the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Terms of Business Lending (STBL). These data provide information on banks׳ new loans as well as interest rates for different loan risk categories and different banking groups. We identify a risk-taking channel of monetary policy by distinguishing responses to monetary policy shocks across different types of banks and different loan risk categories. Following an expansionary monetary policy shock, small domestic banks increase their exposure to risk. Large domestic banks do not change their risk exposure. Foreign banks take on more risk only in the mid-2000s, when interest rates were ‘too low for too long’.     

The shadow costs of repos and bank liability structure

Making use of a structural model that allows for optimal liquidity management, we study the role that repos play in a bank׳s financing structure. In our model the bank׳s assets consist of illiquid loans and liquid reserves and are financed by a combination of repos, long-term debt, deposits and equity. Repos are a cheap source of funding, but they are subject to an exogenous rollover risk. We show that the use of repos inflicts two types of indirect (“shadow”) costs on the bank׳s shareholders: first, it induces the bank to maintain higher liquid reserves in order to alleviate the additional default risk; second, it adds to the cost of long-term debt financing. These shadow costs limit the bank׳s appetite for cheap but unstable repo funding. This effect is, however, weakened under poor returns on risky assets, access to deposit funding and the depositor preference rule. We also analyze the impact of a liquidity coverage ratio, payout restrictions and a leverage ratio on the bank׳s financing choices and show that all these tools are able to curb the bank׳s reliance on repos.     

Redistribution effects of inflation

This note discusses Lee Ohanian׳s paper on “Monetary policy in the midst of big shocks”. In particular, it asks what would happen if assumptions are changed so inflation have redistribution effects. Evidence on nominal positions suggests that such effects can be quantitatively important.     

Learning about monetary policy rules when the cost-channel matters

We study how monetary policy may affect determinacy and expectational stability (E-stability) of rational expectations equilibrium when the cost channel of monetary policy matters. Focusing on instrumental Taylor-type rules and optimal target rules, we show that standard policies can induce indeterminacy and expectational instability when the cost channel is present. A naïve application of the traditional Taylor principle could be misleading, and expectations-based reaction function under discretion does not always induce determinate and E-stable equilibrium. This result contrasts with the findings of Bullard and Mitra [2002. Learning about monetary policy rules. Journal of Monetary Economics 49, 1105–1129] and Evans and Honkapohja [2003. Expectations and stability problem for optimal monetary policies. Review of Economic Studies 70, 807–824] for the standard new Keynesian model. The ability of the central bank to commit to an optimal policy is an antidote to these problems.     

The impact of monetary policy in the midst of big shocks

This paper studies the impact of Federal Reserve policies that created the largest deviations from price stability during the Fed׳s first 100 years: the post-World War I deflation, the deflation of the Great Depression, the inflation of World War II, and the Great Inflation of the 1970s. In terms of their macroeconomic impacts, I find that deflation was uniquely depressing in the 1930s because of cartel policies that prevented nominal prices and wages from adjusting to clear markets, and not because deflation is generically depressing. I find that the biggest impact of monetary policy during World War II was in debasing debt through inflation. I find that the main drivers of the 1970s economy were long-run changes in productivity and the labor market, and that there may have been little that the Fed could have done at this time to expand employment and output. More broadly, I find that macroeconomic performance would have been better over the Fed׳s first century had the Fed followed a monetary policy to deliver stable prices.     

Note on ‘Loss of monetary discretion in a simple dynamic policy game’

Jensen (1994a) finds that loss of monetary discretion leads to lower welfare. However, by extending his model we show that if real base money holdings are relatively low, as is likely to be the case for modern economics, a zero-inflation rule may well be preferable to monetary discretion. If the emphasis on achieving the output and public spending targets falls, a zero-inflation rule is more likely to be preferred. The increased support for binding policy rules thus conforms with a less tolerant attitude towards inflation.