货币需求稳定性、货币目标制与中国货币政策框架改革

稳定的货币需求是货币目标制有效发挥作用的前提条件。文章首先从理论上阐述了货币需求与货币目标制的内在关联。其次,基于协整理论与误差修正模型,利用1996-2011年季度数据实证检验了中国货币需求函数的稳定性。实证研究结果表明,中国长期货币需求函数和短期货币需求函数的系数都缺乏稳定性。货币需求函数的不稳定势必增加中国以货币供应量为中间目标的货币政策操作难度,从而导致现行货币目标制的有效性和适宜性不断降低。最后提出为提高货币政策框架的有效性,中国应择机引入通胀目标制。     

Alternative Monetary Targets,Instruments and Future Monetary Policy Frameworks

ABSTRACT

This article expands on the debate of whether merely controlling inflation can be considered a good outcome in terms of monetary policy, discussing proposals for adopting alternative monetary targets (e.g., price level, nominal GDP), alternative instruments (e.g., monetary finance, central bank digital currencies), for enlarging central banks' mandates (e.g., incorporating employment, wages, inequality, environmental objectives) and for the design of future monetary policy frameworks.

We argue that in the coming years, central banks should not simply maintain their pre-2008 standards by de-implementing unconventional monetary policies. Instead, they must take advantage of their past and recent experiences in order to improve, under an evolutionary perspective, future monetary policy and financial stability frameworks. Based on this, measures implemented since the 2008 crisis would have three possible treatments in new frameworks: i) be discarded, due to their predominantly adverse effects; ii) not be regularly implemented, but be used as backstop mechanisms if needed; iii) be incorporated as regular measures of monetary policy/financial stability frameworks. Accordingly, monetary and financial stability authorities will increasingly need to evolve and engage in a continuously adaptive and innovative process in order to face challenges posed by financial markets that are becoming more dynamic, innovative, complex, interconnected and globalised.     

Inflation Targeting versus Nominal Income Targeting

In this paper we analyze two different target regimes, flexible inflation targeting and nominal income targeting, under discretion in a simple dynamic macro model. The key results of our paper are: First, for both targeting regimes optimal monetary policy response leads to a shock-dependent feedback rule. Second, a demand shock is completely offset by both monetary strategies. Third, in case of a supply shock there is a significant difference between the two different targeting regimes. Under inflation targeting the policy makers face a trade-off between inflation and output stabilization. This trade-off depends on the weight Φ the policy makers attach to output stabilization relative to inflation stabilization in the loss function. In contrast, under nominal income targeting policy makers face a constant trade-off between inflation and real output growth: an increase in inflation leads to a fall in real output growth by an equal amount. Furthermore, in Appendix A we analyze a (linear) commitment solution for inflation targeting and compare it with the discretionary case. Under commitment, inflation is smaller and the output gap is larger than under discretion. In Appendix B, we investigate inflation targeting in a two-period time-lag version of the model. The qualitative results on the trade-off between inflation and output growth remain the same as in the basic model without time lag. Received May 3, 2000; revised version received December 3, 2001 Published online: February 17, 2003     

Federal Monetary Policy

What is the optimal institutional structure for a federal central bank? The framework developed in this paper is used to analyze under what conditions an individual region will prefer a monetary union to be organized according to regional or common influences and how a combination of both can be rationalized. The implications of an enlargement of a monetary union for changes in its institutional setup are also derived.     

Federal Monetary Policy: A Comment

We comment on an article published in this journal by Hefeker (2003) and reveal an inconsistency in his analysis of monetary policy in federal monetary unions. We clarify an implicit assumption in his model and show that even when this further assumption is met, Hefeker's (2003) claim that a pure majority vote by the regions and the central government results in a monetary authority consisting solely of regionally appointed governors is not generally valid in the context of his model.     

The Monetary Policy of the European Central Bank

The first six years of ECB monetary policy are examined using a general framework that allows central bankers to weight differently positive and negative deviations of inflation, output and the interest rate from their reference values. The empirical analysis on synthetic euro‐area data suggests that the objective of price stability is symmetric, whereas the objectives of real activity and interest‐rate stabilizations are not. Output contractions imply larger policy responses than output expansions of the same size, while movements in the interest rate are larger when the level of the interest rate is relatively high. The hypothesis of M3 growth‐rate targeting is rejected.     

Indian Monetary Policy in the Time of Inflation Targeting and Demonetization

This paper provides a narrative of Indian monetary policy since the North Atlantic Financial Crisis (NAFC) in the mid‐2008 till the current period. The period 2009–2013 was dominated by the joint monetary and fiscal stimuli of the Indian authorities prompted by the NAFC. These, along with some structural shocks and a hands‐off attitude in forex market intervention, could have had their role in rising inflation and external account instability (leading up to the taper tantrum episode). In such a backdrop, after considerable discussion during 2013–2014, a Monetary Policy Framework Agreement was signed between the Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India on February 20, 2015 that formally adopted flexible inflation targeting (IT) in India. While the IT regime so far has coincided with significant reduction in inflation in India, the atmosphere has been benign. Now that fuel prices have started moving in the north‐east direction, the government has proposed a revised framework for the minimum support price in the Union Budget for 2018–2019 and fiscal slippages have started happening, it remains to be seen whether IT can wither more rough weather in the days to come. Finally, in recent years, Indian monetary policy has been dominated by two significant events: the emergence of significant deterioration of Indian public sector balance sheets, and the demonetization episode in November 2016. Monetary policy in both of these periods wrestled with fashioning an appropriate strategy for managing the impossible trinity.     

European Monetary and Fiscal Policies after the EU Enlargement

This paper examines the design of macroeconomic policies after Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) have joined the EU. We consider scenarios with and without CEECs being members of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and analyze consequences of different intermediate targets for the European Central Bank. For the fiscal policy variables, we assume that the governments of incumbent and new members either refrain from pursuing active stabilization policies or follow either non-cooperative or cooperative activist fiscal policies. Different scenarios are simulated with the macroeconomic McKibbin–Sachs Model (MSG2 Model), and the resulting welfare orderings are determined. They show that the advantages and disadvantages of different policy arrangements depend strongly on the nature of the shock the economies are faced with. Additional macroeconomic noise resulting from the CEECs' membership of the EMU does not seem to be too much of a problem.     

Monetary policy in the UK

The authors argue that the institutional dimension of the Bankof England monetary policy and the role the UK HM Treasury assumesin this framework are both firmly based on the New Consensusin Macroeconomics (NCM). This is also the theoretical frameworkupon which the inflation targeting element of monetary policyis firmly based. This paper discusses these aspects of UK monetarypolicy, and then assesses the policy that has been pursued since1997 (with some reference made to the period between 1992 and1997 when a version of the framework was introduced). The strategyhas been successful in terms of keeping UK inflation rates withinthe targets set by HM Treasury. However, a number of problematicissues are highlighted and discussed.     

通货膨胀目标制在中国的适用性分析

近几年,国内学术界建议政府采纳通货膨胀目标制的呼声越来越高。由通货膨胀目标制的内涵出发,客观地阐述通货膨胀目标制的优越性,根据中国当前的具体国情及其适用条件,通货膨胀目标制在中国暂时尚缺乏可行性。     

Monetary policy with heterogeneous households and imperfect risk-sharing

This paper considers a sticky-price model with heterogeneous households and financial frictions. Financial frictions lead to imperfect risk-sharing among households with idiosyncratic labor incomes. I study implications of imperfect risk-sharing for optimal monetary policy by documenting its impacts on the monetary transmission mechanism, the inflation–output tradeoff faced by the central bank, the policy objective function, and the resulting targeting rule. The main finding is that while the central bank continues to have the conventional dual mandate — the output gap and inflation stabilization — it should place a greater weight on the later as the degree of financial frictions increases because price stability provides the additional benefit of reducing undesired consumption dispersion.     

Optimal choice of monetary policy instruments under velocity and fiscal shocks

This paper, in the spirit of Poole [Poole, William, 1970. The Optimal Choice of Monetary Policy Instruments in a Simple Macro Model. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84, 192–216.], studies how differently monetary and fiscal shocks influence the appropriate choice of the monetary policy regime. Velocity shocks are introduced by embedding a stochastic cash-in-advance constraint within the New Keynesian framework. In addition to optimal policy under discretion, three classic rules, interest rate targeting, monetary targeting, and the Taylor rule are ranked under both fiscal and velocity shocks. The non-stationarity of prices under the Taylor rule makes it inferior to the other rules under which prices are stationary. Monetary targeting, by stabilizing aggregate demand under fiscal shocks, outperforms interest rate targeting, while the latter provides a better insulation against velocity shocks. Monetary targeting (under fiscal shocks) and interest rate targeting (under velocity shocks) even outperform the optimal policy under discretion for sufficiently high intertemporal elasticities of consumption substitution.     

Monetary Policy Transparency in the UK: The Impact of Independence and Inflation Targeting

There is a widespread belief that the transparency of UK monetary policy has increased substantially as a result of the introduction of inflation targeting in 1992 and a number of procedural and institutional reforms which accompanied and followed it. Here, money market responses (and other data) are used to test the possibility that improved anticipation of policy moves may be the result of developments other than the institutional reforms popularly cited. We find overwhelming evidence that the switch to inflation targeting itself significantly reduced monetary policy surprises, while subsequent reforms have contributed little. Where we advance substantially on earlier work is to look at the cross‐sectional dispersion of agents’ anticipation. If the benefit of transparency is the elimination of policy surprise, there is little benefit if the averagely correct anticipations of agents conceal a wide dispersion of view.     

The dynamics of wage determination in Romania

This article examines wage developments in Romania over the last 20 years, discusses the evolving role of government wage policy and structural labour market changes, and analyses the dynamics of the wage determination process. It finds that government wage policy has had a significant demonstration effect on private sector wages, driven mainly by policy decisions over the past few years. The article also finds strong causality from private sector wages to wages in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and government. No causality was found for changes in government wages to wages in SOEs or from SOE wages to private sector wages.     

Modelling International Policy Games: Lessons from European Monetary Coordination

Most international monetary policy games are modelled as prisoners' dilemma games. Political scientists suggest however that other game-theoretic structures (chicken, stag-hunt and deadlock games) could be more appropriate to describe international monetary coordination. This paper provides some empirical evidence on this issue, by studying the case of European monetary coordination from 1979 to 1989. First, central banks' and governments' preferences are revealed through an analysis of their actual behaviour. Then, the dynamic game describing policymakers' interactions is simulated under alternative institutional arrangements: coordination, defection, sub-group coalitions, etc. The main conclusion is that the stylised facts derived from those experiments seem not to be consistent with the implications of the prisoners' dilemma framework. Consistency is instead found with the features of a stag-hunt game. CEPR and FEEM This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Monetary Policy Rules and Business Cycles

Basic features of business cycle properties under both exogenous and endogenous monetary policy rules are examined in calibrated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with nominal rigidities (the nominal wage contract model, the monopolistic competition model with price adjustment costs and a combination of these models). The experiments show that the difference in business cycle features under exogenous and endogenous monetary policy rules is as large as the change generated by introducing nominal rigidities (and monetary disturbances). This result suggests that, for monetary business cycle research, developing a proper way to incorporate endogenous monetary policy rules may be as important as developing new transmission mechanisms of monetary policy disturbances.     

Monetary Policy with Parameter Uncertainty in Small-Open Economy

This paper computes optimal robust monetary policy in a new Keynesian small-open economy model with Knightian uncertainty about the degree of price stickiness and the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods. Due to the simple model structure used in the paper, I can derive analytical results for the min–max solution under discretion and assess how a robust optimal Taylor rule must be set in small-open economy. I find that, in an optimal robust discretionary equilibrium, the central bank should assume that the degree of price stickiness and the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods take on their highest numerical values. In terms of interest rate setting, if the optimal discretionary robust equilibrium is implemented with a Taylor rule, the policy rate should react to inflation in a less aggressive way than in the case of complete information.     

析货币政策的科学性与艺术性

货币政策的制定和实施离不开科学原则作指导,但货币政策的实时决策又是极其复杂的,需要中央银行家的审时度势和敏锐判断,也即货币政策的艺术性。详细分析了货币政策科学性和艺术性的具体表现,认为货币政策的科学性与艺术性在实践中是难以分割和同等重要的,好的货币政策总是需要好的政策实施者,需要将科学性原则与中央银行家们的决策艺术完美地结合起来。     

略论中国货币政策有效性

在界定货币政策有效性的概念基础上对中国的货币政策效果进行实证分析,进而提出提高中国货币政策有效性的对策建议。货币政策目标的实现程度是衡量货币政策有效性的标志。货币政策有效性的内涵就是货币政策具有真实效应,能够对真实经济变量产生影响。货币政策有效性就是货币政策能够在保持物价稳定、国际收支平衡的前提下促进经济增长和降低失业。