Disagreement about inflation and the yield curve

We show that inflation disagreement, not just expected inflation, has an impact on nominal interest rates. In contrast to expected inflation, which mainly affects the wedge between real and nominal yields, inflation disagreement affects nominal yields predominantly through its impact on the real side of the economy. We show theoretically and empirically that inflation disagreement raises real and nominal yields and their volatilities. Inflation disagreement is positively related to consumers’ cross-sectional consumption growth volatility and trading in fixed income securities. Calibrating our model to disagreement, inflation, and yields reproduces the economically significant impact of inflation disagreement on yield curves.     

人民币汇率波动与我国通胀、产出波动：一个扩展泰勒曲线的研究

发挥市场供求对汇率的调节作用,增强人民币汇率双向浮动弹性,是当前我国汇率体制改革的主要方向。本文在泰勒曲线的框架下考察人民币汇率波动对我国宏观经济波动和货币政策实施的影响。通过实证研究发现,1994—2006年通货膨胀波动对人民币汇率波动是不敏感的,人民币汇率传递效应不显著,人民币汇率波动对宏观经济波动没有显著的影响;2007年以后人民币汇率波动推动泰勒曲线向内移动,因此更大的人民币汇率弹性对货币政策传导和货币政策有效性是有利的,逐步扩大的人民币汇率弹性区间对我国宏观经济运行是适宜和可接受的。另外人民币汇率波动也使得泰勒曲线更加陡峭,稳定通货膨胀所导致的产出缺口波动减小了,因而更有利于货币政策当局追求一个低而稳定的通胀目标。     

Financial Development,Interest Rate Liberalization,and Macroeconomic Volatility

This article examines the relationship between financial development, interest rate liberalization, and macroeconomic volatility in fifty-six emerging and developed economies over the period 1980–2009. We find that financial development plays a significant role in dampening the volatility of macroeconomic growth rate, but up to a limit. The more the interest rate is liberalized, the more likely that financial development can stabilize the economy. Particularly, interest rate liberalization has a more positive influence on emerging and developing countries. Financial development and interest rate liberalization can also alleviate the influence of external shocks. They mutually enhance their functions as economic stabilizers.     

Monetary policy and corporate default

When a corporation issues debt with a fixed nominal coupon, the real value of future payments decreases with the price level. Forward-looking corporate default decisions therefore depend on monetary policy through its impact on expected inflation. We build a general equilibrium economy with deadweight bankruptcy costs that demonstrates how nominal rigidities in corporate debt create an important role for monetary policy even in the absence of standard nominal frictions such as staggered price setting in the output market. Under a passive nominal interest rate peg, the direct effects of a negative productivity shock combine with deflation to produce strong incentives for corporate default. A debt-deflationary spiral results when there are real costs of financial distress. Inflation targeting eliminates this amplification mechanism but full inflation targeting requires permitting the nominal interest rate to depend explicitly on credit market conditions.     

Flexible inflation targeting and financial stability: Is it enough to stabilize inflation and output?

We investigate empirically whether a central bank can promote financial stability by stabilizing inflation and output, and whether additional stabilization of asset prices and credit growth would enhance financial stability in particular. We employ an econometric model of the Norwegian economy to investigate the performance of simple interest rate rules that allow a response to asset prices and credit growth, in addition to inflation and output. We find that output stabilization tends to improve financial stability. Additional stabilization of house prices, equity prices and/or credit growth enhances stability in both inflation and output, but has mixed effects on financial stability. In general, financial stability as measured by e.g., asset price volatility improves, while financial stability measured by indicators that depend directly on interest rates deteriorates, mainly because of higher interest rate volatility owing to a more active monetary policy.     

The "Great Moderation" in the United Kingdom

We use a Bayesian time-varying parameters structural VAR with stochastic volatility for GDP deflator inflation, real GDP growth, a 3-month nominal rate, and the rate of growth of M4 to investigate the underlying causes of the Great Moderation in the United Kingdom. Our evidence points toward a dominant role played by good luck in fostering the more stable macroeconomic environment of the last two decades. Results from counterfactual simulations, in particular, show that (i) "bringing the Monetary Policy Committee back in time" would only have had a limited impact on the Great Inflation episode, at the cost of lower output growth; (ii) imposing the 1970s monetary rule over the entire sample period would have made almost no difference in terms of inflation and output growth outcomes; and (iii) the Great Inflation was due, to a dominant extent, to large demand non-policy shocks, and to a lesser extent—especially in 1973 and 1979—to supply shocks.     

Financial stability: A worthy goal,but how feasible?

Financial stability has proved elusive. Despite the success of central banks in controlling inflation, economies continue to experience periods of exchange rate overvaluation, stock market volatility and housing price bubbles that affect individuals very deeply. This note speculates that such financial volatility may be the product of three factors, (a) successful inflation targeting, (b) the existence of nonlinearities and differential economic dynamics, and (c) the recent evolution of key structural parameters in the economy. If so, then central banks might better focus on making financial systems more resilient than on trying to develop more sophisticated policies aimed at reducing financial volatility.     

The determinants of the model-free positive and negative volatilities

In this paper we analyze the role of macroeconomic and financial determinants in explaining stock market volatilities in the U.S. market. Both implied and realized volatility are computed model-free and decomposed into positive and negative components, thereby allowing us to compute directional volatility risk premia. We capture the behaviour of each component of implied volatility and risk premium in relation to their different determinants. The negative implied volatility appears to be linked more towards financial conditions variables such as uncertainty and geopolitical risk indexes, whereas positive implied volatility is driven more by macro variables such as inflation and GDP. There is a clear shift in importance from macro towards financial determinants moving from the pre towards the post financial crisis. A mixed frequency Granger causality approach uncovers causality relationships between volatilities and risk premia and macro variables and vice versa, a finding which is not detected with a conventional low frequency VAR model.     

The high-frequency impact of news on long-term yields and forward rates: Is it real?

Macroeconomic news announcements move yields and forward rates on nominal and index-linked bonds and inflation compensation. This paper estimates the reactions using high-frequency data on nominal and index-linked bond yields, allowing the effects of news announcements on real rates and inflation compensation to be parsed far more precisely than is possible using daily data. Long-term nominal yields and forward rates are very sensitive to macroeconomic news announcements. Inflation compensation is sensitive to announcements about price indices and monetary policy. However, for news announcements about real economic activity, such as nonfarm payrolls, the vast majority of the sensitivity is concentrated in real rates. Accordingly, most of the sizeable impact of news about real economic activity on the nominal term structure of interest rates represents changes in expected future real short-term interest rates and/or real risk premia rather than changes in expected future inflation and/or inflation risk premia. Such sensitivity of real rates to macroeconomics news is hard to rationalize within the framework of existing macroeconomic models.     

Sovereign bond markets and financial stability in an emerging economy: an application of directed acyclic graphs and SVAR models

During the last two decades, domestic government bond markets have developed significantly in emerging economies. Although the financial sector has benefited accordingly, volatility in this market also has posed potential risks in terms of financial stability. This paper uses directed acyclic graphs and structural vector-autoregressive models to evaluate the impact of different shocks on both the public debt market and financial stability. Results suggest that inflation, the policy interest rate and indicators of risk perception are the variables that most affect the slope of the yield curve. In turn, when the slope increases, there is a positive contemporary effect on bank risk indicators.     

Predicting the long-term stock market volatility: A GARCH-MIDAS model with variable selection

We consider a GARCH-MIDAS model with short-term and long-term volatility components, in which the long-term volatility component depends on many macroeconomic and financial variables. We select the variables that exhibit the strongest effects on the long-term stock market volatility via maximizing the penalized log-likelihood function with an Adaptive-Lasso penalty. The GARCH-MIDAS model with variable selection enables us to incorporate many variables in a single model without estimating a large number of parameters. In the empirical analysis, three variables (namely, housing starts, default spread and realized volatility) are selected from a large set of macroeconomic and financial variables. The recursive out-of-sample forecasting evaluation shows that variable selection significantly improves the predictive ability of the GARCH-MIDAS model for the long-term stock market volatility.     

Flexibility of Adjustment to Shocks: Economic Growth and Volatility of Middle-Income Countries Before and After the Global Financial Crisis of 2008

Our analysis shows that the associations of growth level, growth volatility, shocks, institutions, and macroeconomic fundamentals have changed in important ways after the 2008 global financial crisis. Economic growth across countries has become more dependent on external factors, including global growth, global oil prices, and global financial volatility. After accounting for the effects global shocks, we find that several factors facilitate adjustment to shocks in middle-income countries. Educational attainment, share of manufacturing output in gross domestic product, and exchange rate stability increase the level of economic growth; although, exchange rate flexibility, education attainment, and lack of political polarization reduce the volatility of economic growth.     

Monetary and financial stability in the euro area: Pro-cyclicality versus trade-off

This paper investigates the nexus between monetary stability and financial stability. We examine, in the experience of EMU between 1994 and 2008, first, the response of the term structure of interest rates, share prices, exchange rates, property price inflation and the deposit–loan ratio of the banking sector (our proxies for financial stability) to changes in the consumer price level and ECB policy rate (our proxies for monetary stability); second, whether and to what extent lower inflation has caused share price stability and how ECB policy rate has reacted to inflation. Using a sign-restriction-based VAR approach, we find that there is a pro-cyclical relationship between monetary and financial stability in the long-run. With a positive inflation shock, we find on average a 2% estimated decline in share prices. This suggests that the interest rate instrument used for inflation targeting is conducive to financial stability.     

住房价格、金融稳定与宏观审慎政策

本文通过建立包含异质性家庭、异质性厂商和金融机构的DSGE模型,分析对预期房价作出反应的货币政策和宏观审慎政策的传导机制和政策效果,研究不同政策的选择和协调问题。研究发现,首先,由于政策的作用范围不同,不同政策会对金融稳定和经济稳定产生不同影响。对预期房价作出反应的货币政策能够抑制住房需求和信贷供给,但也会抑制消费需求和产出;而对预期房价作出反应的逆周期LTV政策和逆周期资本充足率政策在应对房价波动导致的金融稳定问题时更加有的放矢。其次,外生冲击的来源会影响政策的选择和协调——当经济波动来源于需求冲击时,固定LTV政策搭配逆周期资本充足率的宏观审慎政策、不对预期房价作出反应的货币政策表现最优;当经济波动来源于供给冲击时,固定LTV政策搭配逆周期资本充足率的宏观审慎政策、对预期房价作出反应的货币政策表现最优。     

Empirical analysis of real and financial volatilities on stock excess returns: evidence from Taiwan industrial data

This paper tests the relation between stock excess returns and risk factors measured by volatility. The sources of the volatility are based on the volatility of macroeconomic factors and time-series volatility. To model the macroeconomic fundamentals, we divide the risk into real and financial volatilities pertinent to Taiwan's economic environment. By examining the data of indusry excess returns and market excess returns, we find evidence to reject the hypothesis that the stock excess returns are independent of the real and financial volatilities.     

Self-oriented monetary policy,global financial markets and excess volatility of international capital flows

This paper explores the nature of macroeconomic spillovers from advanced economies to emerging market economies (EMEs) and the consequences for independent use of monetary policy in EMEs. We first empirically document that a US contractionary monetary policy shock leads a retrenchment in EME capital flows, a fall in EME GDP, and an exchange rate depreciation. We construct a theoretical model that can help to account for these findings. In the model, macroeconomic spillovers may be exacerbated by financial frictions. Absent financial frictions, international spillovers are minor, and an inflation targeting rule represents an effective policy for the EME. With frictions in financial intermediation, however, spillovers are substantially magnified, and an inflation targeting rule has little advantage over an exchange rate peg. However, an optimal monetary policy markedly improves on the performance of naive inflation targeting or an exchange rate peg. Furthermore, optimal policies don't need to be coordinated across countries. A non-cooperative, self-oriented optimal policy gives results very similar to those of a global cooperative optimal policy.     

Equilibrium implications of interest rate smoothing

We introduce a macro-finance model in which monetary authorities adjust the money supply by targeting not only output and inflation but also the slope of the yield curve. We study the impact of McCallum-type rules on capital growth, the volatility of interest rates, the spread between long- and short-term rates, and the persistence of monetary shocks. Our model supports the Federal Reserve's choice to incorporate financial data in their policy decisions and expand the monetary base to decrease the nominal interest rate spread at the cost of lower expected long-term growth.     

Determinants of asymmetric return comovements of gold and other financial assets

Using conditional time-varying copula models, we characterize the dependence structure of return comovements of gold and other financial assets (stocks, bonds, real estate and oil) during economic expansion and contraction regimes. We also investigate which key macroeconomic and non-macroeconomic variables significantly impact the asset return comovements using a two stage Markov Switching Stochastic Volatility (MSSV) framework. Our results show that the non-macro variables have significant influence on the return comovements. We find that gold is an inappropriate hedge against interest rate changes for real-estate and oil-based portfolios, while for bond portfolios, gold offers a good hedge against inflation uncertainty. We also provide evidence that the “flight to safety” phenomenon is due to the implied volatility of the stock market, rather than the observed stock market uncertainty. Finally, we forecast the asset return comovements and examine their economic significance. We show that a dynamic MSSV model which includes the macroeconomic and non-macroeconomic variables yields superior forecast of future asset return comovements when compared with a multivariate conditional covariance model.     

Effects of Monetary and Macroprudential Policies—Evidence from Four Inflation Targeting Economies

We examine the effects of monetary and macroprudential policies in the Asia‐Pacific region, where many inflation targeting economies have adopted macroprudential policies in order to safeguard financial stability. Using structural panel vector autoregressions that identify both monetary and macroprudential policy actions, we show that tighter macroprudential policies used to contain credit growth also have a significant negative impact on macroeconomic aggregates such as real GDP and the price level. The similar effects of monetary and macroprudential policies may suggest a complementary use of the two policies at normal times. However, they could also create challenges for policymakers, especially during times when low inflation coincides with buoyant credit growth.