基于前瞻性泰勒规则对中国通货膨胀目标值估计的实证研究

基于状态空间形式的前瞻性泰勒规则,采用卡尔曼滤波估计方法对中国1992～2008年动态通货膨胀目标值进行估计,结果显示中国的通货膨胀预期目标值较实际水平平滑,1998年之后的通货膨胀目标估计值能够较准确反映中国这一时期真实通货膨胀率预期值;中国历年通货膨胀和产出水平的变化随着利率的变化而顺向变动。结论提示今后中国货币政策可采取把灵活而又规范的通货膨胀目标制与泰勒规则结合的操作框架。     

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.     

Expected Inflation, Interest Rates, and Stock Returns

This paper documents a long-lived asymmetrical relationship between interest rate changes and subsequent stock returns. Drops in interest rates are followed by twelve months of excess stock returns, while increases in interest rates have little effect. The results are robust to the choices of short-term interest rate and stock index. These findings cannot be explained by Geske and Roll's [10] reversed causality argument; nor do they appear to result from periods of unusual interest rates or stock returns. Since interest rate changes are generally used as proxies for changes in expected inflation, the results provide new insights into previous research on inflation and stock returns, and there are important implications for the literature on time-varying risk premia.     

Sentiment and Financial Health Indicators for Value and Growth Stocks: The European Experience

In this study, we analyse the effect of macroeconomic surprises on inflation compensation data – the sum of inflation expectation, risk and liquidity premia – in the euro area. The empirical analysis is based on a daily data set, which covers a wide spectrum of maturities, stemming from inflation-indexed markets between 2 January 2004 and 31 December 2007. Our results suggest that when gauging short- and medium-term inflation compensations, market operators are sensitive to surprises related to real activity and prices. Notwithstanding, long-term inflation compensations remain generally unresponsive to macroeconomic surprises, attesting the European Central Bank's high credibility on the sample under consideration. The study also cross-checks the results from two different euro area inflation-indexed instruments (bonds and swaps) which differ slightly regarding medium-term horizon but give a similar picture regarding long-term horizons.     

Global asset prices and FOMC announcements

This paper analyzes the impact of U.S. monetary policy announcement surprises on foreign equity indexes, short- and long-term interest rates, and exchange rates in 49 countries. We use two proxies for monetary policy surprises: the surprise change to the current target federal funds rate (target surprise) and the revision to the expected path of future monetary policy (path surprise). We find that different asset classes respond to different components of the monetary policy surprises. Global equity indexes respond mainly to the target surprise; exchange rates and long-term interest rates respond mainly to the path surprise; and short-term interest rates respond to both surprises. On average, a hypothetical surprise 25-basis-point cut in the federal funds target rate is associated with about a 1 percent increase in foreign equity indexes and a 5 basis point decline in foreign short-term interest rates. A surprise 25-basis-point downward revision in the expected path of future policy is associated with about a ½ percent decline in the exchange value of the dollar against foreign currencies and 5 and 8 basis point declines in short- and long-term interest rates, respectively. We also find that asset prices’ responses to FOMC announcements vary greatly across countries, and that these cross-country variations in the response are related to a country’s exchange rate regime. Equity indexes and interest rates in countries with a less flexible exchange rate regime respond more to U.S. monetary policy surprises. In addition, the cross-country variation in the equity market response is strongly related to the percentage of each country’s equity market capitalization owned by U.S. investors. This result suggests that investors’ asset holdings may play a role in transmitting monetary policy surprises across countries.     

REIT Stock Prices with Inflation Hedging and Illusion

Employing dividend yield decomposition, this paper explores the inflation illusion and inflation hedging effects on REIT stock prices. Results show that changes in expected inflation explain a large share of the time series variation of the mispricing component of the dividend yield. Also, while both inflation hedging and inflation illusion effects exist for REITs, the inflation illusion effect tends to dominate the hedging effect during the 1980 to 2008 period. These results suggest that investors are unable to quickly reconcile changes in discount rates and dividend growth rates associated with inflation into stock prices. The findings also provide an alternative explanation as to why short-term REIT returns are often negatively related to expected inflation.     

What Moves Investment Growth?

We use accounting identities to decompose unexpected changes in investment growth into surprises to current cash‐flow growth and stock returns, and revisions of expectations about future cash‐flow growth and future discount rates. Using a vector autoregressive model we find that current cash‐flow surprises account for the largest element of the variance decomposition. Investment growth and current cash‐flow surprises are negatively correlated with news about future cash‐flow growth, which can be expected from persistent productivity shocks and decreasing returns to scale. We find little evidence of a discount rate channel for investment since return terms are small and have unintuitive signs.     

Monetary policy surprises and international bond markets

We examine the impact and spillover effects of monetary policy surprises on international bond returns. Within the framework of Campbell and Ammer (1993), we decompose international bond returns into news regarding future returns, real interest rates and future inflation for Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. We examine how excess bond returns in these three countries are affected by surprise changes in monetary policy in each country. Our measure of the unanticipated element of monetary policy is based on futures markets rather than the more traditional vector autoregression. Our results indicate that excess bond returns primarily react to domestic as compared to foreign monetary policy surprises. We also find there is a strong divergence between the effects of domestic monetary policy on excess bond returns in Germany relative to the U.K. A surprise monetary tightening in Germany (U.K.) leads to a rise (fall) in the excess holding period return. We trace this effect to news about lower (higher) inflation expectations and could be potentially rationalized by differences in the credibility of the monetary policy authority in each country.     

The joint response of stock and foreign exchange markets to macroeconomic surprises: Using US and Japanese data

This paper investigates the joint response of stock and foreign exchange (FX) market returns to macroeconomic surprises, employing a system method of estimation that allows for the cross-country and cross-market interaction for asset returns and risk premia. Using US and Japanese data, we find that US stock markets are asymmetrically responsive to domestic developments in output growth and interest rates but are not influenced by macroeconomic surprises from Japan. The surprise in the FX market seems to affect stock markets in the US and Japan, respectively. In particular, we find that the interest rate surprise in the US and inflation surprise in Japan tend to overstate the impact that these surprises would have on the respective stock market. The impact of the surprises would appear smaller if macroeconomic developments induced by the FX market were incorporated into the model.     

Aggregate Market Reaction to Earnings Announcements

This analysis identifies a distinct immediate announcement period negative relation between earnings announcement surprises and aggregate market returns. Such a relation implies that market participants use earnings information in forming expectations about expected aggregate discount rates and, specifically, that good earnings news is associated with a positive shock to required returns. Consistent with this interpretation we find that Treasury bond rates and implied future inflation expectations respond directly to earnings news. We also find some evidence that the negative relation between earnings news and market return persists beyond the immediate announcement period, suggesting that market participants do not immediately fully impound these future market return implications of aggregate earnings news.     

Rules,discretion and reputation in a model of monetary policy

In a discretionary regime the monetary authority can print more money and create more inflation than people expect. But, although these inflation surprises can have some benefits, they cannot arise systematically in equilibrium when people understand the policymaker's incentives and form their expectations accordingly. Because the policymaker has the power to create inflation shocks ex post, the equilibrium growth rates of money and prices turn out to be higher than otherwise. Therefore, enforced commitments (rules) for monetary behavior can improve matters. Given the repeated interaction between the policymaker and the private agents, it is possible that reputational forces can substitute for formal rules. Here, we develop an example of a reputational equilibrium where the outcomes turn out to be weighted averages of those from discretion and those from the ideal rule. In particular, the rates of inflation and monetary growth look more like those under discretion when the discount rate is high.     

Aggregate earnings and stock market returns: The good,the bad,and the state-dependent

Prior research documents a negative aggregate earnings-returns relation. In contrast, we posit that the sign of the relation varies, depending upon the macroeconomic and financial market conditions that exist in the earnings announcement quarter. We argue that the existing macroeconomic and financial market conditions influence market participants’ frame of reference, which in turn affects whether they interpret aggregate earnings surprises to be informative about the expected inflation component of the discount rate, the market risk premium component of the discount rate, or aggregate future cash flows. Consistent with this, we find that the sign of the aggregate earnings-returns relation changes numerous times across our sample period. We also find that market participants interpret aggregate earnings to be informative about changes in expected inflation (market risk premium) when the sign of the aggregate earnings-returns relation is negative (positive). Finally, we identify macroeconomic and financial market conditions under which the aggregate earnings-returns relation is more (less) likely to be negative (positive).     

U.S. Monetary Policy Surprises and International Securitized Real Estate Markets

This paper examines the impact of U.S. monetary policy surprises on securitized real estate markets in 18 countries. The policy surprises are measured by both the surprise changes to the target federal funds rate (the target factor) and surprises in the future direction of the Federal Reserve monetary policy (the path factor). The results show that most international securitized real estate markets have significantly positive responses to surprise decrease in current or future expected federal funds rates, though such responses vary greatly across countries. Also, while the U.S. securitized real estate market reacts mainly to the target factor, foreign securitized real estate markets react to the path factor. Furthermore, we find that the cross-country variation in the response to the target factor is correlated with the country’s exchange rate regime and its degree of real economic and particularly financial integration, while the cross-country variation in the response to the path factor is mainly related to the country’s degree of financial integration.     

Are expectations of inflation rational? or Is variation of the expected real interest rate unpredictable?

The joint hypothesis developed and tested in this paper is that the nominal interest rate is a rational expectation of the real interest rate plus the inflation rate and that variation of the expected real interest rate is unpredictable on the basis of information used in the test. This test is applied to quarterly data on three-month United States Treasury bills of 1954 to 1973. The information used in the tests includes, besides past interest rates and inflation rates, past growth rates of the source base, the money supply, and real GNP. Some of the tests allow for a positive marginal tax rate, which changes the results little. The hypothesis is generally consistent with the data, which provides support for the proposition that predictable changes of the money supply do not affect expected real interest rates over periods as short as a quarter.     

The Fiscal and Monetary Linkage between Stock Returns and Inflation

Contrary to economic theory and common sense, stock returns are negatively related to both expected and unexpected inflation. We argue that this puzzling empirical phenomenon does not indicate causality. Instead, stock returns are negatively related to contemporaneous changes in expected inflation because they signal a chain of events which results in a higher rate of monetary expansion. Exogenous shocks in real output, signalled by the stock market, induce changes in tax revenue, in the deficit, in Treasury borrowing and in Federal Reserve “monetization” of the increased debt. Rational bond and stock market investors realize this will happen. They adjust prices (and interest rates) accordingly and without delay. Although expected inflation seems to have a negative effect on subsequent stock returns, this could be an empirical illusion, since a spurious causality is induced by a combination of: (a) a reversed adaptive inflation expectations model and (b) a reversed money growth/stock returns model. If the real interest rate is not a constant, using nominal interest proxies for expected inflation is dangerous, since small changes in real rates can cause large and opposite percentage changes in stock prices.     

Adaptive-regressive expectations and the price level: A reformulation

In a recent paper, Frenkel (1975) presents an adaptive-regressive scheme of expectations as applied to the inflation rate. While the rationale for the scheme is the presence of expectations concerning the price level, Frenkel's construction does not specify such an expected price level, but only a short-run (instantaneous) and a long-run expected inflation rate. It is shown here that, even though such a specification yields reasonable results for certain important kind of policy changes, it is not robust enough so as to yield equally reasonable outcomes for other type of changes. This paper presents a specification of the expected price level (and, consequently, of all future expected inflation rates) which is not subject to those shortcomings and which seems to reflect in a better manner the basic economic idea behind the scheme.     

Monetary policy when potential output is uncertain: Understanding the growth gamble of the 1990s

The Fed kept interest rates low and essentially unchanged during the late 1990s despite a booming economy and record-low unemployment. These interest rates were accommodative by historical standards. Nonetheless, inflation remained low. How did the Fed succeed in sustaining rapid economic growth without fueling inflation and inflationary expectations? In retrospect, it is evident that the productive capacity of the economy increased. Yet as events unfolded, there was uncertainty about the expansion of the capacity of the economy and therefore about the sustainability of the Fed's policy.This paper provides an explanation for the success of the Fed in accommodating growth with stable inflation in the late 1990s. It shows that if the central bank is committed to reverse policy errors it makes because of unwarranted optimism, inflation can remain in check even if the central bank keeps interest rates low because of this optimism. In particular, a price level target—which is a simple way to model a commitment to offset errors—can serve to anchor inflation even if the public does not share the central bank's optimism about shifts in potential output. The paper shows that price level targeting is superior to inflation targeting in a wide range of situations. The paper also provides econometric evidence that, in contrast to earlier periods, the Fed has recently put substantial weight on the price level in setting interest rates. Moreover, it shows that CPI announcement surprises lead to reversion in the price level. Finally, it provides textual evidence that Alan Greenspan puts relatively more weight on the price level than inflation.     

Common stock returns,real activity,money, and inflation: Some international evidence

This paper tests whether the negative relationship between real stock returns and inflation in the United States is in fact proxying for a positive relationship between stock returns and real activity variables in six major industrial countries over 1966–1979. Consistent with Fama's ‘proxy-effect’ hypothesis, we document a negative relationship between inflation and real activity and a positive one between real stock returns and real activity variables. Real activity variables dominate money growth rates and expected and unexpected inflation in explaining real stock returns. A puzzling result that still remains is the positive role of money and the negative role of expected inflation in explaining these real stock returns in all major industrial countries.     

Do Expected Shifts in Inflation Affect Estimates of the Long-Run Fisher Relation?

Recent empirical studies suggest that nominal interest rates and expected inflation do not move together one-for-one in the long run, a finding at odds with many theoretical models. This article shows that these results can be deceptive when the process followed by inflation shifts infrequently. We characterize the shifts in inflation by a Markov switching model. Based upon this model's forecasts, we reexamine the long-run relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation. Interestingly, we are unable to reject the hypothesis that in the long run nominal interest rates reflect expected inflation one-for-one.