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Recently, the Bank of Japan outlined a “two perspectives” approach to the conduct of monetary policy that focuses on risks to price stability over different time horizons. Interpreting this as pertaining to different frequency bands, we use band spectrum regression to study the determination of inflation in Japan. We find that inflation is related to money growth and real output growth at low frequencies and the output gap at higher frequencies. Moreover, this relationship reflects Granger causality from money growth and the output gap to inflation in the relevant frequency bands. Keywords: spectral regression, frequency domain, Phillips curve, quantity theory. JEL Numbers: C22, E3, E5
Opting out of the great inflation: German monetary policy after the break down of Bretton Woods
(2009)
During the turbulent 1970s and 1980s the Bundesbank established an outstanding reputation in the world of central banking. Germany achieved a high degree of domestic stability and provided safe haven for investors in times of turmoil in the international financial system. Eventually the Bundesbank provided the role model for the European Central Bank. Hence, we examine an episode of lasting importance in European monetary history. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how the Bundesbank monetary policy strategy contributed to this success. We analyze the strategy as it was conceived, communicated and refined by the Bundesbank itself. We propose a theoretical framework (following Söderström, 2005) where monetary targeting is interpreted, first and foremost, as a commitment device. In our setting, a monetary target helps anchoring inflation and inflation expectations. We derive an interest rate rule and show empirically that it approximates the way the Bundesbank conducted monetary policy over the period 1975-1998. We compare the Bundesbank´s monetary policy rule with those of the FED and of the Bank of England. We find that the Bundesbank´s policy reaction function was characterized by strong persistence of policy rates as well as a strong response to deviations of inflation from target and to the activity growth gap. In contrast, the response to the level of the output gap was not significant. In our empirical analysis we use real-time data, as available to policy-makers at the time. JEL Classification: E31, E32, E41, E52, E58
We study the responses of residential property and equity prices, inflation and economic activity to monetary policy shocks in 17 countries, using data spanning 1986-2006, using single-country VARs and panel VARs in which we distinguish between groups of countries depending on their financial systems. The effect of monetary policy on property prices is about three times as large as its impact on GDP. Using monetary policy to guard against financial instability by offsetting asset-price movements thus has sizable effects on economic activity. While the financial structure influences the impact of policy on asset prices, its importance appears limited.
This paper explores the role of trade integration—or openness—for monetary policy transmission in a medium-scale New Keynesian model. Allowing for strategic complementarities in price-setting, we highlight a new dimension of the exchange rate channel by which monetary policy directly impacts domestic inflation. Although the strength of this effect increases with economic openness, it also requires that import prices respond to exchange rate changes. In this case domestic producers find it optimal to adjust their prices to exchange rate changes which alter the domestic currency price of their foreign competitors. We pin down key parameters of the model by matching impulse responses obtained from a vector autoregression on U.S. time series relative to an aggregate of industrialized countries. While we find evidence for strong complementarities, exchange rate pass-through is limited. Openness has therefore little bearing on monetary transmission in the estimated model.
Monetary policy analysts often rely on rules-of-thumb, such as the Taylor rule, to describe historical monetary policy decisions and to compare current policy to historical norms. Analysis along these lines also permits evaluation of episodes where policy may have deviated from a simple rule and examination of the reasons behind such deviations. One interesting question is whether such rules-of-thumb should draw on policymakers "forecasts of key variables such as inflation and unemployment or on observed outcomes. Importantly, deviations of the policy from the prescriptions of a Taylor rule that relies on outcomes may be due to systematic responses to information captured in policymakers" own projections. We investigate this proposition in the context of FOMC policy decisions over the past 20 years using publicly available FOMC projections from the biannual monetary policy reports to the Congress (Humphrey-Hawkins reports). Our results indicate that FOMC decisions can indeed be predominantly explained in terms of the FOMC´s own projections rather than observed outcomes. Thus, a forecast-based rule-of-thumb better characterizes FOMC decision-making. We also confirm that many of the apparent deviations of the federal funds rate from an outcome-based Taylor-style rule may be considered systematic responses to information contained in FOMC projections.
The European Central Bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision. The case against including money in the central bank’s interest rate rule is based on a standard model of the monetary transmission process that underlies many contributions to research on monetary policy in the last two decades. In this paper, we develop a justification for including money in the interest rate rule by allowing for imperfect knowledge regarding unobservables such as potential output and equilibrium interest rates. We formulate a novel characterization of ECB-style monetary cross-checking and show that it can generate substantial stabilization benefits in the event of persistent policy misperceptions regarding potential output. JEL Classification: E32, E41, E43, E52, E58
The European Central Bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision. In this paper, we explore possible justifications. The case against including money in the central bank’s interest rate rule is based on a standard model of the monetary transmission process that underlies many contributions to research on monetary policy in the last two decades. Of course, if one allows for a direct effect of money on output or inflation as in the empirical “two-pillar” Phillips curves estimated in some recent contributions, it would be optimal to include a measure of (long-run) money growth in the rule. In this paper, we develop a justification for including money in the interest rate rule by allowing for imperfect knowledge regarding unobservables such as potential output and equilibrium interest rates. We formulate a novel characterization of ECB-style monetary cross-checking and show that it can generate substantial stabilization benefits in the event of persistent policy misperceptions regarding potential output. Such misperceptions cause a bias in policy setting. We find that cross-checking and changing interest rates in response to sustained deviations of long-run money growth helps the central bank to overcome this bias. Our argument in favor of ECB-style cross-checking does not require direct effects of money on output or inflation. JEL Classification: E32, E41, E43, E52, E58
This paper proposes a possible way of assessing the effect of interest rate dynamics on changes in the decision-making approach, communication strategy and operational framework of a Central bank. Through a GARCH specification we show that the USA and Euro area displayed a limited but significant spillover of volatility from money market to longer-term rates. We then checked the stability of this phenomenon in the most recent period of improved policymaking and found empirical evidence that the transmission of overnight volatility along the yield curve vanished soon after specific policy changes of the FED and ECB.
We focus on a quantitative assessment of rigid labor markets in an environment of stable monetary policy. We ask how wages and labor market shocks feed into the inflation process and derive monetary policy implications. Towards that aim, we structurally model matching frictions and rigid wages in line with an optimizing rationale in a New Keynesian closed economy DSGE model. We estimate the model using Bayesian techniques for German data from the late 1970s to present. Given the pre-euro heterogeneity in wage bargaining we take this as the first-best approximation at hand for modelling monetary policy in the presence of labor market frictions in the current European regime. In our framework, we find that labor market structure is of prime importance for the evolution of the business cycle, and for monetary policy in particular. Yet shocks originating in the labor market itself may contain only limited information for the conduct of stabilization policy. JEL Classification: E32, E52, J64, C11
Mortgage markets, collateral constraints, and monetary policy: do institutional factors matter?
(2006)
We study the role of institutional characteristics of mortgage markets in affecting the strength and timing of the effects of monetary policy shocks on house prices and consumption in a sample of OECD countries. We document three facts: (1) there is significant divergence in the structure of mortgage markets across the main industrialised countries; (2) at the business cycle frequency, the correlation between consumption and house prices increases with the degree of flexibility/development of mortgage markets; (3) the transmission of monetary policy shocks on consumption and house prices is stronger in countries with more flexible/developed mortgage markets. We then build a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model with price stickiness and collateral constraints, where the ability of borrowing is endogenously linked to the nominal value of a durable asset (housing). We study how the response of consumption to monetary policy shocks is affected by alternative values of three key institutional parameters: (i) down-payment rate; (ii) mortgage repayment rate; (iii) interest rate mortgage structure (variable vs. fixed interest rate). In line with our empirical evidence, the sensitivity of consumption to monetary policy shocks increases with lower values of (i) and (ii), and is larger under a variable-rate mortgage structure. JEL Classification: E21, E44, E52