Economic Policy Uncertainty, Trust and Inflation Expectations

Theory and evidence suggest that in an environment of well-anchored expectations, temporary news or shocks to economic variables, should not affect agents' expectations of inflation in the long term. Our estimated structural VARs show that both long- and short-term inflation expectations are sensible to policy-related uncertainty shocks. A rise of long-term inflation expectations in times of economic contraction, in response to such shocks, suggests that heightened policy uncertainty observed during the recent years indeed raises concerns about future inflation. Furthermore, both monetary and fiscal policy-related uncertainties are significant for the negative dynamics in citizens' trust in the ECB

Economic Policy Uncertainty, Trust and Inflation Expectations *

Abstract Theory and evidence suggest that in an environment of well-anchored expectations, temporary news or shocks to economic variables, should not affect agents' expectations of inflation in the long term. Our estimated structural VARs show that both longand short-term inflation expectations are sensible to policy-related uncertainty shocks. A rise of long-term inflation expectations in times of economic contraction, in response to such shocks, suggests that heightened policy uncertainty observed during the recent years indeed raises concerns about future inflation. Furthermore, both monetary and fiscal policy-related uncertainties are significant for the negative dynamics in citizens' trust in the ECB. JEL classification: E02, E31, E58, E63, P1

Fed communication on financial stability concerns and monetary policy decisions: revelations from speeches

Este trabajo estudia el contenido de los discursos de los funcionarios de la Fed, poniendo el foco en la estabilidad financiera, desde 1997 hasta 2018. En él se desarrollan indicadores que miden tanto la intensidad como el tono de los discursos de los miembros de la Junta de Gobernadores y los distintos presidentes de la Fed regionales al hablar de este tema. Cuando estos indicadores se introducen en una regla de Taylor forward-looking, encontramos que una mayor intensidad del tema o un tono negativo del discurso se asocian con una política monetaria más acomodaticia que la que se derivaría del estado de la economía. Nuestros resultados de la regla de Taylor se basan principalmente en la información de los discursos de los presidentes de la Fed. Analizamos varios canales, que refrendan este resultado.This paper studies the informational content of speeches of Fed officials, focusing on financial stability, from 1997 to 2018. We construct indicators that measure the intensity and tone of this topic for both Governors and Fed presidents. When added to a standard forward-looking Taylor rule, a higher topic intensity or negative tone is associated with more monetary policy accommodation than implied by the state of the economy. Our results are mainly driven by the information in speeches of Fed presidents. We discuss several channels to rationalize this finding

Perceived FOMC: The Making of Hawks, Doves and Swingers

Narrative records in US newspapers reveal that about 70 percent of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members who served during the last 55 years are perceived to have had persistent policy preferences over time, as either inflation-fighting hawks or growth-promoting doves. The rest are perceived as swingers, switching between types, or remained an unknown quantity to markets. What makes a member a hawk or a dove? What moulds those who change their tune? We highlight ideology by education and early life economic experiences of members of the FOMC from 1960s to 2015. This research is based on an original dataset

Fed´s financial stability concerns and monetary policy

Summary of Banco de España Working Paper no. 211

Identification of systematic monetary policy

We propose a novel identification design to estimate the causal effects of systematic monetary policy on the propagation of macroeconomic shocks. The design combines (i) a time-varying measure of systematic monetary policy based on the historical composition of hawks and doves in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) with (ii) an instrument that leverages the mechanical FOMC rotation of voting rights. We apply our design to study the effects of government spending shocks. We find fiscal multipliers between two and three when the FOMC is dovish and below zero when it is hawkish. Narrative evidence from historical FOMC records corroborates our findings

Economic Policy Uncertainty and Inflation Expectations

Parallel Sessions E: Uncertainty and Disagreement in Economic Forecastin