Interest rate smoothing

Interest rates ; Monetary policy - United States

Interest Rate and Exchange Rate Determination

Since Meese and Rogoff's (1983) results, the view has become fairly widespread that structural models of exchange rates are not very good. There is, however, somewhat of a dichotomy in the literature between those who deal with small models, where the focus is almost exclusively on exchange rates, and those who deal with large macroeconometric models, where exchange rates make up only a small subset of the endogenous variables. Most of the emphasis has been on the first approach, and it may be that exchange rate determination within the context of large models has not been given a sufficient hearing. Exchange rate and interest rate equations are estimated and analyzed for 17 countries in this paper. This study is part of a larger project of constructing a multicountry econometric model. One of the aims of the paper is to see if the exchange rate equations that are part of my multicountry model also suffer from the Meese and Rogoff criticism. The results show that the view that structural exchange rate models are not very good may be too pessimistic.

Backward-Looking Interest-Rate Rules, Interest-Rate Smoothing, and Macroeconomic Instability

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to give rise to aggregate fluctuations due to self-fulfilling expectations. In response to this concern literature has focused on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate rules whereby the central bank responds to a measure of past inflation. The consensus view that has emerged is that backward-looking rules contribute to protecting the economy from embarking on expectations-driven fluctuations. A common characteristic of the existing studies that arrive at this conclusion is their focus on local analysis. The contribution of this paper is to conduct a more global analysis. We find that backward-looking interest-rate feedback rules do not guarantee uniqueness of equilibrium. We present examples in which for plausible parameterizations attracting equilibrium cycles exist. The paper also contributes to the quest for policy rules that guarantee macroeconomic stability globally. Our analysis indicates that policy rules whereby the interest rate is set as a function of the past interest rate and current inflation are likely to ensure global stability provided that the coefficient on lagged interest rates is greater than unity.

Interest rate targets abandoned

Interest rates ; Monetary policy - Japan

Recent interest rate trends

Interest rates ; Capital market

Global interest rate linkages

Foreign exchange rates ; Interest rates ; Germany

On affine interest rate models

Bernstein processes are Brownian diffusions that appear in Euclidean Quantum Mechanics. Knowledge of the symmetries of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation associated with these processes allows one to obtain relations between stochastic processes (Lescot-Zambrini, Progress in Probability, vols 58 and 59). More recently it has appeared that each one--factor affine interest rate model (in the sense of Leblanc-Scaillet) could be described using such a Bernstein process

International interest rate linkages

Interest rates