Against Amnesia: Re-Imagining Central Banking

The purpose of the present paper is to identify and challenge contemporary adherence to the core of the prevailing monetary policy consensus. This consensus consists of what we call the holy trinity of the inflation targeting paradigm: price stability as the primary goal of the central bank; central bank independence as the institutional arrangement; and the short-term interest rate as the operational target. Drawing on the literature on the history and political economy of central banking, we argue that the inability to think beyond this holy trinity stems from a severe case of collective institutional amnesia and comes at a heavy cost. We highlight that monetary policy can be deployed towards social purposes other than controlling inflation, in institutional configurations other than isolation from the rest of the government and with instruments other than interest rate manipulation. One central message is that whereas central banks are commonly portrayed as commanding only one instrument, in reality they have a battery of instruments at their disposal. We should think of central banking not as a hammer – a tool to hit inflation where it rears its ugly head – but as a Swiss army knife – a multi-purpose tool with many instruments. Doing so will help overcome the collective amnesia that stands in the way of an enlightened debate about how the power of central banking can – and perhaps should – be harnessed in the pursuit of collective social goals.1 Introduction 2 The Holy Trinity 3 Historical Specificity 3.1 Pre-War 3.2 Post-War, Pre-Inflation 3.3 Holy Trinity 3.4 Shoring up the Holy Trinity: The Tinbergen Rule 4 Beyond the Tinbergen Rule: A Swiss Army Knife Theory of Central Banking 4.1 Lender of Last Resort 4.2 Financial Market-Shaping I: Monetary Policy Implementation 4.3 Financial Market-Shaping II: Monetary Policy Transmission 5 Conclusion Reference

State regulation of the national currency exchange rate by gold and foreign currency reserve management

Status of the national currency of Ukraine exchange rate has been characterized as unstable in recent years. Herewith, the Government has not implemented decisive measures on its stabilization, as a rule, underestimating the importance of the Hryvnia exchange rate stability for the successful economic growth in terms of socio-economic transformations. It should also be noted that in modern conditions among scientific and methodical approaches to the State exchange rate formation mechanisms some uncertainty regarding basic and additional tools for such regulatory activities allocation is still persist. The problem relevance is exacerbated by the lack of effective policy (coordination between the NBU and the Government actions) regarding the national currency stabilization as an indispensable prerequisite for an effective macroeconomic development. These circumstances determine the importance of factors influencing the national currency exchange rate and its regulation tools research, as well as new organizational and economic mechanisms for the national currency exchange rate in Ukraine stabilization identification. In the emerging market economy conditions formation of the efficient State currency exchange-rate regulation system provides an opportunity not only to stabilize its exchange rate in different socio-economic conditions, but to create the basis for improvement the country economic development as a whole. Given this, the issue of effective tools for the national currency exchange-rate regulation by the state determination is of theoretical, practical and methodological significance. This emphasizes the relevance of further scientific-methodological and practical principles in-depth development for the national currency exchange-rate regulation

Monetary policy in a systemic crisis

This paper examines the monetary policy followed during the current financial crisis from the perspective of the theory of the lender of last resort. It is argued that standard monetary policy measures would have failed because the channels through which monetary policy is implemented depend upon the well functioning of the interbank market. As the crisis developed, liquidity vanished and the interbank market collapsed, central banks had to inject much more liquidity at low interest rates than predicted by standard monetary policy models. At the same time, as the interbank market did not allow for the redistribution of liquidity among banks, central banks had to design new channels for liquidity injection.

Optimal Fear of Floating: The Role of Currency Mismatches and Fiscal Constraints

Evidence suggests that developing countries are more concerned with stabilizing the nominal exchange rate than developed countries. Some papers show not only that nominal exchange rates are less volatile, but also that international reserves and domestic interest rates are significantly more volatile. This paper presents a model with flexible prices that introduces a new channel through which the fear of floating is generated. It departs from the previous research in an important dimension; fears will come from nominal, as supposed to real, exchange rate volatility. Also, the model is able to explain the whole range of observed policies. The trade-off proposed in the paper is driven by two facts that proved to be crucial in recent financial crises: emerging market countries face fiscal restrictions during turbulent times, and they tend to have a mismatch in the currency denomination of their assets and their liabilities. These features make both interventions and depreciations costly. Thus, faced with these costs policymakers have to choose the optimal policy mix, such that the costs are minimized. Based on these intervention and depreciation costs, the model is able to rationalize as the outcome of an optimal policy decision, the observation that emerging markets end up with higher inflation rates and lower fluctuations in the nominal exchange rate. The results suggest that the amount of intervention depends on the degree of currency mismatch, the degree of flexibility on the fiscal side, the elasticity of money demand, and the relative size of the financial system. Estimations of a stylized econometric model support the effect of these variables on the variability of the exchange rate. Variability is negative correlated with the mismatch, the fiscal and the size variables; and positive correlated with elasticity, being in all these cases highly significant across most specifications.exchange rates, floating, currency mismatch, optimal policy

Optimal fear of floating: the role of currency mismatches and fiscal constraints

Evidence suggests that developing countries are much more concerned with stabilizing the nominal exchange rate than developed countries. This paper presents a model to explain this observation, based on the hypotheses that both interventions and depreciations are costly. Interventions are costly because they generate a financial need in a fiscally constrained government that relies solely on distortionary taxes. Depreciations are costly because the country, in particular its financial sector, is exposed to a currency mismatch between its assets and its liabilities that is not effectively hedged. The results suggest that the amount of intervention will depend on the degree of currency mismatch between assets and liabilities, the elasticity of money demand, and the relative size of the financial system. It would be expected that countries with a high degree of currency mismatch and large financial sectors would intervene heavily in foreign exchange markets, as long as the money demand is not too sensitive to the nominal interest rate.

The double play: simultaneous speculative attacks on currency and equity markets

This paper investigates the potential for foreign speculators to profit from simultaneously taking short positions in foreign exchange and equity markets under a fixed exchange rate regime, in what has been termed as the double play. Such a strategy is considered when the monetary authority is faced with two conflicting objectives exchange rate stability and low interest rates. While the monetary authority may not be able to directly intervene to stabilize interest rates under the fixed exchange rate regime, it may consider intervention in equity markets to head off speculative pressure on interest rates. The model determines market conditions where speculators may find the double play strategy profitable and the impact of government intervention on speculative short equity positions and the interest rate, concluding that intervention can never simultaneously reduce speculation in the equity and the money markets. In the case where country fundamentals are strong, intervention while reducing short positions in equity markets actually increases short positions in the money market and induces higher interest rates. The paper concludes by discussing the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's intervention in the Hong Kong equity market within the context of this model.Economic stabilization ; Foreign exchange rates ; Stock exchanges

Summer workshop on money, banking, payments and finance: an overview

The 2010 Summer Workshop on Money, Banking, Payments and Finance met at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago this summer, for the second year. The following document summarizes and ties together the papers presented.Payment systems

Exchange Rate Dynamics and the Relationship between the Random Walk Hypothesis and Official Interventions

This paper examines the empirical evidence that official interventions are associated with periods of high predictability in exchange rate markets. We employ a block bootstrap methodology to build critical values for the Variance Ratio statistics and test for predictability within moving windows of fixed length sizes for major developed countries currencies. Empirical results suggest that interventions are indeed associated to periods of increase in predictability and that time varying risk premium may, at least partially, explain such results.

Unconventional Monetary Policy in Theory and in Practice

In this paper, after discussing the theoretical underpinnings of unconventional monetary policy measures, we review the existing empirical evidence on their effectiveness, focusing on those adopted by the European Central Bank and by the Federal Reserve. These measures operate in two ways: through the signalling channel and through the portfolio-balance channel. In the former, the central bank can use communication to steer interest rates and to restore confidence in the financial markets; the latter hinges on the hypothesis of imperfect substitutability of assets and liabilities in the balance sheet of the private sector and postulates that the central bank’s asset purchases and liquidity provision lower financial yields and improve funding conditions. The review of the empirical literature suggests that the unconventional measures were effective and that their impact on the economy was sizeable. However, a very large degree of uncertainty surrounds the precise quantification of these effects.Central bank, unconventional monetary policy, financial crisis, signalling channel, portfolio balance channel