Monetary transmission lags and the formulation of the policy decision on interest rates

Monetary theory ; Monetary policy ; Interest rates

Modeling a Housing and Mortgage Crisis

The purpose of this paper is to explore financial instability in this case due to a housing crisis and defaults on mortgages. The model incorporates heterogeneous banks and households. Mortgages are secured by collateral, which is equal to the amount of housing which agents purchase. Individual default is spread through the economy via the interbank market. Several comparative statistics illustrate the directional effects of a variety of shocks in the economy.

Credit Risks and European Government Bond Markets: A Panel Data Econometric Analysis

A fixed effects panel data estimation of the determinants of European government default risk is undertaken. Credit risk of sovereign debt is assessed by comparing yields on benchmark government bonds with high-quality private risk represented by interest rate swap yields. Using a new data-set from the European Commission (DG2's AMECO database), we find government default risk to depend positively on changes in the debt to GDP ratio and the variability of inflation and negatively on lagged inflation and changes in taxable capacity. Finally, there is evidence for persistence of government bond yield spreads reflecting differences in cross-country government default risk.Bond Market; Bonds; Government Bonds; Interest Rates; Interest; Yield

Support for small businesses amid COVID‐19

How should the government support small and medium-sized enterprises amid a pandemic crisis while balancing the trade-off between short-run stabilization and long-run allocative efficiency? We develop a two-sector equilibrium model featuring small businesses with private information on their likely future success and a screening contract. Businesses in the sector adversely affected by a pandemic can apply for government loans to stay afloat. A pro-allocation government sets a harsh default sanction to deter entrepreneurs with poorer projects, thereby improving long-run productivity at the cost of persistent unemployment, whereas a pro-stabilization government sets a lenient default sanction. Interest rate effective lower bound leads to involuntary unemployment in the other open sector and shifts the optimal default sanction to a lenient stance. The rise in firm markups exerts the opposite effect. A high creative destruction wedge polarizes the government’s hawkish and dovish stances, and optimal default sanction is more lenient, exacerbating resource misallocation. The model illuminates how credit guarantees might be structured in future crises

Bank credit, inflation, and default risks over an infinite horizon

The financial intermediation wedge of the banking sector used to co-move positively with the federal funds rate, but the post-GFC era saw a disconnect between them. We develop a flexible price dynamic general equilibrium with banks’ liquidity creation to offer an explanation. In a corridor system, the financial wedge and policy rate are shown to co-move, and the pass-through of monetary policy onto both inflation and output obtains. However, the post-GFC floor system obviates the need for the financial wedge to cover the cost of obtaining reserves, so the wedge and the policy rate indeed disconnect in equilibrium; furthermore, we show that the disconnect obstructs monetary expansions from generating inflation. In this environment, tightening bank capital requirement leads to disinflationary pressure. Money-financed fiscal expansions that subsidise non-bank sectors’ borrowing costs improve output and reduce default risks but increase inflation. The model uses banks’ liquidity creation via credit extension to provide a rationale for both the pre-pandemic disinflation and the post-pandemic inflation. The results hold both on the dynamic paths and in the steady state, and the role of money enlarges the Taylor rule determinacy region

QE: A Successful Star May Be Running into Diminishing Returns

This article is published in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. To view this article in its entirety please see the related resources section above. Recommended Citation: Charles A. E. Goodhart, Jonathan P. Ashworth, QE: a successful start may be running into diminishing returns, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 28, Issue 4, WINTER 2012, Pages 640– 670, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grs03

The Failure of Northern Rock: A multi-dimensional Case Study

In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years earlier it had converted from a mutual building society whose activities were limited by regulation largely to retail deposits and mortgages. Graphic television news pictures showed very long queues outside the bank as depositors rushed to withdraw their deposits. There was always a fear that this could spark a systemic run on bank deposits. After failed attempts to secure a buyer in the private sector, the government nationalised the bank and, for the first time, in effect socialised the credit risk of the bank. It is now a fully state-owned bank..