Monetary Policy and Asset Price Volatility

We explore the implications of asset price volatility for the management of monetary policy. We show that it is desirable for central banks to focus on underlying inflationary pressures. Asset prices become relevant only to the extent they may signal potential inflationary or deflationary forces. Rules that directly target asset prices appear to have undesirable side effects. We base our conclusions on (i) simulation of different policy rules in a small scale macro model and (ii) a comparative analysis of recent U.S. and Japanese monetary policy.

Monetary policy and asset price volatility

Over the past twenty years the world's major central banks have been largely successful at bringing inflation under control. While it is premature to suggest that inflation is no longer an issue of great concern, it is quite conceivable that the next battles facing central bankers will lie on a different front. One development that has already concentrated the minds of policymakers is an apparent increase in financial instability, of which one important dimension is increased volatility of asset prices.> In a presentation at the Federal Reserve Banks of Kansas City's 1999 symposium, "New Challenges for Monetary Policy," Bernanke and Gertler examined the role that asset prices should play in monetary policy. They concentrated on three issues: why policymakers should care about asset price volatility, how asset price volatility affects the economy, and how monetary policy should respond to changes in asset prices.Monetary policy ; Banks and banking, Central

Systematic Monetary Policy and the Effects of Oil Price Shocks

macroeconomics, monetary policy, oil, oil price shocks

Banking in General Equilibrium

This paper attempts to provide a step towards understanding the role of financial intermediaries ("banks") in aggregate economic activity. We first develop a model of the intermediary sector which is highly simplified, but rich enough to motivate several special features of bauks. Of particular importance in our model is the assumption that banks are more efficient than the public in evaluating and auditing certain information --intensive loan projects. Banks are also assumed to have private information about their investments, which motivates the heavy reliance of banks on debt rather than equity finance and their need for buffer stock capital. We embed this intermediary sector in a general equilibrium framework, which includes consumers and a non-banking investment sector. Mainly because banks have superior access to some investments, factors affecting the size or efficiency of banking will also have an impact on the aggregate economy. Among the factors affecting intermediation, we show, are the adequacy of bank capital, the riskiness of bank investments, and the costs of bank monitoring. We also show that our model is potentially useful for understanding the macroeconomic effects of phenomena such as financial crises, disintermediation, banking regulation, and certain types of monetary policy.

Financial Fragility and Economic Performance

Applied macroeconomists (e.g., Eckstein and Sinai (1986)) have stressed the role of financial variables, such as firm balance sheet positions, in the determination of investment spending and output. Our paper presents a formal analysis of this link. We develop a model of the process of investment finance in which there is asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders about the quality of investment projects and about the borrower's effort. In this model, the cost of external investment finance under the optimal contract is higher, the worse the borrower's balance sheet position (i.e., the lower his net worth). In general equilibrium, the lower is borrower net worth, the further the number of projects initiated and the average quality of undertaken projects will be from the unconstrained first-best. We characterize a "financially fragile" situation as one in which balance sheets are so weak that the economy experiences substantial underinvestment, misallocation of investment resources, and possibly even a complete investment collapse. Our policy analysis suggests that, under some circumstances, government "bailouts" of insolvent debtors may be a reasonable alternative in periods of extreme financial fragility.

Agency Costs, Collateral, and Business Fluctuations

Bad economic times are typically associated with a high incidence of financial distress, e.g., insolvency and bankruptcy. This paper studies the role of changes in borrower solvency in the initiation and propagation of the business cycle. We first develop a model of the process of financing real investment projects under asymmetric information, extending work by Robert Townsend. A major conclusion here is that when the entrepreneurs who borrow to finance projects are more solvent (have more "collateral"), the deadweight agency costs of investment finance are lower. This model of investment finance is then embedded in a dynamic macroeconomic setting. We show that, first, since reductions in collateral in bad times increase the agency costs of borrowing, which in turn depress the demand for investment, the presence of these financial factors will tend to amplify swings in real output. Second, we find that autonomous factors which affect the collateral of borrowers (as in a "debt-deflation") can actually initiate cycles in output.

Sudden Financial Arrest

This paper was presented as the Mundell-Fleming Lecture at the Tenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference at the International Monetary Fund in Washington held November 5–6, 2009.There are striking and terrifying similarities between the sudden failure of a heart and that of a financial system. In the medical literature, the former is referred to as sudden cardiac arrest. By analogy, I refer to its financial counterpart as a sudden financial arrest. In this article I describe the latter and its treatment guided by its medical counterpart

Are the effects of monetary policy in the euro area greater in recessions than in booms?

This paper investigates whether monetary policy impulses have asymmetric effects on output growth in seven countries of the euro area (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands). First, it is shown that these seven countries share the same business cycle. Next, strong evidence is presented that area-wide monetary policy impulses, measured as the contribution of monetary policy shocks to the short-term interest rate in a simple VAR for the euro area economy, have significantly larger effects on output growth in recessions than in booms. These differences are most pronounced in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Belgium, while they are much smaller in Austria and the Netherland

Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission

The 'credit channel' theory of monetary policy transmission holds that informational frictions in credit markets worsen during tight- money periods. The resulting increase in the external finance premium--the difference in cost between internal and external funds-- enhances the effects of monetary policy on the real economy. We document the responses of GDP and its components to monetary policy shocks and describe how the credit channel helps explain the facts. We discuss two main components of this mechanism, the balance-sheet channel and the bank lending channel. We argue that forecasting exercises using credit aggregates are not valid tests of this theory.

The Central-Bank Balance Sheet as an Instrument of Monetary Policy

While many analyses of monetary policy consider only a target for a short-term nominal interest rate, other dimensions of policy have recently been of greater importance: changes in the supply of bank reserves, changes in the assets acquired by central banks, and changes in the interest rate paid on reserves. We extend a standard New Keynesian model to allow a role for the central bank's balance sheet in equilibrium determination, and consider the connections between these alternative dimensions of policy and traditional interest-rate policy. We distinguish between "quantitative easing" in the strict sense and targeted asset purchases by a central bank, and argue that while the former is likely be ineffective at all times, the latter dimension of policy can be effective when financial markets are sufficiently disrupted. Neither is a perfect substitute for conventional interest-rate policy, but purchases of illiquid assets are particularly likely to improve welfare when the zero lower bound on the policy rate is reached. We also consider optimal policy with regard to the payment of interest on reserves; in our model, this requires that the interest rate on reserves be kept near the target for the policy rate at all times