Real exchange rate dynamics revisited: a case with financial market imperfections

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between real exchange rate dynamics and financial market imperfections. For this purpose, we first construct a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model that incorporates staggered loan contracts as a simple form of the financial market imperfections. Our model with such a financial market friction replicates persistent, volatile, and realistic hump-shaped responses of real exchange rates, which have been thought very difficult to materialize in standard NOEM models. Remarkably, these realistic responses can materialize even with both supply and demand shocks, such as cost-push, loan rate and monetary policy shocks. This implies that the financial market developments is a key element for understanding real exchange rate dynamics.Foreign exchange ; International finance ; Macroeconomics - Econometric models

Financial Stability in Open Economies

This paper investigates the implications for monetary policy of financial markets that are internationally integrated but have intrinsic frictions. When there is no other distortion than financial market imperfections in the form of staggered international loan contracts, financial stability, which here constitutes eliminating the inefficient fluctuations of loan premiums, is the optimal monetary policy in open economies, regardless of whether policy coordination is possible. Yet, the optimality of inward-looking monetary policy requires an extra condition, in addition to those included in previous studies on the optimal monetary policy in open economies. To make allocations between cooperative and noncooperative monetary policy coincide, the exchange rate risk must be perfectly covered by the banks. Otherwise, each central bank has an additional incentive to control the nominal exchange rate to favor firms in her own country by reducing the exchange rate risk.optimal monetary policy, policy coordination, global banking, international staggered loan contracts

A Dynamic New Keynesian Life-Cycle Model: Societal Ageing, Demographics and Monetary Policy

In this paper, we first construct a dynamic new Keynesian model that incorporates life-cycle behavior a la Gertler (1999), in order to study whether structural shocks to the economy have asymmetric effects on heterogeneous agents, namely workers and retirees. We also examine whether considerations of life-cycle and demographic structure alter the dynamic properties of the monetary business cycle model, specifically the degree of amplification in impulse responses. According to our simulation results, shocks indeed have asymmetric impacts on different households and the demographic structure does alter the size of responses against shocks by changing the degree of the trade-off between substitution and income effects.Heterogenous Agents, Life-Cycle, New Keynesian Model

Real Exchange Rate Dynamics under Staggered Loan Contracts

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between real exchange rate dynamics and financial market imperfections. For this purpose, we first construct a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model that incorporates international staggered loan contracts as a simple form of the financial market imperfections. Recent empirical studies show that such staggered loan contracts are prevalent in the US, UK, and Japan and direct shocks to the bank lending interest rate (risk premium shocks) are major drivers of business cycle dynamics. Simulation results only with such a financial market friction and a risk premium shock can generate persistent, volatile, and realistic hump-shaped responses of real exchange rates, which have been thought very difficult to reproduce in standard NOEM models. This implies that these financial market developments can possibly be a major source of real exchange rate fluctuations.Financial Market Imperfections, Real Exchange Rates, Staggered Loan Contracts

Global Liquidity Trap: A Simple Analytical Investigation

How should monetary policy cooperation be designed when more than one country simultaneously faces zero lower bounds on nominal interest rates? To answer this question, we examine monetary policy cooperation with both optimal discretion and commitment policies in a two- country model. We reach the following conclusions. Under discretion, monetary policy cooperation is characterized by the intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES), a key parameter measuring international spillovers, and no history dependency. On the other hand, under commitment, monetary policy features history dependence with international spillover effects.Optimal Monetary Policy Cooperation, Zero Lower Bound

Global Liquidity Trap

In this paper we consider a two-country New Open Economy Macroeconomics model, and analyze the optimal monetary policy when countries cooperate in the face of a "global liquidity trap" -- i.e., a situation where the two countries are simultaneously caught in liquidity traps. The notable features of the optimal policy in the face of a global liquidity trap are history dependence and international dependence. The optimality of history dependent policy is confirmed as in local liquidity trap. A new feature of monetary policy in global liquidity trap is whether or not a country's nominal interest rate is hitting the zero bound affects the target inflation rate of the other country. The direction of the effect depends on whether goods produced in the two countries are Edgeworth complements or substitutes. We also compare several classes of simple interest-rate rules. Our finding is that targeting the price level yields higher welfare than targeting the inflation rate, and that it is desirable to let the policy rate of each country respond not only to its own price level and output gap, but also to those in the other country.Zero Interest Rate Policy, Two-country Model, International Spillover, Monetary Policy Coordination