Aggregating Money Demand in Europe with a Divisia Index

Proponents of an aggregation theoretic approach to money demand argue that simple-sum measures do not capture the theoretical notion of money. This is especially true for broad monetary aggregates, which include components held for savings motives that are only imperfect substitutes for transactions media. Simple-sum monetary aggregates thus are not consistent with microeconomic theory. Monetary aggregation in Europe using indices for monetary services seems attractive because these indices can account for the imperfect substitutability between different currencies. In this paper the aggregation theoretic framework is applied to money holdings of European residents and the resulting index is compared to simple-sum M3.Divisia index, money demand, European Monetary Union

Monetary Policy in Europe: Evidence from Time-Varying Taylor Rules

We estimate monetary policy reaction functions for France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States using a Markov-switching model that incorporates switching in the monetary policy regime as well as an independent switching process for shifts in the state of the economy. Results indicate that over time all central banks have assigned changing weights to inflation and the output gap. Regimes can be classified as ``dovish" with a high weight on output and a low weight on inflation, and ``hawkish" with a high weight on inflation and a low one on output. For France and Italy, the German interest rate had an influence on domestic monetary policy especially at the beginning of the 1980s after the inception of the European Monetary System (EMS). Switching in the residual variance of the monetary rule accounts for heteroscedasticity and turns out to be important for the fit of the model. Robustness of the results is checked by considering alternative specifications of expected inflation and the output gap. In general, results are robust to these changes.Monetary policy rule, Taylor rule, Markov switching

Aggregation Bias in Estimating European Money Demand Functions

Recently, money demand functions for a group of European countries have been estimated and generally have been found to perform better than most national money demand functions. While parameter equality is a sufficient condition for valid aggregation of linear equations, in money demand estimation often log-linear specifications are used, so that aggregation is in effect nonlinear. This makes the relation between the aggregate and the individual equations more complicated. To investigate if the conditions for unbiased linear aggregation are also valid for logarithmic aggregation, a simulation study is performed.Demand for Money, Nonlinear Aggregation, European monetary Union

The Stability of European Money Demand: An Investigation of M3H

The paper assesses the stability and predictive performance of a European money demand function as compared to national money demand functions. Two different groups of countries for a monetary union are considered. With respect to the explanatory accuracy, the national functions perform better than the aggregated function though the difference is barely significant. Examination of the residuals of the national money demand equations indicates that currency substitution is not the major cause for the stability of the aggregated money demand function.demand for money, European Monetary Union, cointegration

Non-linear Effects of Fiscal Policy in Germany: A Markov-Switching Approach

Keynesian theory suggests that a reduction in government expenditure has a negative effect on private demand and therefore on output. Contrary, neoclassical theory argues that reduced public expenditure makes room for an expansion of the private sector and thus has a stimulating effect on the economy. Additionally, expectations of a lower tax burden in the future should stimulate consumption. The recent literature discusses that both theories might be right at different times. Especially, during times of fiscal contractions from high levels of debt the economy might react in a neoclassical way. In this paper, we test for non-linear effects of fiscal policy in a Markov-switching approach. We find two different regimes, with a neoclassical regime prevailing around 1972-74, 1979-82 and 1991-93. Furthermore, using time-varying transition probabilities (TVTP) for the Markov process, we test if the neoclassical reaction of private consumption to fiscal variables depends on some!fiscal policy, private consumption, Markov-switching, time-varying transition probabilities

Financial structure and the impact of monetary policy on asset prices

We study the responses of residential property and equity prices, inflation and economic activity to monetary policy shocks in 17 countries, using data spanning 1986-2006, using single-country VARs and panel VARs in which we distinguish between groups of countries depending on their financial systems. The effect of monetary policy on property prices is about three times as large as its impact on GDP. Using monetary policy to guard against financial instability by offsetting asset-price movements thus has sizable effects on economic activity. While the financial structure influences the impact of policy on asset prices, its importance appears limited

European business cycles: new indices and analysis of their synchronicity

This article presents a new type of business-cycle index that allows for cycle-to-cycle comparisons of the depth of recessions within a country, cross-country comparisons of business-cycle correlation and simple aggregation to arrive at a measure of a European business cycle. The paper examines probit-type specifications of binary recession/expansion variables in a Gibbs-sampling framework, wherein it is possible to incorporate time-series features to the model, such as serial correlation, heteroskedasticity and regime switching. The data-augmentation implied by Gibbs sampling generates posterior distributions for a latent coincident business-cycle index and extracts information from indicator variables, such as the slope of the yield curve. Sub-sample correlations between an aggregated ``Europe'' index and the national business-cycle indices from France, Germany, Italy are consistent with the claim that the European economies are becoming more harmonized over time, but there is no guarantee that this pattern will hold in the future.Business cycles ; European Economic Community

The term structure of interest rates across frequencies

This paper tests the expectations hypothesis (EH) of the term structure of interest rates in US data, using spectral regression techniques that allow us to consider different frequency bands. We find a positive relation between the term spread and the change in the long-term interest rate in a frequency band of 6 months to 4 years, whereas the relation is negative at higher and lower frequencies. We confirm that the variance of term premia relative to expected changes in long-term interest rates dominates at high and low frequencies, leading the EH to be rejected in those bands but not in the intermediate frequency band. JEL Classification: C22, E43Expectations theory of the term structure, frequency domain, Interest Rates, spectral regression

Money Growth, Output Gaps and Inflation at Low and High Frequency: Spectral Estimates for Switzerland

While monetary targeting has become increasingly rare, many central banks attach weight to money growth in setting interest rates. This raises the issue of how money can be combined with other variables, in particular the output gap, when analysing inflation. The Swiss National Bank emphasises that the indicators it uses to do so vary across forecasting horizons. While real indicators are employed for short-run forecasts, money growth is more important at longer horizons. Using band spectral regressions and causality tests in the frequency domain, we show that this interpretation of the inflation process fits the data well.spectral regression, frequency domain, Phillips curve, quantity theory

Assessing forecast uncertainties in a VECX model for Switzerland: an exercise in forecast combination across models and observation windows

model for Switzerland. Forecast uncertainty is evaluated in three different dimensions. First, we investigate the effect on forecasting performance of averaging over forecasts from different models. Second, we look at different estimation windows. We find that averaging over estimation windows is at least as effective as averaging over different models and both complement each other. Third, we explore whether using weighting schemes from the machine learning literature improves the average forecast. Compared to equal weights the effect of the weighting scheme on forecast accuracy is small in our application