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This paper evaluates competing approaches to assess the effectiveness of transmission channels for the U.S. monetary policy from 1°Q 1995 to 3°Q 2019. While evaluating the competing approaches, the paper follows wavelet coherence approach providing results in time and frequency domain. The results show how money and credit channels work quite well during low volatile periods generally, whereas they suggest that these channels are less effective during periods of financial turmoil and very low interest rate. However, investment-based channels and the bank-lending channel revisited version show some effects also during periods of instability. In more detail, investment-based channels and the bank-lending channel revisited appear to be the most effective monetary policy transmission mechanisms, while the traditional banking-lending channel seems effective only in low volatile periods. Finally, the results for consumption-based channels and international trade-based channels show the least effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying a BVAR model, the present paper first identifies the possible drivers of Germany's TARGET claims. In this context, in terms of potential causes, a distinction is made between a rise in the global risk assessment, tensions within the euro area, and European monetary policy. It becomes evident that the TARGET flows between 2015 and 2017 can be ascribed in large part to monetary policy and to a minor extent to the risk assessment within the euro area. At the peak of the European debt crisis between 2010 and mid-2012, the TARGET flows were affected by uncertainty in the euro area as a dominant factor, although global factors also played a key role according to the model. The BVAR model we use opens up the possibility of studying the causes of current fluctuations in Germany's TARGET claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research examines connectedness landscape and the dynamic spillovers of volatility and returns in the network comprising eleven agricultural commodities and US shadow short rate in a quality of inflation indicator, observed in monetary policymaking. We use daily data from November 2000 to May 2021. We document monetary policy as a net transmitter of spillover for both return and volatility of agricultural commodities. We find significant volatility connectedness among agricultural commodities. The connectedness is shown to be of a time-varying nature, exhibiting considerable increases during periods of market turmoil. The results of this paper provide relevant insights into the interrelations of US monetary policy and agricultural commodity prices, being, hence, potentially useful for commodity investors, brokers and dealers, as well as for market regulators designing policy solutions for financial stability enhancements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like most central banks, the European Central Bank makes and implements its monetary policy decisions by adjusting its targets for short-term interest rates in response to information gleaned from a wide range of macroeconomic indicators and projections. Unlike other central banks, however, the ECB also monitors money growth as a 'cross check' against the macroeconomic analysis that guides its policies of interest rate management. This paper argues that making further use of this 'second pillar' would help the ECB to better achieve its nominal objectives in the present environment of exceptionally low interest rates. By modifying the 'P-star' framework – a small-scale model with Quantity Theory foundations – the paper shows how the ECB could set a quantitative 'reference value' for Divisia money growth to stabilize nominal spending around a target path, even while its traditional interest rate policies are constrained by the zero lower bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research undertakes an examination of the Okun Model and re-evaluates its relationship within the context of the United States, spanning from January 1990 to May 2022. Employing the ARDL estimation, the study discerns that, over the long term, fiscal policy and trade policy exert upward pressure on the unemployment rate. Contrarily, the Consumer Price Index wields a statistically significant and detrimental influence on unemployment, driving it downwards. Furthermore, the results derived from the Markov-Switching Dynamic Regression analysis, when contemplating high-growth unemployment over the long term, illuminate noteworthy insights. Specifically, variables such as Gross Formation Capital Fixed multiplied by Capacity Utilization and Employment Level multiplied by Labour Force Participation are statistically significant with negative effects on unemployment. In contrast, Monetary Policy Uncertainty is linked to an anticipated increase in the unemployment rate. Therefore, this paper will be of interest to a wide range of labour market economic agents. As is known, investors' feelings on monetary policy and fiscal policy can shape US economic apprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reaction of asset prices to monetary and macroeconomic news announcements represents a rich source of information which is important to better understand the financial market impact of economic fundamentals. Given the significant connection of energy to other sectors in the economy, this study attempts to address to what extent the views that a central bank expresses in its communications get reflected in the energy stock market. The GARCH with Jump intensity approach is used to analyse the volatility of energy stock prices and to measure their reactions to anticipated and unanticipated policy news. Moreover, we assess whether central bank communications exert differential impacts on changes in energy stock prices under various time-horizons. Focusing on the European Union and the UK energy stocks, the paper finds evidence of a time-varying market responsiveness. For instance, a more hawkish stance is associated with an increase in the energy stock price jumps for the EU in the short- and medium-terms, whereas it only holds for the UK in the short-run. Although central bank policies do not target the exchange rate itself, we find that the exchange rate channel is an important part of the monetary policy transmission mechanism for the energy market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how macroeconomic news affected the spreads of Italian sovereign bonds before and during the quantitative easing by the European Central Bank. Daily changes in the bond spreads are regressed on macroeconomic news shocks, where the news shocks are computed as the difference between the published data and the preceding private-sector forecasts. The analysis shows that macroeconomic news shocks had economically and statistically significant effects on Italian bond spreads in 2012–2014 before quantitative easing, while the effects were negligible afterwards although with a partial exception of a period in 2019 when the net asset purchases were paused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial crisis was the second worst in U.S. history. There are a variety of explanations for what caused it, but no consensus. Moreover, there is little agreement about when or why it ended. This paper investigates when and why the financial crisis began and when and why it ended. The analysis shows that the financial crisis was caused by a large reduction in mortgage lending standards which was primarily due to Congresses' mandate to increase homeownership. The paper provides evidence that the financial crisis was abating by January 2009 and ended when the recession ended in June 2009. The paper argues that neither deliberate monetary nor fiscal policy actions ended it. Rather, it was brought to an end by the unprecedented increase in the monetary base caused by the Fed's lending to banks and other financial institutions immediately following Lehman Bros. bankruptcy announcement on 15 September 2008. The increase was not a deliberate policy action but an unintended consequence of the fact that the Fed was no longer able to sterilize its lending after Lehman's bankruptcy announcement. The financial crisis ended because the Fed inadvertently followed Walter Bagehot's recommendation that during a crisis the central bank should lend freely. The Fed followed Bagehot's advice in spite of Bernanke's effort to sterilize the Fed's lending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of automobile loan debt on US unemployment. Individuals with heterogeneous economic positions deem automobiles as important durable goods for unemployment exit and expected wage increases. The methodological approach makes use of an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound Testing modelling approach to document a negative and significant relationship between auto loans and unemployment. The results survive certain robustness tests, while they seem to confirm certain theoretical arguments posed in the literature, such as that the credit mechanism that dominates the transmission mechanism of monetary policy (credit shocks have a profound significant link with unemployment), while they seem to mitigate the role of alternative theories (where levered households suffer from a 'debt overhang' problem that distorts their preferences, making them demand high wages, and the 'vacancy-posting' effect) which imply that loans lead to high unemployment. The findings seem to provide significant recommendations to monetary policy makers on strengthening the banking services industry, providing an alternative to monetary policy for labour market intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of automobile loan debt on US unemployment. Individuals with heterogeneous economic positions deem automobiles as important durable goods for unemployment exit and expected wage increases. The methodological approach makes use of an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound Testing modelling approach to document a negative and significant relationship between auto loans and unemployment. The results survive certain robustness tests, while they seem to confirm certain theoretical arguments posed in the literature, such as that the credit mechanism that dominates the transmission mechanism of monetary policy (credit shocks have a profound significant link with unemployment), while they seem to mitigate the role of alternative theories (where levered households suffer from a 'debt overhang' problem that distorts their preferences, making them demand high wages, and the 'vacancy-posting' effect) which imply that loans lead to high unemployment. The findings seem to provide significant recommendations to monetary policy makers on strengthening the banking services industry, providing an alternative to monetary policy for labour market intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the impairment in monetary policy caused by different forms of global financial cycles. We find that while both equity inflows and outflows cycles do exert influence over monetary policy, the bond inflows cycle does not have a significant impact. Further, we discuss the role of macroprudential policies in mitigating this impairment by using Difference-in-Difference with heterogeneous treatment effects which is robust to presence of heterogeneity across both time periods and groups. We find that FX-based policies such as Capital Restrictions on Foreign Exchange positions and Limits on Foreign Exposure alongside SIFIs and Loan Loss Provisioning are effective in reducing the impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the influencing factors of share pledging, this paper discusses the influence of asset mispricing on the share pledging decision-making of controlling shareholders and examines the differences in the impact of different monetary policies using China's A-share listed firms from 2007 to 2018. This study found that when the share price is overvalued, the share pledging enthusiasm of controlling shareholders increases, and the scale of share pledging expands. Further examination found that the enthusiasm and the scale of share pledge of controlling shareholders increase significantly with the increase in the overvaluation level of the share price. When the monetary policy tends to be loose or the interest rate is low, the enthusiasm for share pledging increases, and the scale of share pledge expands, which is more obvious when the stock price is overvalued. This study indicates that the capital market is not perfect, and insiders represented by controlling shareholders can identify investors' cognitive biases, respond to asset mispricing in time, and raise more funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the linkages between monetary policy surprises and long-term interest rates is of immense interest to policymakers and researchers worldwide. In this paper, we investigate this relationship for a large sample of 29 economies and attempt to unravel the possible reasons for rotated linkages between these two variables in a long time-period, i.e., 1979–2019. We provide empirical evidence on exogenous shifts in the preferences of central banks in terms of weightage of inflation to output, altering the behaviour of long-term interest rates. We examine this phenomenon using financial crisis, and positive inflation deviations which may cause such exogenous shifts, and find both to be responsible for rotated linkages. On comparison, we find that the linkages get rotated the most during systemic crisis, followed by banking crisis, and currency crisis in that order. In terms of policy prescriptions, we confirm that central banks can ensure effective monetary transmission to long-term interest rates by having a robust monetary policy framework which encompasses the three pillars of independence and accountability, policy and operational strategy, and communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the influence of the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policies on non-financial firms. It sheds light on non-financial firms' decisions regarding leverage, and on how the ECB's conventional and unconventional policies may have affected them. The paper also examines how these policies influenced non-financial firms' decisions on capital allocation – primarily capital spending and shareholder distribution (for example, dividends and share repurchases). We use an exhaustive and unique dataset comprised of income statements and balance sheets of leading non-financial firms operating in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The main results suggest that ECB's monetary policies have encouraged firms to raise their debt burden, especially after the global recession of 2008. Finally, the ECB's policies, especially after 2011, also seem to have led non-financial firms to allocate more resources not just to capital spending but to shareholder distribution as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the determinants and the stability of money demand functions in Hungary and Poland, using an error-correction framework. The null of stable cointegration relationships cannot be rejected in some specifications. The results suggest that long-run parameters are in line with economic theory. While judging the appropriateness of different strategies of monetary policy on the basis of these findings alone would be premature, the paper suggests that money demand functions can serve as a useful reference for monetary authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low short-term interest rates, induced by the Bank of Japan's (BoJ) accommodative monetary policy, is mainly responsible for keeping long-term Japanese government bonds' (JGBs) nominal yields exceptionally low for a protracted period. Elevated government debt and deficit ratios do not exert upward pressure on JGBs' nominal yields. This paper provides an empirical investigation of chronically low nominal yields of JGBs from a Keynesian perspective. It deploys a Vector Error Correction (VEC) approach to model long-term government bond yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we study the relationship between monetary policy and corporate bankruptcies in the USA. The main hypothesis is that an increase in the monetary base or a decrease in the federal funds rate reduces the probability of corporate bankruptcies. The main intuition lies in the economic mechanism through which both of these actions accelerate inflation and lower the real value of corporate debt. The results strongly support the main hypothesis of the paper. In addition, we also study the impact of other macroeconomic variables on bankruptcy rates. Our findings show that the total reserves of depositary institutions and the overall performance of the US corporate sector are negatively related to the frequency of corporate failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unconventional monetary policy (UMP) influences inequality through two channels that work in opposite directions – a labour market channel (more employment, higher wages) and a financial market channel (higher asset prices). In an earlier paper, covering UMP through 2014, we found that UMP in Japan had contributed to greater income inequality through its effects on asset prices. With a longer time period, a richer dataset including labour market data, and a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) we confirm that these results continue to hold, and investigate why UMP's impact on inequality in Japan differs from some other countries. We argue that Japanese structural issues may mute the labour market channel, especially: (i) labour market rigidity; and (ii) the large share of the population that is older than 65 years old or retired. The older cohort's capital gains and dividends are re-saved in other financial assets, instead of being consumed or used for starting businesses. At the same time, wages have not increased despite the severe labour shortage, due to the frictions in Japan's labour market. We conclude that these factors may make the inequality created by UMP in Japan unique by international comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on income inequality in Japan, using hitherto unexplored data from the Japan Household Panel Survey. Empirical evidence shows that expansionary monetary policy in Japan has contributed to diminishing the gender pay gap through an increase in working time of women relative to men, but also to increasing the education pay gap. These effects may have materialized via the aggregate demand channel and the labour productivity channel. In contrast, expansionary monetary policy has had no significant impact on the development of the age pay gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes an empirical inquiry concerning the determinants of the long-term interest rate on U.S. Treasury securities. It applies the bounds testing procedure to cointegration and error correction models within the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) framework, using monthly data and estimating a wide range of Keynesian models of long-term interest rates. While previous studies have mainly relied on quarterly data, the use of monthly data substantially expands the number of observations. This in turn enables the calibration of a wide range of models to test various hypotheses. The short-term interest rate is the key determinant of the long-term interest rate, while the rate of core inflation and the pace of economic activity also influence the long-term interest rate. A rise in the ratio of the federal fiscal balance (government net lending/borrowing as a share of nominal GDP) lowers the long-term interest rate on Treasury securities. The short- and long-run effects of short-term interest rates, the rate of inflation, the pace of economic activity, and the fiscal balance ratio on the long-term interest rate are estimated. The findings reinforce Keynes's prescient insights on the determinants of government bond yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes an empirical inquiry concerning the determinants of the long-term interest rate on U.S. Treasury securities. It applies the bounds testing procedure to cointegration and error correction models within the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) framework, using monthly data and estimating a wide range of Keynesian models of long-term interest rates. While previous studies have mainly relied on quarterly data, the use of monthly data substantially expands the number of observations. This in turn enables the calibration of a wide range of models to test various hypotheses. The short-term interest rate is the key determinant of the long-term interest rate, while the rate of core inflation and the pace of economic activity also influence the long-term interest rate. A rise in the ratio of the federal fiscal balance (government net lending/borrowing as a share of nominal GDP) lowers the long-term interest rate on Treasury securities. The short- and long-run effects of short-term interest rates, the rate of inflation, the pace of economic activity, and the fiscal balance ratio on the long-term interest rate are estimated. The findings reinforce Keynes’s prescient insights on the determinants of government bond yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overnight money market rate is a key monetary policy tool. In recent years, central banks worldwide have developed new monetary policy strategies aimed at keeping its deviations from the policy rate small and short-lived. This paper describes the main instruments used for this purpose by the US Fed, the ECB and the BoE and also their policy responses to the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Fractional integration and long-memory methods are then applied to investigate how those affected the persistence of policy spreads (i.e. the difference between overnight rates and policy rates) during different sub-periods. It is found that this increased sharply during the GFC but has fallen back in recent years. In the case of the ECB the introduction of the new €-STR benchmark in particular appears to have made monetary policy more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the economy of Hong Kong through the lens of a small open economy DSGE model with a currency board exchange rate commitment. It assumes flexible prices and a banking system that provides credit to entrepreneurial household firms; the money supply is fully backed by reserves under the currency board. We estimate and evaluate the model by Indirect Inference over the sample period of 1994Q1-2018Q3; we find that it matches the data behaviour as represented by a VAR. We examined the economy's volatility using bootstrapping of the model innovations, under both the estimated currency board model and a standard alternative regime with floating exchange rate and a Taylor rule; we found that Hong Kong welfare is higher in the currency board, which substantially reduces output volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim at explaining a specific type of heterogeneity in the euro area pertaining to the diverging responses of countries and sectors to the European Central Bank's Unconventional Monetary Policy. Equipped with stock markets indices of 17 sectors for each euro area country, we first preform an event-study analysis to assess the reaction of the markets. Next, we regress the responses on a set of country-specific drivers. Our main findings show that variables related to the nature of banking industry (e.g. cost-to-income, return on assets), macroeconomic environment (e.g. gross debt) and macroprudential policy all contribute to observe diverging responses to ECB's monetary policies. While some sectors and countries responded more negatively than positively to the policies, the Unconventional Monetary Policy impacts the markets positively on average. A policy implication is that the heterogeneous response calls for domestic structural reforms that should target the discrepancies in the banking and the macroeconomic environments across euro area countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the average treatment effect of inflation targeting on the likelihood of financial crisis with a large panel of countries over 1980–2017. To address the self-selection problem of inflation targeting, we adopt propensity score matching. Various matching estimators show consistent evidence that inflation targeting has significantly reduced the probability of a financial crisis. When decomposing financial crisis into various types, the effects are pronounced for the banking crisis, inflation crisis, external debt crisis, and stock crash. Our results are largely unaltered to a battery of robustness checks when controlling for legal origins, governance quality, financial development, capital account openness, fiscal balance, debt-to-GDP ratio, financial regulations, and central bank independence. This paper suggests that price-stability-oriented monetary policy frameworks, such as inflation targeting, also have non-negligible 'side effects' on financial stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the consequences of foreign exchange (FX) intervention in monetary policy under a managed floating regime. Focusing on China's FX intervention, we identify periods of strong and weak FX intervention using a Markov regime switching approach. We then evaluate quantity-based monetary policy rules using both regime switching reduced-form and structural estimations. In particular, monetary policy regimes obtained from the structural estimation match well with the previously identified intervention regimes. We find that the People's Bank of China has significant exchange rate stabilization incentives during periods of strong FX intervention, and that the monetary policy rule depends on the state of FX intervention. Furthermore, our estimations point to a trade-off between the central bank's internal and external policy targets in that strong FX intervention leads to weak responses to domestic GDP and inflation fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the Markov-switching model to analyse the transition probabilities and generalized method of moments (GMM) with Newey–West heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance estimators (HAC) to examine the continuity of monetary policies in different countries when the U.S. and China change their monetary policies. Our results indicate that the euro area's monetary authority continues to increase/decrease their money supply to stimulate/depress the economy. In Japan, long-term economic recession motivated the Japanese government to maintain a loose money supply. The continuity of Korea's monetary policy in expansionary states lasts up to 5.1 years. Besides, the outcomes show the implementation of U.S. quantitative easing (QE), overnight reverse repurchase agreement (RRP), and Chinese RRP policies have significant spillover effects on other nations. Particularly, the effects on the euro area are the largest. Furthermore, although the monetary policies of China and the euro area seem to move in opposite directions, they are interdependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy importance of non-core liabilities (bank liabilities other than equity and retail deposits) has risen to prominence in recent years with a number of studies highlighting it as a useful indicator of financial procyclicality and vulnerability. In this paper, we look at non-core liabilities in relation to its role in the transmission of monetary policy, particularly by examining how the interest rate channel of monetary policy is affected by non-deposit liabilities. We analyse this issue in the context of an emerging economy experience of Indonesia, which in recent years, has seen an increased reliance of its banking sector on non-core funding. Our investigation employs available bank-level data on non-core liabilities and lending rates in Indonesia over the period October 2011 to July 2016. We find that including non-core liabilities in the estimation has an effect, relative to the baseline, of stronger overall and immediate pass-through, albeit with a more sluggish adjustment towards the correction of disequilibrium in the next period. The overall effect is that non-core liabilities make the duration longer for the monetary policy rate to transmit to bank lending rates in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The funding mix of European firms is weighted heavily towards bank credit, which underscores the importance of efficient pass-through of monetary policy actions to lending rates faced by firms. Euro area pass-through has shifted from being relatively homogenous to being fragmented and incomplete since the financial crisis. Distressed loan books are a crisis hangover with direct implications for profitability, hampering banks ability to supply credit and lower loan pricing in response to reductions in the policy rate. This paper presents a parsimonious model to decompose the cost of lending and highlight the role of asset quality in diminishing pass-through. Using bank-level data over the period 2008-2014, we empirically test the implications of the model. We show that a one percentage point increase in the impairment ratio lowering short run pass-through by 3%. We find that banks with severely impaired balance sheets do not adjust their loan pricing in response to changes in the policy rate at all. We derive a measure of the hidden bad loan problem, the NPL gap, which we define as the excess of non-performing loans over impaired loans. We show that it played a significant role in the fragmentation of euro area pass-through post-crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent literature on monetary policy has dedicated considerable attention to modelling agents' processing of information about the future in real time. This paper contributes to this growing strand by investigating the implied differences in the so-called news shocks estimated from the standard New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model using the real-time data sets from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and the Federal Reserve's Greenbook (GB) forecasts. Alternative specifications with either the SPF or GB forecasts aim to delineate the differences in the private sector's and the Fed's expectations of future macroeconomic outcomes and identify the differences in their perception of news shocks. Our results indicate that while the demand news shocks have very similar distributions in the two datasets, the monetary and cost-push news shocks from the models estimated on the GB data tend to be larger than those from the SPF. These findings suggest that the Federal Reserve's forecasting methods allow for more variation in future outcomes than the SPF's. These findings mesh well with the extant literature on the superiority of the Fed's forecasts relative to the private sector's and provide a structural explanation for the source of this superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses how monetary policy outcomes affect fragility. Diving into the universe of the most prominent combinations of pursued monetary policy objectives across fragile settings, we examine the relationships between monetary policy and fragility, and find the combination of reduction of inflation and lower unemployment to be the one that delivers the highest payoff in terms of promoting peace and cohesion. Setting aside the challenges of monetary policy transmission, results from our analysis broadly confirm the above ‘winning’ combination, with low inflation as a primary desired outcome and low unemployment rate as a secondary one. We also carry out a series of robustness tests, which confirm our findings. Overall, our results lend credence to the importance of paying attention – in the context of reducing fragility – to monetary policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sri Lanka's monetary policy has evolved differently during and after a three-decade-long ethnic conflict. This paper empirically investigates effects of monetary policy shocks on Sri Lankan economy with particular focus on the strength of credit and exchange rate channels using a VAR model for 2003–2019 period. We find that: (i) monetary policy shocks have a significant and persistent impact on key macroeconomic variables even though several puzzling results emerge; (ii) the effects of monetary policy shocks are significant and more persistent in the post-conflict period than in the conflict period; (iii) a tight monetary policy effectively contains inflation in the post-conflict period; and (iv) interest rate and exchange rate channels play a dominant role while the credit channel responds with some lags in the post-conflict period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which variables have supported growth in the euro area over the last 30 years? Answering is challenging due to dimensionality problems caused by a large set of potential determinants, limited data availability, and the prospect of non-stationarity of some variables. We propose an atheoretical framework starting with a set of 35 real, financial, monetary, and institutional variables for nine of the initial euro area countries covering the period between 1990Q1 and 2019Q4. Using the Weighted-Average Least Squares method, we gather clues about which variables to select. We quantify the impact of various determinants of growth in the short and long runs. Our main findings are that institutional reforms, competitiveness, monetary policy and a decrease in systemic risk play a relevant role for long-run growth in the euro area. Surprisingly, the fiscal deficit is not an important factor, and neither is credit to households. Lower debt to GDP ratios are beneficial in the short run. Credit to firms has been an important factor for growth in core countries and an increase in global GDP spillovers positively to the euro area growth in a longer horizon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops two time-varying parameter uncovered interest parity (TVP-UIP) models and studies their validity in both developed and emerging countries. Compared to the traditional models, TVP-UIP models can successfully capture dynamic relationships and help to explain the UIP puzzle. Empirical results show that the coefficients vary substantially over time and the UIP relationship can be regarded as a dynamic equilibrium process especially in emerging economies. The UIP hypothesis holds in several periods and can be significantly affected by specific major events, such as the financial crises and the recovery policies in response to it, or the US monetary policy changes. The time-varying risk premium attracts great concern in the literature but only plays a limited role in this case. Moreover, the failure of UIP in some periods can be attributable to the persistence inherent in the data, which leads to a long-lasting re-establishment of the UIP relationship after a shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a survey data set that includes a large cross-section of currencies to test for the rationality of expectations in the foreign exchange market. Two standard tests are applied to the data. First, a test to determine if investors make systematic forecast errors. Second, a test to determine if investors use all available information efficiently when they make their forecasts. This paper's data set involves a more recent time period which saw more quiescent exchange rate changes than the 1980s. This paper finds that participants in the foreign exchange market do make systematic forecast errors and do not always use all available information when forecasting. This conclusion is similar to past research but is now extended to a broader range of currencies and more recent time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inflation rate is a key variable in many macroeconomic models that are used to guide policy analysts and lead to effective decisions. However, achieving this outcome depends, to a large extent, upon the validity of these macroeconomic models whose successes, in turn, critically depend on whether inflation is stationary or not. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of inflation in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries using both linear and non-linear tests. To add an extra layer of robustness to our results, we avoid the pitfalls of the econometrics of stationarity by applying the MS-ADF and Fourier ADF tests. After using a battery of tests, the analysis provides more reliable inferences on the question of whether the inflation rates of these countries are I(0) or I(1). The findings convincingly support the view that not only are the inflation rates of these countries non-linear, but they are also characterized by mean-reversion behaviour. The policy implication of our findings is that random shocks will not have permanent effects and that active monetary policies are not needed, as these effects will eventually disappear in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of an exchange rate based monetary policy rule for Singapore given the highly open nature of the economy has been empirically well documented in the literature. However, what is somewhat less recognized is that monetary policy in Singapore has historically been conducted in an asymmetric manner where there is willingness to allow for greater appreciation of the nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) during boom periods to curb inflation but not to implement a policy of depreciation during a downturn, i.e. a strong Singapore dollar (SSD) policy. We contribute to the literature by being one of the first to test the empirical validity of a SSD policy. We do so by estimating a Taylor style monetary policy rule (MPR) for Singapore with NEER as the main instrument of policy using monthly data for 2000 to 2019. Our empirical findings suggest that Singapore's MPR appears to react asymmetrically to inflation and output above a particular threshold but is predominantly concerned with inflation in the policy rule, offering evidence of a policy position consistent with SSD in that it allows for disproportionately higher NEER in boom periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underlying, or core, inflation is likely the most important variable for monetary policy. It is considered to be the optimal nominal anchor as it is stable, excludes relative price shocks, and reflects underlying trends in the behaviour of price-setters and demand conditions in the economy. Despite its importance, there is sparse literature on estimating and forecasting core inflation in South Africa, with the focus still on measuring it. This paper emphasizes predicting core inflation from time-varying parameter vector autoregressive models (TVP-VARs), factor-augmented VARs (FAVAR), and structural break models using quarterly data from 1981Q1 to 2013Q4. We use mean squared forecast errors (MSFE) and predictive likelihoods to evaluate the forecasts. In general, we find that (i) time-varying parameter models consistently outperform constant coefficient models (ii) small TVP-VARs outperform all other models; (iii) models with heteroscedastic errors do better than models with homoscedastic errors; and (iv) allowing for structural breaks does not improve the predictability of core inflation. Overall, our results imply that additional information on the growth rate of the economy and the interest rate is sufficient to forecast core inflation accurately, but the relationship between these three variables needs to be modelled in a time-varying fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional monetary policy rule describes a simple linear relationship between the domestic interest rate, inflation rate and output gap. An important extension to this rule is to incorporate the forward-looking behaviour of central banks, where it is assumed that they target an expected level of inflation instead of its current realised value. Using quarterly observations for the period 1993:1-2018:2, this paper investigates whether the conduct of monetary policy in Australia can be described by a forward-looking linear monetary policy rule, or by a nonlinear forward-looking monetary policy rule. In particular, the nonlinear forward-looking monetary policy rule is analysed in a regime-switching framework using a smooth logistic transition regression model. While the results show that the conventional forward-looking linear monetary policy rule describes the application of monetary policy in Australia reasonably well, the interest rate setting behaviour of the RBA is best described by a nonlinear forward-looking monetary policy rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether there is an asymmetry in the effects of positive versus negative and small versus big money supply shocks, and whether the effects of the shocks on output and prices vary over the business cycles in the case of Turkey. Negative shocks to money are found to have greater output and smaller price effects compared to the effects of positive shocks, irrespective of the initial state of the economy. It is also found that monetary shocks of different size affect output growth and inflation rates proportionately. These findings can be interpreted as evidence for the view that the short run aggragate supply curve is convex in such a country like Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides some new evidence on the credibility of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS). The study differs from previous research in the literature in three main respects. First, the main contribution is the use of several credibility indicators, some of which have never been applied before to all of the currencies under study. This allows one to strengthen the results obtained in this paper. Second, a longer period than that of previous studies is analysed, covering the complete EMS history. Third, a comparison has been made of the prediction qualities of the different indicators, in order to explore their ability to capture the main ERM events (realignments, changes in the fluctuations bands and speculative pressures). Fourth, the indicators are applied to the experience of the new, modified ERM linking the currencies of non-euro area Member States to the euro, showing the relevance of this approach in the near future with the enlargement of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the performance of the New Keynesian IS curve for the G7 countries is assessed. It is found that there is an IS puzzle for both the purely backward-looking as well as for the forward-looking IS curve. The real interest rate does not have a significantly negative effect on the output gap. Based on an extended specification of the IS curve, also including asset prices and monetary aggregates, a significantly negative interest rate effect on aggregate demand is found for all countries. This finding suggests that a richer specification of the IS curve in empirical work may be necessary in order to obtain an unbiased estimate of the effect of monetary policy on aggregate demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses monetary transmission mechanism in Turkey using a small structural macroeconomic model. The core equations of the model consist of aggregate demand, wage-price setting, uncovered interest rate parity, foreign sector and a monetary policy rule. The aim of the paper is to analyse the disinflation path, the output gap, the output level, the exchange rate and the interest rate, and also the output-inflation variance frontier of the economy under various scenarios. The first scenario assumes that a standard Taylor rule is implemented as the policy rule. In the alternative scenario, instead of the standard Taylor rule, the MCI, Monetary Conditions Index--combination of the changes in the short-term real interest rate and in the real effective exchange rate in a single variable--is used as a policy instrument. The results indicate that the economy stabilizes much more quickly and shows significantly less volatility under this new setting. Therefore, the paper concludes that the policymakers should consider using MCI as an instrument when conducting monetary policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of a monetary policy shock on output, prices and the exchange rate for Ireland during its participation in the EMS. The paper draws on recent techniques used in the structural vector autoregression literature. Results suggest that an exogenous temporary increase in the short-term interest rate leads to a decline in output and prices with the latter responding more sluggishly. In addition, a higher interest rate leads to an immediate appreciation of the domestic exchange rate and a subsequent depreciation of the currency. Exchange rate or forward bias puzzle, which are prevalent in other studies, are not found. The robustness of these results is checked under a number of alternative identifications schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparison in the changes of Hong Kong macroeconomic fundamental variables before and after its currency was 'pegged' to the US dollar in October 1983. Using a simple method from Flood and Rose (1995) and Baxter and Stockman (1989), this paper compares the volatilities of all aggregate variables used by those investigators in so far as these data are available for Hong Kong. The results show, contrary to the dominating empirical literature for the G-7 countries, that the volatilities of more than half of the nominal and real variables under the float are significantly higher than those under the link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is still considerable controversy about the interest rate responsiveness of private saving in developing countries. This paper provides recent evidence based on individual country estimations for a sample of 16 countries. The model used here follows the 'Euler equation approach' and includes rational and forward-looking permanent income consumers together with liquidity-constrained consumers. Overall, for this sample of countries the results obtained in this paper offer new evidence of a low responsiveness of saving to changes in the interest rate. My results also support a strong role of liquidity constraints in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of cash flow as a determinant of investment in fixed capital at the firm level. A criterion was established for classifying firms as cash flow constrained or unconstrained on a year by year basis. Firms were then assigned to one of these two categories. Data for a sample of 58 Australian firms for the period 1974-75 to 1989-90 were used to estimate separate regressions, incorporating a common set of facilitating and incentive variables, for constrained and unconstrained cases. The results suggest that the investment behaviour of firms when they are financially constrained exhibits a greater sensitivity to cash flow than that of firms when they are unconstrained. In addition, incentive variables such as Tobin's 'Q' and sales growth only have an explanatory role when firms are unconstrained. The implications of these findings for monetary policy are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to account for currency substitution, the exchange rate is included in the demand for money. More recent studies have demonstrated that exchange rate changes could have asymmetric effects on the demand for money or domestic currency. In this paper, we consider the experiences of 18 African countries and show that in most countries, indeed exchange rate changes have short-run asymmetric effects on the demand for money. However, short-run effects translate to long-run asymmetric effects only in a limited number of African countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regarding the forecasting of real-time data, it is assumed that the third quarter release produces the best forecasts since it includes data from new and revised sources, which this paper finds is not necessarily the case. There seems to be a benchmark effect when estimating the local nonparametric regressions and the forecasts of real-time PCE and core PCE when examining the four benchmark periods beginning in 1996:Q1, 1999:Q4, 2003:Q4, and 2009:Q3. There is a benchmark effect with respect to the estimated local nonparametric slopes with the demarcation being at the 2003:Q4 benchmark, which is also the demarcation for the forecasting results. For the benchmark revisions periods of 1996:Q1 and 1999:Q4, the second quarter real-time data releases produce the smaller RMSE and for the benchmark revisions of 2003:Q4 and 2009:Q3, the third quarter real-time data releases produce forecasts with smaller RMSE approximately 58% and 60% of the time, respectively. Abbreviations: PCE, Personal Consumption Expenditures; KWLS, Kernel Weighted Least Squares; "V_" as a prefix stand for vintage, i.e. V_2003:Q4 is vintage 2003:Q4, which means that the data sample ends in 2003: Q3; IRSC, integrated residual squares criterion; NPISH, Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households; SNA, System of Accounts; RMSE, Root Mean Square Error; MAE, Mean Absolute Error; NAICS, North American Industry Classification System; SIC, Standard Industrial Classification; ARSC, Average Residual Squares Criterion; I-O, Input - Output; EIA, Energy Information Administration; ATM, Automated Teller Machines; BEA, Bureau of Economic Analysis; SNA, System of Accounts [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies Canadian fiscal and monetary policy regime changes that could influence the services of money. It is argued that if these policy regime changes were not incorporated in the estimation of demand for real balances, the resulting estimate would be biased and unstable. Using Canadian monthly data for the January 1975 to June 2001 period, the paper estimates a standard demand-for-money (M1) function with and without these policy regime changes. It was found the demand for money in Canada is stable over the short- and long-run periods when these policy regime changes are incorporated and the estimated coefficients have correct signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]