Search

We investigate the transmission of monetary policy to investment using Norwegian administrative data. We have two main findings. First, financially constrained firms are more responsive to monetary policy, but the effect is modest; suggesting that firm heterogeneity plays a minor role in monetary transmission. Second, we disentangle the investment channel of monetary policy into direct effects from interest rate changes and indirect general equilibrium effects. We find that the investment channel of monetary policy is due almost exclusively to direct effects. The two results imply that a representative firm framework with investment adjustment frictions in most cases provides a sufficiently detailed description of the investment channel of monetary policy.

This paper presents a novel method to estimate the depreciation rate of durable goods using a combination of identified marginal and average spending shares. We apply our method to Chinese spending responses to disposable income changes induced by monetary policy in 2008-2009. The marginal spending response is 0.40. Durable goods make up about 45% of this marginal spending response. By combining this marginal spending share on durables with an average spending share of 14%, we estimate the annual depreciation rate of durables in China to be 0.16.

Households’ debt-to-income ratios change due to (a) primary deficits or (b) "Fisher effects" from interest costs, income growth, and inflation. With Norwegian micro data, we estimate how monetary policy affects household indebtedness by debt levels. In response to interest rate hikes, channel (a) pulls debt-to-income ratios down while channel (b) pushes debt-to-income ratios up. Channel (a) dominates even among highly indebted households where Fisher effects are forceful. However, among indebted households with high unemployment risk, we find no discernible effect on debt-to-income ratios, indicating that monetary policy has limited potential to contain debt where the largest risks are concentrated.

Denne rapporten er skrevet på oppdrag for Sysselsettingsutvalget. Sysselsettingsutvalget skal analysere utviklingen i sysselsettingen i Norge og foreslå tiltak for å øke sysselsettingen. Arbeidet er delt opp i to faser. Fase én var ferdig da ekspertgruppen la fram sine forslag for økt sysselsetting 28. mars 2019. I fase to er utvalget utvidet og inkluderer partene i arbeidslivet. Fase to begynte 5. april 2019. I denne rapporten analyseres hvordan markedsmakt og ulikhet kan påvirke den økonomiske aktiviteten, herunder sysselsettingen. Prosjektet ble satt i gang før utbredelsen av koronaviruset i Norge

We use sizeable lottery prizes in Norwegian administrative panel data to characterize households’ marginal propensities to consume (MPCs). Our main contribution is to document how MPCs vary with household characteristics and prize size, and how lottery prizes are spent and saved over time. We find that spending spikes in the year of winning, and reverts to normal within 5 years. Controlling for all items on households’ balance sheets and characteristics such as education and income, it is the amount won, age and liquid assets that vary systematically with MPCs. Low-liquidity winners of the smallest prizes (around USD 1,500) are estimated to spend all within the year of winning. The same estimate for high-liquidity winners of large prizes (USD 8,300-150,000) is slightly below one half. While the consumption responses we find are high, their systematic relations with observables point toward well-understood mechanisms from existing theory and should be useful to quantify structural models.