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With short-term interest rates at the zero lower bound, forward guidance has become a key tool for central bankers, and yet we know little about its effectiveness. This paper first empirically documents the impact of forward guidance announcements on a broad cross section of financial markets data and professional forecasts. We find that Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements containing forward guidance had heterogeneous effects depending on the other content of the statement. We show that once we control for these other elements, forward guidance had, on average, positive and meaningful effects on output and inflation expectations. Using this benchmark, we then show that standard medium-scale DSGE models tend to grossly overestimate the impact of forward guidance on the macroeconomy, a phenomenon we call the “forward guidance puzzle.” We explain why this is the case and show that incorporating a perpetual youth structure into the benchmark provides a possible resolution to the puzzle.

When financial contracts are not fully enforceable and firms observe their own nominal sales before the observation of the aggregate nominal price, the optimal financial contract is not fully indexed to inflation. Because of the limited nominal indexation, which is endogenous in the model, unanticipated inflation affects aggregate investment and future economic activity. The macroeconomic volatility induced by price uncertainty, however, is not monotone: it first increases and then decreases with nominal price uncertainty. We also show that the degree of nominal indexation declines with real idiosyncratic volatility and the impact of an inflation shock decreases with nominal indexation. Using firm-level data from Canada, we find that both predictions are supported by the data.

In this paper, we use an open economy model of the United Kingdom to examine the extent to which monetary policy should respond to movements in sectoral inflation rates. To do this we construct a Generalised Taylor model that takes specific account of the sectoral make up of the consumer price index (CPI), where the sectors are based on the COICOP classification the UK CPI microdata. We calibrate the model for each sector using the UK CPI microdata and model the sectoral shocks that drive sectoral inflation rates as white noise processes, as in the UK data. We find that a policy rule that allows for different responses to inflation in different sectors outperforms a rule which just targets aggregate CPI. However, the gain is small and comes from partially looking through movements in aggregate inflation driven by movements in petrol price inflation, which is volatile and tends not to reflect underlying inflationary pressure.

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.

To analyse the interdependence between monetary and fiscal policy during a financial crisis, we develop an open-economy DSGE model with monetary and fiscal policy as well as financial markets in a continuous-time framework based on stochastic differential equations. Monetary policy is modelled using both a standard and a modified Taylor rule and fiscal policy is modelled as either expansionary or austere. In addition, we differentiate between open economies and monetary union members. We find evidence that the modified Taylor rule notably reduces the likelihood that the financial market crisis affects the real economy. But if we assume that households are averse with respect to outstanding government debt, we find that a combination of expansionary monetary policy and austere fiscal policy provides better stabilisation of both domestic and foreign economies in terms of both output and inflation. In the case of a monetary union, we find that stabilisation of output in the country where the financial shock originates is no longer as easy and, in terms of prices, there is now deflation in the country where the crisis originated and a positive inflation rate in the other country.

Despite the distinctive character of the Austrian approach to «microfoundations for macroeconomics», the literature on free banking contains a number of arguments which make use of game-theoretic concepts and models such as the well-known Prisoner’s Dilemma model. While there can be no general a priori presumption against the possible usefulness of game-theoretic concepts for Austrian theorizing, in the context of the debate on free banking such concepts and models have been used with varying degrees of perspicacity. One example which is elaborated in the paper is concerned with the interaction configuration between independent banks in a fractional-reserve free banking system, which has sometimes been modeled as a One-Shot Prisoner’s Dilemma game. This conceptualization does not provide a sufficient argument for the in-concert overexpansion thesis, nor for the thesis that fractional-reserve free banking will tend to lead to the establishment of a central bank. The author drops the implicit assumption that there exists a one-to-one correspondence between the outcome matrix and the utility matrix. When it is acknowledged that banks in a fractional-reserve free banking system need not necessarily adopt a «myopic», self-regarding perspective but may recognize the long-run harmony of interests between the banking sector and society at large, a different conceptualization and a different matrix representation emerge. Key words: Economic Mechanism Design; Business Cycle Theory; Prisoner’s Dilemma; Free Banking. JEL codes: D01, E31, E32, E42, E52, E58, E66, G18, K39. Resumen: A pesar del carácter distintivo del enfoque austríaco de las «microfundaciones para la macroeconomía», la literatura sobre la banca libre contiene algunos argumentos que recurren a los conceptos y modelos de la teoría de juegos tales como el conocido modelo Dilema del Prisionero. A pesar de que no puede existir una presunción a priori sobre la posible utilidad de conceptos de la teoría de juegos para las teorías austríacas, en el contexto del debate sobre la banca libre tales conceptos y modelos han sido manejados con distintos grados de perspicacia. Un ejemplo elaborado en el documento comenta la configuración de interacción entre los bancos independientes en un sistema de banca libre con reserva fraccionaria, que a veces ha sido modelado como un juego de Dilema del Prisionero One-Shot. Esta conceptualización no ofrece suficientes argumentos para la tesis de la sobreexpansión in-concert, ni para la tesis de que un sistema de banca libre con reserva fraccionaria tendería a la creación de un banco central. El autor abandona la asunción implícita de que existe una correspondencia de uno a uno entre la matriz de resultado y la matriz de utilidad. Al reconocerse que los bancos en un sistema de banca libre con reserva fraccionaria no deben adoptar necesariamente una perspectiva «miope» y egoísta, pero pueden reconocer la armonía de intereses a largo plazo entre el sector bancario y la sociedad en general, surgen una conceptualización y representación de la matriz distintas. Palabras clave: Diseño de mecanismo económico; Teoría del ciclo económico; Dilema del Prisionero; Banca libre. Códigos JEL: D01, E31, E32, E42, E52, E58, E66, G18, K39.

The unconventional monetary policy of forward guidance operates through the management of expectations about future paths of interest rates. This paper examines the link between expectations formation and the effectiveness of forward guidance. A standard New Keynesian model is extended to include forward guidance shocks in the monetary policy rule. Agents form expectations about future macroeconomic variables via either the standard rational expectations hypothesis or a more plausible theory of expectations formation called adaptive learning. The results show the efficacy of forward guidance depends on the manner in which agents form their expectations. In response to forward guidance, the paths of the output gap and inflation under adaptive learning overshoot and undershoot those implied by rational expectations. The adaptive learning impulse responses of the endogenous variables to a forward guidance shock exhibit more persistence before and after the forward guidance shock has been realized upon the economy. During an economic crisis (e.g. a recession), the assumption of rational expectations overstates the effects of forward guidance relative to adaptive learning. Specifically, the output gap is higher under rational expectations than adaptive learning. Thus, if monetary policy is based on a model with rational expectations, which is the standard assumption in the macroeconomic literature, the results of forward guidance could be potentially misleading.

We study optimal monetary policy in an environment in which firms' pricing and production decisions are subject to informational frictions. Our framework accommodates multiple formalizations of these frictions, including dispersed private information, sticky information, and certain forms of inattention. An appropriate notion of constrained efficiency is analyzed alongside the Ramsey policy problem. Similarly to the New-Keynesian paradigm, efficiency obtains with a subsidy that removes the monopoly distortion and a monetary policy that replicates flexible-price allocations. Nevertheless, "divine coincidence" breaks down and full price stability is no more optimal. Rather, the optimal policy is to "lean against the wind", that is, to target a negative correlation between the price level and real economic activity.

We study a class of infinite-horizon nonlinear dynamic economic models in which preferences, technology and laws of motion for exogenous variables can change over time either deterministically or stochastically, according to a Markov process with time-varying transition probabilities, or both. The studied models are nonstationary in the sense that the decision and value functions are time-dependent, and they cannot be generally solved by conventional solution methods. We introduce a quantitative framework, called extended function path (EFP), for calibrating, solving, simulating and estimating such models. We apply EFP to analyze a collection of challenging applications that do not admit stationary Markov equilibria, including growth models with anticipated parameters shifts and drifts, unbalanced growth under capital augmenting technological progress, anticipated regime switches, deterministically time-varying volatility and seasonal fluctuations. Also, we show an example of estimation and calibration of parameters in an unbalanced growth model using data on the U.S. economy. Examples of MATLAB code are provided.

High-frequency changes in interest rates around FOMC announcements are an important tool for identifying the effects of monetary policy on asset prices and the macroeconomy. However, some recent studies have questioned both the exogeneity and the relevance of these monetary policy surprises as instruments, especially for estimating the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy shocks. For example, monetary policy surprises are correlated with macroeconomic and financial data that is publicly available prior to the FOMC announcement. The authors address these concerns in two ways: First, they expand the set of monetary policy announcements to include speeches by the Fed Chair, which essentially doubles the number and importance of announcements in our dataset. Second, they explain the predictability of the monetary policy surprises in terms of the “Fed response to news” channel of Bauer and Swanson (2021) and account for it by orthogonalizing the surprises with respect to macroeconomic and financial data. Their subsequent reassessment of the effects of monetary policy yields two key results: First, estimates of the high-frequency effects on financial markets are largely unchanged. Second, estimates of the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy are substantially larger and more significant than what most previous empirical studies have found.

We study how monetary policy should respond to shocks which permanently alter the steady state structure of the economy. In such a case monetary policy affects not only the short run misallocations due to nominal rigidities, but also relative prices which stimulate reallocation of capital. We consider a permanent and negative shock to export revenues that requires a larger traded sector and a smaller non-traded sector in the new steady state. This reallocation calls for a change in relative prices during the transition, but may also lead to a period of high unemployment. We show how an appropriate monetary policy could mitigate the welfare costs of the transition by allowing the exchange rate to depreciate, and thereby allowing inflation to increase in the short run. Traditional monetary policy regimes, such as inflation targeting or a fixed exchange rate, would imply high unemployment and inefficiently slow transition. Stabilizing nominal wage growth, in contrast, would be close to the welfare-optimal monetary policy.

The authors study the impact of dissent in the ECB‘s Governing Council on uncertainty surrounding households‘ inflation expectations. They conduct a randomized controlled trial using the Bundesbank Online Panel Households. Participants are provided with alternative information treatments concerning the vote in the Council, e.g. unanimity and dissent, and are asked to submit probabilistic inflation expectations. The results show that the vote is informative. Households revise their subjective inflation forecast after receiving information about the vote. Dissenting votes cause a wider individual distribution of future inflation. Hence, dissent increases households‘ uncertainty about inflation. This effect is statistically significant once the authors allow for the interaction between the treatments and individual characteristics of respondents. The results are robust with respect to alternative measures of forecast uncertainty and hold for different model specifications. The findings suggest that providing information about dissenting votes without additional information about the nature of dissent is detrimental to coordinating household expectations.

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.

For the academic audience, this paper presents the outcome of a well-identified, large change in the monetary policy rule from the lens of a standard New Keynesian model and asks whether the model properly captures the effects. For policymakers, it presents a cautionary tale of the dismal effects of ignoring basic macroeconomics. The Turkish monetary policy experiment of the past decade, stemming from a belief of the government that higher interest rates cause higher inflation, provides an unfortunately clean exogenous variance in the policy rule. The mandate to keep rates low, and the frequent policymaker turnover orchestrated by the government to enforce this, led to the Taylor principle not being satisfied and eventually a negative coeffcient on inflation in the policy rule. In such an environment, was the exchange rate still a random walk? Was inflation anchored? Does the “standard model”” suffice to explain the broad contours of macroeconomic outcomes in an emerging economy with large identifying variance in the policy rule? There are no surprises for students of open-economy macroeconomics; the answers are no, no, and yes.

This paper examines real exchange rate responses to shocks in exchange rate determinants for fourteen Asian developing countries. The analysis is based on a panel structural vector error correction model, and the shocks are identified using sign and zero restrictions. We find that trade liberalization generates permanent depreciation, and higher government consumption causes persistent appreciation. Traded-sector productivity gains induce appreciation but their effects are not immediate and last only for a few years. Real exchange rate responses to unexpected monetary tightening are consistent with the long-run neutrality of money. The evidence suggests that trade liberalization and government consumption have a strong effect on real exchange rates, while the effects of traded-sector productivity shocks are much weaker.

This paper establishes vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) models for Malaysian monetary policy analysis by efficiently identifying and simultaneously estimating the model parameters using full information maximum likelihood. The monetary literature is largely dominated by vector autoregressive (VAR) and structural vector autoregressive (SVAR).models, and to the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to use VARMA modelling to investigate monetary policy. Malaysia is an interesting small open economy to study because of the capital control measures imposed by the government following the 1997 Asian financial crisis. A comparison of the impulse responses generated by these three models for the pre- and post-crisis periods indicates that the VARMA model impulse responses are consistent with prior expectations based on economic theories and policies pursued by the Malaysian government, particularly in the post-crisis period. Furthermore, uncovering the way in which various intermediate channels work would help Bank Negara Malaysia to steer the economy in the right direction so that monetary policy can still remain an effective policy measure in achieving sustainable economic growth and price stability.

This paper investigates international responses of key macroeconomic variables, particularly real exchange rates, to simultaneous shocks to productivity in the traded sector in eight Asian emerging and developing countries. We use panel estimation techniques to construct component submodels in a thirty country global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model. The GVAR approach can account for interaction among all countries and capture many potential international transmission channels. We identify the shocks by using sign restricted impulse responses. We find that increases in traded-sector productivity in Asian developing countries lead to a real appreciation of the domestic currencies, in line with the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis. Inflation also increases in many Asian developing countries. After the shocks, nontraded sector productivity in the US and other developed countries increases, suggesting that there is a compositional shift in their production, away from the traded goods toward the nontraded goods. This allows productivity in the nontraded sector to increase. Further, the traded sector productivity shocks in Asia stimulate international trade in most countries.

Event studies show that the Federal Reserve’s announcements of forward guidance and large Scale asset purchases had large and desired effects on asset prices but they do not tell us how long such effects last. Wright (2012) used a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) to argue that unconventional policies have very transient effects on bond yields, with half-lives of 3 to 6 months. The present paper shows, however, that the SVAR is very possibly misspecified, structurally unstable, forecasts very poorly and therefore delivers spurious inference. In addition, the implied in-sample return predictability from the SVAR greatly exceeds a level consistent with rational asset pricing and reasonable risk aversion. Restricted models that respect more plausible asset return predictability are more stable and imply that the unconventional monetary policy shocks were fairly persistent. Estimates of the dynamic effects of shocks should respect the limited predictability in asset prices.

We show that discretionary policymaking can lead to multiple rational-expectations equilibria where the central bank responds to inflation sentiments, which are driven by past endogenous variables but are unrelated to current economic fundamentals. Some of these equilibria have favourable consequences for welfare, resulting in outcomes superior even to those achieved under timeless-perspective commitment. Inflation sentiments also provide a novel explanation for the sizeable macroeconomic fluctuations in many countries in the 1970s. Compared to interest-rate rules violating the Taylor principle, our explanation has the advantage of providing a rationale for why central banks that are confronted with inefficiently large macroeconomic fluctuations may not be able to deviate to new policies with superior macroeconomic outcomes. Moreover, we show that our approach provides an alternative explanation for the high degree of inflation persistence found in the data.

Expectations play a crucial role in modern macroeconomic models. We replace the common assumption of rational expectations in a New Keynesian framework by the assumption that expectations are formed according to a heuristics switching model that has performed well in earlier work. We show how the economy behaves under these assumptions with a special focus on inflation volatility. Contrary to comparable models based on full rationality, the behavioral model predicts that inflation volatility can be lowered if the central bank reacts to the output gap in addition to inflation. We test the opposing theoretical predictions with a learning to forecast experiment. The experimental results support the behavioral model and the claim that reacting to the output gap in addition to inflation can indeed lower inflation volatility.

In menu cost models, real effects of aggregate nominal shocks are sensitive to unobserved characteristics of price setting. The standard way to calibrate key pricing parameters is to match the cross-sectional distribution of price changes. We argue that this unconditional distribution contains insufficient information for a clean identification. In particular, it is consistent with parameterizations with contradictory aggregate implications: one generating sizeable real effects, the other effective money neutrality. We argue, instead, that price change observations conditional on aggregate shocks can be sufficiently informative. To show this, we utilize new micro level evidence on price responses to large value-added tax shocks. We present a new menu cost model with idiosyncratic shocks and show that our model successfully predicts the magnitude of the observed price responses, outperforming alternative pricing models. The new model generates small real effects of monetary policy shocks implying that imposing the menu cost assumption alone fails to explain robust time-series evidence finding the opposite.

Appointing Rogoff's (1985) conservative central banker improves welfare if the economy is subject to large contractionary shocks and the policy rate occasionally falls to the zero lower bound (ZLB). In an economy with occasionally binding ZLB constraints, the anticipation of future ZLB episodes creates a trade-off between inflation and output stabilization. As a consequence, inflation systematically falls below target even when the policy rate is above zero. A conservative central banker mitigates this deflationary bias away from the ZLB, improving allocations both at and away from the ZLB through expectations.

This paper assesses the transmission of monetary policy in a large Bayesian vector autoregression based on the approach proposed by Banbura, Giannone and Reichlin (2010). The paper analyzes the impact of monetary policy shocks in the United States and Canada not only on a range of domestic aggregates, trade flows, and exchange rates, but also foreign investment income. The analysis provides three main results. First, a surprise monetary policy action has a statistically and economically significant impact on both gross and net foreign investment income flows in both countries. Against the background of growing foreign wealth and investment income, this result provides preliminary evidence that foreign balance-sheet channels might play an increasingly important role for monetary transmission. Second, the impact of monetary policy on foreign investment income flows differs considerably across asset categories and over time, suggesting that the investment instruments and the currency denomination of a country’s foreign assets and liabilities are potentially relevant for the way in which monetary policy affects the domestic economy. Finally, the results support existing evidence on the effectiveness of large vector autoregressions and the Bayesian shrinkage approach in addressing the curse of dimensionality and eliminating price and exchange rate puzzles.

This paper revisits the benefits of explicitly announcing an inflation target for the con- duct of monetary policy in the framework of an agent-based model (ABM). This framework offers a flexible tool for modeling heterogeneity among individual agents and their bounded rationality, and to emphasize, on this basis, the role of learning in macroeconomic dynamics. We consider that those three features (heterogeneity, bounded rationality, and learning) are particularly relevant if one desires to question the rationale for the monetary authorities to be transparent about the inflation target, and to achieve credibility. Indeed, the inflation targeting’s potential role in anchoring inflation expectations and stabilizing the inflation and the economy can be analyzed more realistically if we do not assume a representative agent framework based on substantial rationality in behaviors and expectations. Our results show that a dynamic loop between credibility and success can arise, and stabilize inflation, but only in the case of a learning environment that corresponds to a moderate degree in heterogeneity regarding the behavior and decisions of individual agents. In a more general way, we analyze, using this ABM, different assumptions about the nature of the economic volatility, and the degree of disclosure of the target.

We test for bias and efficiency of the ECB inflation forecasts using a confidential dataset of ECB macroeconomic quarterly projections. We investigate whether the properties of the forecasts depend on the level of inflation, by distinguishing whether the inflation observed by the ECB at the time of forecasting is above or below the target. The forecasts are unbiased and efficient on average, however there is evidence of state dependence. In particular, the ECB tends to overpredict (underpredict) inflation at intermediate forecast horizons when inflation is below (above) target. The magnitude of the bias is larger when inflation is above the target. These results hold even after accounting for errors in the external assumptions. We also find evidence of inefficiency, in the form of underreaction to news, but only when inflation is above the target. Our findings bear important implications for the ECB forecasting process and ultimately for its communication strategy.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the intense debate about secular stagnation will become even more important. Empirical estimates of equilibrium real interest rates are so far mostly limited to advanced economies, since no statistical procedure suitable for a large set of countries is available. This is surprising, as equilibrium rates have strong policy implications in emerging markets and developing economies as well; current estimates of the global equilibrium rate rely on only a few countries; and estimates for a more diverse set of countries can improve understanding of the drivers. This paper proposes a model and estimation strategy that decompose ex ante real interest rates into a permanent and transitory component even with short samples and high volatility. This is done with an unobserved component local level stochastic volatility model, which is used to estimate equilibrium rates for 50 countries with Bayesian methods. Equilibrium rates were lower in emerging markets and developing economies than in advanced economies in the 1980s, similar in the 1990s, and have been higher since 2000. In line with economic integration and rising global capital markets, synchronization has been rising over time and is higher among advanced economies. Equilibrium rates of countries with stronger trade linkages and similar demographic and economic trends are more synchronized.

The recently observed disconnect between inflation and economic activity can be explained by the interplay between the zero lower bound (ZLB) and the costs of external financing. In normal times, credit spreads and the nominal interest rate balance out; factor costs dominate firms' marginal costs. When nominal rates are constrained, larger spreads can more than offset the effect of lower factor costs and induce only moderate inflation responses. The Phillips curve is hence flat at the ZLB, but features a positive slope in normal times and thus a hockey stick shape. Via this mechanism, forward guidance may induce deflationary effects.

This paper aims at an improved understanding of the relationship between monetary policy and racial inequality. We investigate the distributional effects of monetary policy in a unified framework, linking monetary policy shocks both to earnings and wealth differentials between black and white households. Specifically, we show that, although a more accommodative monetary policy increases employment of black households more than white households, the overall effects are small. At the same time, an accommodative monetary policy shock exacerbates the wealth difference between black and white households, because black households own less financial assets that appreciate in value. Over multi-year time horizons, the employment effects are substantially smaller than the countervailing portfolio effects. We conclude that there is little reason to think that accommodative monetary policy plays a significant role in reducing racial inequities in the way often discussed. On the contrary, it may well accentuate inequalities for extended periods.

The secular decline in the equilibrium real interest rate observed over the past decades has materially limited the room for policy-rate reductions in recessions, and has led to a marked increase in the incidence of episodes where policy rates are likely to be at, or near, the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates. Using the ECB's New Area-Wide Model, we show that, if unaddressed, the effective lower bound can cause substantial costs in terms of worsened macroeconomic performance, as rejected in negative biases in inflation and economic activity, as well as heightened macroeconomic volatility. These costs can be mitigated by the use of nonstandard instruments, notably the joint use of interest-rate forward guidance and large-scale asset purchases. When considering alternatives to inflation targeting, we find that make-up strategies such as price-level targeting and average-inflation targeting can, if they are well-understood by the private sector, largely undo the negative biases and heightened volatility induced by the effective lower bound.

Using the exact wording of the ECB’s definition of price-stability, we started a representative online survey of German citizens in January 2019 that is designed to measure long-term inflation expectations and the credibility of the inflation target. Our results indicate that credibility has decreased in our sample period, particularly in the course of the deep recession implied by the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, even though inflation rates in Germany have been clearly below 2% for several years, credibility has declined mainly because Germans increasingly expect that inflation will be much higher than 2% over the medium term. We investigate how inflation expectations and the impact of the pandemic depend on personal characteristics including age, gender, education, income, and political attitude.

We explore the impact of low and negative monetary policy rates in core world economies on bank lending in four small open economies – Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic and Norway – using confidential bank-level data. Our results show that the impact on lending in these small open economies depends on the interest rate level in the core. When interest rates are high, monetary policy cuts in core economies can reduce credit supply in small open economies. In contrast, when interest rates in core economies are low, further expansionary monetary policy increases lending in small open economies, consistent with an international bank lending channel. These results have important policy implications, suggesting that central banks in small open economies should watch for the impact of potential regime switches in core economies’ monetary policy when rates shift to and from the very low end of the distribution.

By focusing on the cost conditions at issuance, I find that not only the Covid-19 pandemic effects were different across bonds and firms at different stages, but also that the market composition was significantly affected, collapsing on investment- grade bonds, a segment in which the share of bonds eligible to the ECB corporate programmes strikingly increased from 15% to 40%. At the same time the high-yield segment shrunk to almost disappear at 4%. In addition to a market segmentation along the bond grade and the eligibility to the ECB programmes, another source of risk detected in the pricing mechanism is the weak resilience to pandemic: the premium requested is around 30 basis points and started to be priced only after the early containment actions taken by the national authorities. On the contrary, I do not find evidence supporting an increased risk for corporations headquartered in countries with a reduced fiscal space, nor the existence of a premium in favour of green bonds, which should be the backbone of a possible "green recovery".

We assess the effect and the timing of the corporate arm of the ECB quantitative easing (CSPP) on corporate bond issuance. Because of several contemporaneous mea- sures, to isolate the programme effects we rely on one key eligibility feature: the euro denomination of newly issued bonds. We find that the significant increase in bonds issuance by eligible firms is due to the CSPP and that this effect took at least six months to unfold. This result holds even when comparing firms with similar ratings, thus providing evidence that unconventional monetary policy can foster a financing diversification regardless of firms' risk profile. We also highlight the impact of the programme on the real economic activity. The evidence suggests that while all firms increased investment in capital expenditures and intangible assets, the CSPP induced eligible firms to invest in marketable and equity securities, to repurchase their own stocks, to hold cash and to carry out short-term investment.

Expectations about economic variables vary systematically across genders. In the domain of inflation, women have persistently higher expectations than men. We argue that traditional gender roles are a significant factor in generating this gender expectations gap as they expose women and men to different economic signals in their daily lives. Using unique data on the participation of men and women in household grocery chores, their resulting exposure to price signals, and their inflation expectations, we document a tight link between the gender expectations gap and the distribution of grocery shopping duties. Because grocery prices are highly volatile, and consumers focus disproportionally on positive price changes, frequent exposure to grocery prices increases perceptions of current inflation and expectations of future inflation. The gender expectations gap is largest in households whose female heads are solely responsible for grocery shopping, whereas no gap arises in households that split grocery chores equally between men and women. Our results indicate that gender differences in inflation expectations arise due to social conditioning rather than through differences in innate abilities, skills, or preferences.

Since 2000 U.S. inflation has remained both below target and silent to domestic slack and monetary interventions. A trend-cycle BVAR decomposition explores the role of imported intermediate goods in explaining the puzzling behaviour of inflation. The trend analysis shows that, starting from the '90s, despite very well-anchored expectations, slow-moving imported "cost-push" factors induced deflationary pressure keeping trend inflation below target. The cycle block provides evidence in favour of a flattening of the Phillips curve, mainly attributable to a weaker wage pass-through. The business cycle behaviour of inflation is determined by a shock originating abroad, which indeed generates the main bulk of volatility in the international prices of intermediate goods and is poorly connected to the domestic slack.

Central banks sometimes evaluate their own policies. To assess the inherent conflict of interest, the authors compare the research findings of central bank researchers and academic economists regarding the macroeconomic effects of quantitative easing (QE). They find that central bank papers report larger effects of QE on output and inflation. Central bankers are also more likely to report significant effects of QE on output and to use more positive language in the abstract. Central bankers who report larger QE effects on output experience more favorable career outcomes. A survey of central banks reveals substantial involvement of bank management in research production.

Should central banks use leaning against the wind (LAW)-type monetary or macroprudential policy to address risks to financial stability? We first assess LAW as a one-off (nonsystematic) policy using an estimated large-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with empirically plausible persistent financial cycles and a stylised regime-switching (RS) framework of occasional crises. We then evaluate policy-rule based (systematic) LAW using an endogenous RS version of our DSGE model with financial crises, effective lower bound (ELB) on interest rates, and an asymmetric LAW policy. Our findings do not support LAW by monetary policy because the costs of depressing the economy in normal times far outweigh the benefits of a less likely and less severe crisis. LAW increases inflation volatility significantly as it amplifies the effects of supply shocks on inflation. It also leads to higher long-run output costs in the case of nonsystematic policy and to a lower mean inflation rate in the case of systematic policy. The latter also results in more frequent ELB episodes due to the lower mean inflation rate it induces. We find that LAW is only advisable if the policymaker cares more about output stability relative to inflation stability or if financial cycles are less persistent, exclusively under systematic LAW. Higher long-run capital requirements in normal times address risks to financial stability better as they reduce the fluctuations in inflation and output considerably.

We study a noncooperative policy game between monetary and fiscal policy, where only monetary policy can commit to future actions. The equilibrium outcome of the game depends on the strategies available to the monetary policymaker. If strategies are left unrestricted, the central bank can alter the incentives of the fiscal authority in a way that replicates the full commitment solution. If the central bank cannot commit to respond to fiscal policy, the fiscal authority generates fluctuations in government expenditure that undermine the stabilization goals of the central bank. (JEL E12, E23, E31, E52, E58, E62)

We analyse the implications of asymmetric monetary policy rules by estimating Markovswitching DSGE models for the euro area (EA) and the US. The estimations show that until mid-2014 the ECB's response to inflation was more forceful when inflation was above 2% than below 2%. Since then, the ECB's policy can be characterised as symmetric, and we quantify the macroeconomic implications of this policy change. We uncover asymmetries also in the Fed's policy, which has responded more strongly in times of crisis. We compute an optimal simple rule for the EA and the US in an environment with the effective lower bound and a low neutral real rate, and find that it prescribes a stronger response to inflation and the output gap when inflation is below target compared to when it is above target. We document its stabilisation properties had this optimal rule been implemented over the last two decades.

High-frequency changes in interest rates around FOMC announcements are a standard method of measuring monetary policy shocks. However, some recent studies have documented puzzling effects of these shocks on private-sector forecasts of GDP, unemployment, or inflation that are opposite in sign to what standard macroeconomic models would predict. This evidence has been viewed as supportive of a "Fed information effect" channel of monetary policy, whereby an FOMC tightening (easing) communicates that the economy is stronger (weaker) than the public had expected. We show that these empirical results are also consistent with a "Fed response to news" channel, in which incoming, publicly available economic news causes both the Fed to change monetary policy and the private sector to revise its forecasts. We provide substantial new evidence that distinguishes between these two channels and strongly favors the latter; for example, (i) high-frequency stock market responses to Fed announcements, (ii) a new survey that we conduct of individual Blue Chip forecasters, and (iii) regressions that include the previously omitted public macroeconomic data releases all indicate that the Fed and Blue Chip forecasters are simply responding to the same public news, and that there is little if any role for a "Fed information effect".

Conditional yield skewness is an important summary statistic of the state of the economy. It exhibits pronounced variation over the business cycle and with the stance of monetary policy, and a tight relationship with the slope of the yield curve. Most importantly, variation in yield skewness has substantial forecasting power for future bond excess returns, high-frequency interest rate changes around FOMC announcements, and consensus survey forecast errors for the ten-year Treasury yield. The COVID pandemic did not disrupt these relations: historically high skewness correctly anticipated the run-up in long-term Treasury yields starting in late 2020. The connection between skewness, survey forecast errors, excess returns, and departures of yields from normality is consistent with a theoretical framework where one of the agents has biased beliefs.

Low domestic saving rates in South Africa may perpetuate a low-growth trap. The decline in government saving, a major reason for the overall decline in saving, is now being reversed. However, personal saving rates have fallen since 1993, and corporate rates since 1995, and both may decline further with lower real interest rates. It is important to understand both personal and corporate saving behaviour in order to formulate policies to raise the domestic saving rate in line with the needs of economic growth. This article summarizes our previous work on the household sector, emphasizing the role of financial liberalization, assets, and income expectations, and it explains sectoral links and policy implications. Further, it analyses South Africa's corporate saving rate in detail. Models are developed both for the share of profits in national income, including the roles of the terms of trade, tax effects, and the price to unit labour cost margin, and for the share of corporate saving in profits, which is found to depend on inflation, the real interest rate, dividend taxation, and financial liberalization. Corporate saving is remarkably underresearched, given its importance in many economies. This research thus puts the saving and growth concerns of Kaldor into a modern empirical context.

This paper examines monetary policy in a currency union whose member countries exhibit heterogeneous rates of limited asset markets participation (LAMP). As a result risk sharing among member countries is imperfect and the monetary transmission mechanism can differ across countries. In the limit the elasticity of output to the union-wide nominal interest rate can be of opposite sign in different countries. I develop a tractable model in which the dispersion of asset markets participation (AMP) becomes a key parameter. While monetary policy can guarantee determinacy by following an active or passive rule depending on the sign of the interest-elasticity of output, ignoring dispersion can lead to incorrect computation of the sign and the size of the latter. Taking the heterogeneity into account is thus central for sound policy Furthermore, due to the failure of risk sharing, determinacy for union-aggregates does not guarantee determinacy in every member country. However, the more open a country is in trade terms, the greater the rate of LAMP for which the country still displays equilibrium determinacy. For complete openness, determinacy is guaranteed. This underlines the importance of risk sharing and trade integration for the functioning of a currency union. Considering the optimal union-wide targeting rule, a higher mean and dispersion of LAMP increase the desired inflation volatility and decrease the desired output volatility. The implied optimal Taylor rule shows that subject to the Taylor principle, the higher are mean and dispersion of LAMP, the softer should be the response of the nominal interest rate to expected inflation.

A well-known time-inconsistency problem hinders optimal decision-making when policymakers are constrained in their pesent choices by expectations of future outcomes. The time-inconsistency problem is caused by differences in the preferences of policymakers who exist at different points in time. Adapting the arguments of Rawls (1971), we propose that these differences can be eliminated if policy is set from behind a 'veil of ignorance', without knowledge of when the policy will be implemented. We set up a well-defined choice problem that captures this normative perspective. The policies that it generates have a number of appealing properties.

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption. This paper exploits liquid and illiquid wealth time series from household balance sheet data for South Africa, previously constructed by the authors, to explain fluctuations in the ratios of consumption and household debt to income in South Africa, from 1971 to 2005. The paper emphasizes the role of substantial credit liberalization and of wealth, treating credit conditions as a latent variable with key interactions with drivers of consumption and debt. Credit conditions are proxied by a spline function entering jointly estimated consumption, debt and income expectations equations in a 'latent interactive variable equation system' (LIVES). The empirical results corroborate the theory in the paper, confirming that consumption relative to income is driven by credit liberalization, fluctuations in a range of asset values and asset accumulation, uncertainty and income expectations, inter alia. The paper confirms a collateral interpretation of housing wealth on consumption as opposed to a life-cycle interpretation. The paper also throws important light on the monetary policy transmission mechanism in South Africa.

We defend the forecasting performance of the FOMC from the recent criticism of Christina and David Romer. Our argument is that the FOMC forecasts a worst-case scenario that it uses to design decisions that will work well enough (are robust) despite possible misspecification of its model. Because these FOMC forecasts are not predictions of what the FOMC expects to occur under its model, it is inappropriate to compare their performance in a horse race against other forecasts. Our interpretation of the FOMC as a robust policymaker can explain all the findings of the Romers and rationalises differences between FOMC forecasts and forecasts published in the Greenbook by the staff of the Federal Reserve System.

We analyze the microfoundations of the Phillips curve and the close links between that relationship and results concerning optimal monetary policy, stabilisation bias and monetary policy delegation. Most recent literature has used a New Keynesian Phillips Curve based on Calvo pricing, often with an additional lagged inflation term motivated by rule-of-thumb behaviour. We develop a framework which encompasses this workhorse model while allowing for a richer time dependent pricing rule. This permits a more general analysis while showing that the standard model and policy conclusions derived from it are not robust to relatively minor changes in its microfoundations.

This paper investigates how best to determine time-invariant policy rules in macroeconomic models with forward-looking constraints, where fully optimal policy is known to be time-inconsistent. It proposes a new 'coefficient optimisation' approach that improves upon the timeless perspective method of Woodford (2003) in deterministic problems, and on average in stochastic problems, without resorting to asymptotic ('unconditional') loss comparisons.

This paper analyses a new-Keynesian model incorporating hysteresis in output. Specifically, we assume that the natural rate of output sluggishly adjusts towards current output. We also assume that the natural rate has an upper bound and that, in addition to having standard objectives, the policymaker seeks to minimise deviations of actual output from this upper bound. We then solve for optimal monetary policy under a range of Phillips curve specifications. Our results suggest that despite increasing inflation temporarily, gradual demand expansions are usually desirable when the natural rate is low. Our model also offers a new explanation for inflation persistence.

In a monetary policy model incorporating partial persistence in inflation it is shown that inflation bias is reduced and the response to shocks improved if the policy maker has a discount rate lower than its true social value. Thus a patient central banker is shown to be a third mechanism for offsetting time inconsistency problems in addition to Rogoff's conservative central banker and the principal-agent approach of Walsh. The paper also analyses outcomes under the latter regimes and the optimal rule, finding important differences from the results of earlier literature that excludes inflation persistence.