Output Gap in Presence of Financial Frictions and Monetary Policy Trade-offs

Output Gap in Presence of Financial Frictions and Monetary Policy Trade-offs

Author: Francesco Furlanetto

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2014-07-18

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13: 1498305326

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The recent global financial crisis illustrates that financial frictions are a significant source of volatility in the economy. This paper investigates monetary policy stabilization in an environment where financial frictions are a relevant source of macroeconomic fluctuation. We derive a measure of output gap that accounts for frictions in financial market. Furthermore we illustrate that, in the presence of financial frictions, a benevolent central bank faces a substantial trade-off between nominal and real stabilization; optimal monetary policy significantly reduces fluctuations in price and wage inflations but fails to alleviate the output gap volatility. This suggests a role for macroprudential policies.


The Inflation-Output Trade-Off Revisited

The Inflation-Output Trade-Off Revisited

Author: Gauti B. Eggertsson

Publisher:

Published: 2013-05-12

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 9781457845727

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A rich literature from the 1970s shows that as inflation expectations become more and more ingrained, monetary policy loses its stimulative effect. In the extreme, with perfectly anticipated inflation, there is no trade-off between inflation and output. Recent literature on the interest-rate zero lower bound, however, suggests there may be some benefits from anticipated inflation when the economy is in a liquidity trap. This study reconciles these two views by showing that while it is true that, at positive interest rates, the greater the anticipated inflation the less stimulative are the effects, the opposite holds true at the zero bound. Indeed, at the zero bound, the more the public anticipates inflation, the greater is the expansionary effect of inflation on output. This leads the authors to revisit the trade-off between inflation and output and to show how radically it changes in the face of demand shocks large enough to bring the economy into a liquidity trap. Instead of vanishing once inflation becomes anticipated, the trade-off between inflation and output increases substantially and may become arbitrarily large. In such cases, raising the inflation target in a liquidity trap can be very stimulative. Figures. This is a print on demand report.


Policymakers' Revealed Preferences and the Output-Inflation Variability Trade-Off

Policymakers' Revealed Preferences and the Output-Inflation Variability Trade-Off

Author: Stephen G. Cecchetti

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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This paper explores two aspects of the conduct of monetary policy under a monetary union. First, even if the preferences of policymakers over inflation and output variability are identical across member countries, differences in economic structure will mean different desired policy responses to even a common shock. Second, policymakers may be forced to make important concessions in their preferences over inflation and output variability. To examine these issues, in this paper we estimate the objective functions that the European national central banks were implicitly maximizing over the 15 or so years prior to monetary union, as well as the slopes of the inflation-output variability trade-off in each country. While the slopes of the trade-offs vary dramatically across countries, the objective functions are quite similar, with most countries having weights in excess of three-quarters on inflation variability and less than one-quarter on output variability. Our findings suggest that the concessions (in terms of preferences over output and inflation variability) that current inflation-targeting countries such as the UK and Sweden would have to make on accession to the European Monetary Union (EMU) are likely to be minimal. On the other hand, the differences in economic structure across the Eurosystem countries might make it difficult to formulate a common policy even in the face of common goals, suggesting that there may still be significant costs to joining for countries currently outside the EMU.


Handbook of Monetary Policy

Handbook of Monetary Policy

Author: Jack Rabin

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2001-12-19

Total Pages: 1012

ISBN-13: 9780824705787

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"Examines the politics of economic policy, focusing on forecasting, inflation, interest rates, market expectations, financial crises, disruptions in global markets, and tax policy, as well as state and local government budgeting, financial management, and policy initiatives for development and growth."


Why Inflation Targeting?

Why Inflation Targeting?

Author: Charles Freedman

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2009-04-01

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13: 145187233X

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This is the second chapter of a forthcoming monograph entitled "On Implementing Full-Fledged Inflation-Targeting Regimes: Saying What You Do and Doing What You Say." We begin by discussing the costs of inflation, including their role in generating boom-bust cycles. Following a general discussion of the need for a nominal anchor, we describe a specific type of monetary anchor, the inflation-targeting regime, and its two key intellectual roots-the absence of long-run trade-offs and the time-inconsistency problem. We conclude by providing a brief introduction to the way in which inflation targeting works.


Flattening of the Phillips Curve

Flattening of the Phillips Curve

Author: Dora M. Iakova

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2007-04

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13:

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Over the past decade, inflation has become less responsive to domestic demand pressures in many industrial countries. This development has been attributed, in part, to globalization forces. A small macroeconomic model, estimated on UK data using Bayesian estimation, is used to analyze the monetary policy implications of this structural change. The focus is on the implications of a globalization-related flattening of the Phillips curve for the trade-off between inflation and output gap variability and for the efficient monetary policy response rule.


Inflation/Output Variance Trade-Offs and Optimal Monetary Policy

Inflation/Output Variance Trade-Offs and Optimal Monetary Policy

Author: Jeffrey C. Fuhrer

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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I estimate the inflation/output-gap variance trade-off faced by monetary policymakers in the U.S. For policymakers who care about deviations of inflation around target and output around potential, the estimated trade-off represents the "optimal policy frontier." Given the structure of the economy, policymakers can do no better than to attain weighted variances of inflation and output that lie on the frontier. I find that the variance trade-off becomes quite severe when the standard deviation of inflation or output drops much below 2%. This suggests that approximately balanced responses to policy goals are consistent with reasonable preferences over inflation and output variability.


Monetary Policy Under Flexible Exchange Rates

Monetary Policy Under Flexible Exchange Rates

Author: Pierre-Richard Agénor

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13:

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In the past few years, a number of central banks have adopted inflation targeting for monetary policy. The author provides an introduction to inflation targeting, with an emphasis on analytical issues, and the recent experience of middle- and high-income developing countries (which have relatively low inflation to begin with, and reasonably well-functioning financial markets). After presenting a formal analytical framework, the author discusses the basic requirements for inflation targeting, and how such a regime differs from money, and exchange rate targeting regimes. After discussing the operational framework for inflation targeting (including the price index to monitor the time horizon, the forecasting procedures, and the role of asset prices), he examines recent experiences with inflation targets, providing new evidence on the convexity of the Phillips curve for six developing countries. His conclusions: Inflation targeting is a flexible policy framework that allows a country's central bank to exercise some degree of discretion, without putting in jeopardy its main objective of maintaining stable prices. In middle- and high-income developing economies that can refrain from implicit exchange rate targeting, it can improve the design, and performance of monetary policy, compared with other policy approaches that central banks may follow. Not all countries may be able to satisfy the technical requirements (such as adequate price data, adequate understanding of the links between instruments, and targets of monetary policy, and adequate forecasting capabilities), but such requirements should not be overstated. Forecasting capability can never be perfect, and sensible projections always involve qualitative judgment. More important, and often more difficult, is the task of designing, or improving an institutional framework that would allow the central bank to pursue the goal of low, stable inflation, while maintaining the ability to stabilize fluctuations in output.


Inflation Expectations

Inflation Expectations

Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1135179778

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Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.