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.
We suggest a new approach for analyzing the role of financial variables and shocks in computing the output gap. We estimate a two-region DSGE model for the euro area, with financial frictions at the household level, between 2000-2013. After joining the monetary union, a decline in some countries’ borrowing costs contributed to a credit, housing and real boom and bust cycle. We show that financial frictions amplified economic fluctuations and the measure of the output gap in those countries. On the contrary, in countries such as France and Germany, financial frictions played a minor role in output gap measures. We also present evidence of the trade-offs faced by the European Central Bank when trying to stabilize two regions in a currency union with unsynchronized economic cycles.
The Great Recession and consequent slow overall economic recovery have reignited research interests in financial factors in business cycle fluctuations and monetary policy rules. In the recent financial crisis, highly interconnected and leveraged financial institutions through wholesale financial markets have been blamed as the main culprit in exacerbating the initial shock in the financial market. The role of market-based financial institutions in the supply of credit has been expanded in the United States especially before the Great Recession. The market-based institutions have used securitization as one of their important tools to raise funds. Market-based lending and the related securitization process are a part of the shadow banking system, which is broadly defined as ''credit intermediation involving entities and activities (fully or partially) outside the regular banking system'' by the Financial Stability Board. My dissertation investigates the importance of financial factors in the business cycle fluctuations and monetary policy rules. The first chapter explores the role of interbank friction shocks in accounting for the business cycle fluctuations. I augment financial intermediation of Gertler and Kiyotaki (2011) with an otherwise standard New Keynesian DSGE model with nominal rigidities in wages and prices. I then fit the model to US data, using two new financial variables (interbank loans and the net worth of banks) in the literature and allowing the interbank frictions to vary over time following exogenous shocks to these frictions. According to the Bayesian estimation of the model, shocks to interbank frictions are important factors in explaining the fluctuations of the economy, accounting for 7% of the output fluctuations, 11% of the investment fluctuations, 53% of the fluctuations in the premium and 8% of the fluctuations in interbank loans. Analyses of historical decompositions show that interbank frictions shock plays an important role in the movement of key macro variables early in the downturn of the recent financial crisis. In the second chapter, I evaluate the effect of financial frictions and shocks on monetary policy. The identification method of Justiniano, Primiceri and Tambalotti (2011) is adopted to tackle the criticism on the identification between labor supply shocks and wage markup shocks by Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2009). The model is re-estimated with more data series on nominal wage inflation and the output gap, defined as the difference between the actual output and potential out, is derived. The output gap is estimated to be large and displays low-frequency movements under Taylor-rule type monetary policy. Estimated shocks including interbank friction shocks then are fed into the model under Ramsey optimal monetary policy to evaluate the impact of financial shocks on the evolution of the economy and the counterfactual simulation on the evolution of the economy is conducted. The counterfactuals show that, unlike the volatile movements of output gap under Taylor-rule type monetary policy, the output gap is more stabilized and the trade-offs between conflicting policy objectives are moderate if monetary policy is conducted optimally. The last chapter explores the possibility of regime shifts in the financial frictions and the volatility of shocks to financial frictions. The preliminary estimation results on the regime-switching DSGE model show that the regime has switched between low friction and high friction regimes. At this sage, the results are mostly preliminary since the numerical optimization may stop at a local but not global maximum of the posterior distribution due to the possibility that the objective function is flat or multimodal with shifts in regimes. More through results will be obtained by gradient-free global optimization methods. The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm and the differential evolution algorithm are now employed to estimate the regime-switching DSGE model in the last chapter.
During the so-called Great Moderation the variability of output, employment and inflation declined substantially in most of the major economies. Because of this positive co-movement the ultimate objective of monetary policy was clear. By stabilizing inflation output will also stay at its potential and the central bank does not face any trade-off between its targets – a situation known as the divine coincidence. With the onset of the financial crisis 2007 these relationships changed. This book contributes to the research on the optimal macroeconomic policy design in the presence of financial frictions. These are incorporated via the cost channel approach into a two-country currency union model. Ultimately, a supply-side effect arises which lowers the efficiency of monetary policy - divine coincidence is not possible any more. Three questions are in the focus of interest of this analysis: What is the optimal monetary policy in the presence of country-specific financial frictions? What role can fiscal policy play? Is macroprudential policy able to improve welfare if the central bank targets a financial stability measure?
The contributions to this prestigious volume describe important developments in monetary economics and monetary policy during the past half century and to draw lessons from this for the future with chapters from Charles Goodhart and Olivier Blanchard.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense. This paper studies how to design simple loss functions for central banks, as parsimonious approximations to social welfare. We show, both analytically and quantitatively, that simple loss functions should feature a high weight on measures of economic activity, sometimes even larger than the weight on inflation. Two main factors drive our result. First, stabilizing economic activity also stabilizes other welfare relevant variables. Second, the estimated model features mitigated inflation distortions due to a low elasticity of substitution between monopolistic goods and a low interest rate sensitivity of demand. The result holds up in the presence of measurement errors, with large shocks that generate a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and resource utilization, and also when ensuring a low probability of hitting the zero lower bound on interest rates.
I analyse the dynamics of a New Keynesian DSGE model where the financing of investments is affected by a moral hazard problem. I solve for jointly Ramsey-optimal monetary and macroprudential policies. I find that when a financial friction is present in addition to the standard nominal friction, the optimal policy can replicate the first-best if the social planner can conduct both monetary and macroprudential policy to control both inflation and the level of investments. Using monetary policy alone is not enough to fully stabilise the economy: it leads to a policy trade-off between stabilising inflation and the output gap. When policy follows simple rules instead, the source of fluctuations is highly relevant for the choice of the appropriate policy mix.
Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.
This book by a leading authority on monetary policy offers a unique view of the subject from the perspectives of both scholar and practitioner. Frederic Mishkin is not only an academic expert in the field but also a high-level policymaker. He is especially well positioned to discuss the changes in the conduct of monetary policy in recent years, in particular the turn to inflation targeting. Monetary Policy Strategydescribes his work over the last ten years, offering published papers, new introductory material, and a summing up, "Everything You Wanted to Know about Monetary Policy Strategy, But Were Afraid to Ask," which reflects on what we have learned about monetary policy over the last thirty years. Mishkin blends theory, econometric evidence, and extensive case studies of monetary policy in advanced and emerging market and transition economies. Throughout, his focus is on these key areas: the importance of price stability and a nominal anch fiscal and financial preconditions for achieving price stability; central bank independence as an additional precondition; central bank accountability; the rationale for inflation targeting; the optimal inflation target; central bank transparency and communication; and the role of asset prices in monetary policy.
