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Output Gap in Presence of Financial Frictions and Monetary Policy Trade-offs
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.
Nowcasting GDP - A Scalable Approach Using DFM, Machine Learning and Novel Data, Applied to European Economies
This paper describes recent work to strengthen nowcasting capacity at the IMF’s European department. It motivates and compiles datasets of standard and nontraditional variables, such as Google search and air quality. It applies standard dynamic factor models (DFMs) and several machine learning (ML) algorithms to nowcast GDP growth across a heterogenous group of European economies during normal and crisis times. Most of our methods significantly outperform the AR(1) benchmark model. Our DFMs tend to perform better during normal times while many of the ML methods we used performed strongly at identifying turning points. Our approach is easily applicable to other countries, subject to data availability.
Financial Frictions in Data
This paper investigates financial frictions in US postwar data to understand the interaction between the real business cycle and the credit market. A Bayesian estimation technique is used to estimate a large Vector Autoregression and New Keynesian models demonstrating how financial shocks can have a large and sluggish impact on the economy. I identify the default risk and the maturity mismatch channels of monetary policy transmission; I further employ a generalized-IRF to establish countercyclicality of risk spreads; and I show that the maturity mismatch shocks produce a stronger impact than the default risk shocks.
Financial Frictions and Sources of Business Cycle
This paper estimates a New Keynesian DSGE model with an explicit financial intermediary sector. Having measures of financial stress, such as the spread between lending and borrowing, enables the model to capture the impact of the financial crisis in a more direct and efficient way. The model fits US post-war macroeconomic data well, and shows that financial shocks play a greater role in explaining the volatility of macroeconomic variables than marginal efficiency of investment (MEI) shocks.
A Fresh Look at Potential Output in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Countries
Was the postcrisis growth slowdown in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) structural or cyclical? We use three different methods—production function approach, basic multivariate filter, and multivariate filter with financial frictions—to evaluate potential growth and output gaps for 18 CESEE countries during 2000-15. Our findings suggest that potential growth weakened significantly after the crisis across most countries in the region. This decline appears to be largely due to stagnant productivity and weaker capital accumulation, which were associated with common external factors, including trading partners’ slow potential growth, but also decline in global trade and stalled expansion of global value chains. Our estimates suggest that output gaps in 2015 were largely closed in many countries in the region.
Booms, Crises, and Recoveries: A New Paradigm of the Business Cycle and its Policy Implications
All types of recessions, on average, not just those associated with financial and political crises (as in Cerra and Saxena, AER 2008), lead to permanent output losses. These findings have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. A new paradigm of the business cycle needs to account for shifts in trend output and the puzzling inconsistency of output dynamics with other cyclical components of production. The ‘output gap’ can be ill-conceived, poorly measured, and inconsistent over time. Persistent losses require more buffers and crisis-avoidance policies, affecting tradeoffs in prudential, macroeconomic, and reserve management policies. The frequency and depth of crises are key determinants of long-term growth and drive a new stylized model of economic development.
Macroeconomic Effects of Reforms on Three Diverse Oil Exporters: Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UK
We build and estimate open economy two-bloc DSGE models to study the transmission and impact of shocks in Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. After accounting for country-specific fiscal and monetary sectors, we estimate their key policy and structural parameters. Our findings suggest that not only has output responded differently to shocks due to differing levels of diversification and structural and policy settings, but also the responses to fiscal consolidation differ: Russia would benefit from a smaller state foot-print, while in Saudi Arabia, unless this is accompanied by structural reforms that remove rigidities, output would fall. We also find that lower oil prices need not be bad news given more oil-intensive production structures. However, lower oil prices have hurt these oil producers as their public finances depend heavily on oil, among other factors. Productivity gains accompanied by ambitious structural reforms, along with fiscal and monetary reforms could support these economies to achieve better outcomes when oil prices fall, including via diversifying exports.
(Not) Dancing Together
This paper provides estimates of the government spending multiplier over the monetary policy cycle. We identify government spending shocks as forecast errors of the growth rate of government spending from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and from the Greenbook record. The state of monetary policy is inferred from the deviation of the U.S. Fed funds rate from the target rate, using a smooth transition function. Applying the local projections method to quarterly U.S. data, we find that the federal government spending multiplier is substantially higher under accommodative than non-accommodative monetary policy. Our estimations also suggest that federal government spending may crowd-in or crowd-out private consumption, depending on the extent of monetary policy accommodation. The latter result reconciles—in a unified framework—apparently contradictory findings in the literature. We discuss the implications of our findings for the ongoing normalization of monetary conditions in advanced economies.
Monetary Policy and Financial Stability
The issue of using monetary policy for financial stability purposes is hotly contested. The crisis was a reminder that price stability is not sufficient for financial stability, financial crises are costly, and policy should aim to decrease the likelihood of crises, not only rely on dealing with their repercussions once they occur. It is clear that well-targeted prudential policies (including micro and macroprudential regulation and supervision) should be pursued actively to attenuate the buildup of financial risks. The question is whether monetary policy should be altered to contain financial stability risks. Should it lend a hand by temporarily raising interest rates more than warranted by price and output stability objectives? Keeping rates persistently higher is also possible, but more costly.
How Does Profit Shifting Affect the Balance of Payments?
Profit shifting by multinational enterprises—through manipulation of transfer prices of related-party trade, intragroup lending, or the location of intangibles—affects international flows, raising the question of its impact on the current account and external balances. This paper approaches this question theoretically and empirically. In theory, profit shifting distorts the components of the current account and bilateral current account balances but leaves a country’s aggregate net balance unaffected. There is, however, a real effect on current account balances, because taxes are paid to different jurisdictions. Moreover—in practice—the measured current account could change, because not all transactions are equally easy to track. Our panel empirical results broadly confirm that the current account balance tends to be, on average, unaffected by profit shifting, but taking heterogeneity into account we find that both the real tax effect and mismeasurement strengthen income balances—and thus the current account—in investment hubs.
