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The impact of monetary policy in large advanced countries on emerging market economies—dubbed spillovers—is hotly debated in global and national policy circles. When the U.S. resorted to unconventional monetary policy, spillovers on asset prices and capital flows were significant, though remained smaller in countries with better fundamentals. This was not because monetary policy shocks changed (in size, sign or impact on stance). In fact, the traditional signaling channel of monetary policy continued to play the leading role in transmitting shocks, relative to other channels, affecting longer-term bond yields. Instead, we find that larger spillovers stem more from structural factors, such as the use of new instruments (asset purchases). We obtain these results by developing a new methodology to extract, separate, and interpret U.S. monetary policy shocks.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent need for policy support have called the traditional separation between fiscal and monetary policies into question. Based on simulations of an open economy DSGE model calibrated to emerging and advance economies and case study evidence, the analysis shows when constraints are binding a more integrated approach of looking at policies can lead to a better policy mix and ultimately better macroeconomic outcomes under certain circumstances. Nonetheless, such an approach entails risks, necessitating a clear assessment of each country’s circumstances as well as safeguards to protect the credibility of the existing institutional framework.
We analyse the effects of macroprudential and monetary policies and their interactions using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model tailored to Sweden. Households face a ceiling on their loan-to-value ratio and must amortize their mortgages. The government grants mortgage interest payment deductions. Lending rates are affected by mortgage risk weights. We find that demand-side macroprudential measures are more effective in curbing household debt ratios than monetary policy, and they are less costly in terms of foregone consumption. A tighter macroprudential stance is also found to be welfare improving, by promoting lower consumption volatility in response to shocks, especially when using a combination of macroprudential instruments.
The rapid growth of crypto assets raises important questions about their cross-border usage. To gain a better understanding of cross-border Bitcoin flows, we use raw data covering both on-chain (on the Bitcoin blockchain) and off-chain (outside the Bitcoin blockchain) transactions globally. We provide a detailed description of available methodologies and datasets, and discuss the crucial assumptions behind the quantification of cross-border flows. We then present novel stylized facts about Bitcoin cross-border flows and study their global and domestic drivers. Bitcoin cross-border flows respond differently than capital flows to traditional drivers of capital flows, and differences appear between on-chain and off-chain Bitcoin cross-border flows. Off-chain cross-border flows seem correlated with incentives to avoid capital flow restrictions.
After several decades of increasing global economic integration, the world is facing the risk of policy-driven geoeconomic fragmentation (GEF). This note explores the ramifications. It identifies multiple channels through which the benefits of globalization were earlier transmitted, and along which, conversely, the costs of GEF are likely to fall, including trade, migration, capital flows, technology diffusion and the provision of global public goods. It explores the consequences of GEF for the international monetary system and the global financial safety net. Finally, it suggests a pragmatic path forward for preserving the benefits of global integration and multilateralism
We assess econometrically the impact of asset shortages on economic growth, asset bubbles, the probability of a crisis, and the current account for a group of 41 Emerging markets for 1995-2008. The econometric estimations confirm that asset shortages pose a serious danger to EMs in terms of reducing economic growth, raising the probability of a crisis, and leading to asset price bubbles. Moreover, asset shortages can also explain the current account positions of EMs. The findings suggest that the consequences of asset shortages for macroeconomic stability are significant, and must be tackled urgently. We conclude with policy implications.
We apply a range of models to the U.K. data to obtain estimates of the output gap. A structural VAR with an appropriate identification strategy provides improved estimates of output gap with better real time properties and lower sensitivity to temporary shocks than the usual filtering techniques. It also produces smaller out-of-sample forecast errors for inflation. At the same time, however, our results suggest caution in basing policy decisions on output gap estimates.
We study 1,400 UK syndicated loans, together with the financial history of the lead bank and the borrowing firm. We interpret abnormal equity returns around loan announcements as the value of the lending relationship to the firm. We find that: (i) Consistent with previous evidence, the value of lending is higher when the firm is riskier or more opaque, suggesting that it primarily reflects the lead bank’s screening and monitoring activities. (ii) As a bank becomes larger, more profitable or more capitalized, the value of its loans first increases and then decreases. The largest, most capitalised or most profitable banks do not give the most valuable loans. (iii) Firms which receive low-value loans are more likely to experience low profitability and financial distress during the lending relationship. By relating the state of bank balance sheets to borrower performance, we offer a new angle to evaluate the impact of financial conditions on the real economy.
We construct a new database which covers production and trade in 136 primary commodities and 24 manufacturing and service sectors for 145 countries. Using this new more granular data, we estimate spillover effects from plausible trade fragmentation scenarios in a new multi-country, multi-sector, general-equilibrium model that accounts for unique demand and supply characteristics of commodities. The results show fragmentation-induced output losses can be sizable, especially for Low-Income-Countries, although the magnitudes vary according to the particular scenarios and modelling assumptions. Our work demonstrates that not accounting for granular commodity production and trade linkages leads to underestimation of the output losses associated with trade fragmentation.
We examine the effects of various borrower-based macroprudential tools in a New Keynesian environment where both real and nominal interest rates are low. Our model features long-term debt, housing transaction costs and a zero-lower bound constraint on policy rates. We find that the long-term costs, in terms of forgone consumption, of all the macroprudential tools we consider are moderate. Even so, the short-term costs differ dramatically between alternative tools. Specifically, a loan-to-value tightening is more than twice as contractionary compared to loan-to-income tightening when debt is high and monetary policy cannot accommodate.