Presenter: Ricardo Reis Affiliation: London School of Economics and Political Science Paper: The Constraint on Public Debt when r < g but g < m. Date: November 16, 2021 Time: 13:00 GMT Abstract: With real interest rates below the growth rate of the economy, but the marginal product of capital above it, the public debt ... Read more
We study the monetary-fiscal mix in the European Monetary Union. The medium and long-run effects of conventional and unconventional monetary policy can be analysed by combining monetary policy shocks identified in a Structural VAR, and the general government budget constraint featuring a single central bank and multiple fiscal authorities. In response to a conventional easing of the policy rate, the real discount rate declines, absorbing the increase in deficit due to the fiscal policy leaning towards the easing. Conversely, in response to an unconventional easing of the long end of the yield curve, the discount rate declines strongly, while the primary fiscal surplus barely moves. The long-run effect of unconventional monetary easing on inflation is about half than that of conventional, a result which also explains the muted response of fiscal policy. Results do not point to large differences across countries.
Before the 2008 crisis, the cross-sectional skewness of banks’ leverage went up and macro risk concentrated in the balance sheets of large banks. Using a model of profit-maximizing banks with heterogeneous Value-at-Risk constraints, we extract the distribution of banks’ risk-taking parameters from balance sheet data. The time series of these estimates allow us to understand systemic risk and its concentration in the banking sector over time. Counterfactual exercises show that (1) monetary policymakers confront the trade-off between stimulating the economy and financial stability, and (2) macroprudential policies can be effective tools to increase financial stability.
Presenter: Saki Bigio Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Economics. Paper: A Model of Credit, Money, Interest, and Prices Date: October 05, 2021 Time: 15:00 IDT (GMT+3) Abstract: This paper integrates a realistic implementation of monetary policy through the banking system into an incomplete-market economy with wage rigidity. Monetary policy sets policy rates … Read more
We construct new measures of country risk and sentiment as perceived by global investors and executives using textual analysis of the quarterly earnings calls of publicly listed firms around the world. Our quarterly measures cover 45 countries from 2002-2020. We use our measures to provide a novel characterization of country risk and to provide a harmonized definition of crises. We demonstrate that elevated perceptions of a country’s riskiness are associated with significant falls in local asset prices and capital outflows, even after global financial conditions are controlled for. Increases in country risk are associated with reductions in firm-level investment and employment. We also show direct evidence of a novel type of contagion, where foreign risk is transmitted across borders through firm-level exposures. Exposed firms suffer falling market valuations and significantly retrench their hiring and investment in response to crises abroad. Finally, we provide direct evidence that heterogeneous currency loadings on global risk help explain the cross-country pattern of interest rates and currency risk premia.
How does market concentration affect the potency of monetary policy? The ubiquitous monopolistic-competition framework is silent on this issue. To tackle this question we build a model with heterogeneous oligopolistic sectors. In each sector, a finite number of firms play a Bertrand dynamic game with staggered price rigidity. Following an extensive Industrial Organization literature, we focus on Markov equilibria within each sector. Aggregating up, we study monetary shocks and provide a closed form formula for the response of aggregate output, highlighting three measurable sufficient statistics: demand elasticities, market concentration, and markups. We calibrate our model to the empirical evidence on pass-through, and find that higher market concentration significantly amplifies the real effects of monetary policy. To separate the strategic effects of oligopoly from the effects this has on residual demand, we compare our model to one with monopolistic firms after modifying consumer preferences to ensure firms face comparable residual demands. Finally, the Phillips curve for our model displays inflation persistence and endogenous cost-push shocks.
Introducing heterogeneous households to a New-Keynesian small open economy model amplifies the real income channel of exchange rates: the rise in import prices from a depreciation lowers households’ real incomes, and leads them to cut back on spending. This channel counteracts the standard expenditure-switching channel of exchange rates, and can result in a contractionary effect of a depreciation on domestic output. We study the monetary policy implications of a large and dominant real income channel.
This paper combines a data rich environment with a machine learning algorithm to provide new estimates of time-varying systematic expectational errors (belief distortions) embedded in survey responses. We find that distortions are large on average even for professional forecasters, with all respondent-types over-weighting their own beliefs relative to other information. Forecasts of inflation and GDP growth oscillate between optimism and pessimism by large margins, with over-optimism associated with an increase in aggregate economic activity. Biases in expectations evolve dynamically in response to cyclical shocks. Biases about economic growth display greater initial under-reaction while those about inflation display greater delayed over-reaction.
We study optimal monetary policy and central bank communication when firms make nominal pricing decisions under uncertainty and when the monetary authority likewise has incomplete information about the current economic state. We find that the optimal monetary policy implements flexible-price allocations despite this multitude of measurability constraints; we explore a series of different implementations. Away from such policies, we find that public communication by the central bank is welfare-improving as long as either firm information or central bank information is sufficiently precise.
This paper presents new stylized facts about exchange rates and their relationship with macroeconomic fundamentals. We show that macroeconomic surprises explain, on average, about 70 percent of variation in nominal exchange rate changes at quarterly frequency. Using a novel present value decomposition of exchange rate changes that is disciplined with survey forecast data, we further show that macroeconomic surprises are also a very important driver of the currency risk premia component and explain about 50 percent of its variation. These surprises have even greater explanatory power during periods of economic downturns and financial uncertainty.