{"title":"The Bank of Russia Switches Over to Monetary Policy Easing","authors":"A. Bozhechkova, P. Trunin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3411527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3411527","url":null,"abstract":"At its June meeting, for the first time this year, the Bank of Russia Board of Directors decided to cut the key rate by 0.25 pp. to 7.5% per annum. Such a decision was motivated by the plunge of annual inflation in April-May 2019 to 5.1%, coupled with weakening inflation risks. The inflation forecast for 2019 has been revised, the target being reduced from 4.7–5.2% to 4.2–4.7%. The RF Central Bank expects that the annual inflation rate in 2020 will hover around 4%, and so it plans to roundup its transition to neutral monetary policy by the middle of the next year.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115387073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Financial Repression Index: U.S Banking System Since 1984","authors":"R. C. Whalen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3155370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3155370","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reviews the research literature concerning financial repression. The paper then presents an empirical measure for financial repression in the US banking system entitled “The Financial Repression Index,” drawing upon public data going back to the early 1980s The paper draws some preliminary conclusions about the economic impact of financial repression in the US based upon observations of the banking system and related data. Overall this paper concludes that bank depositors and investors have been the victims of significant financial repression since the 1990s and particularly since the 2008 financial crisis as measured by the dramatic shift in net interest income in favor of banks. The paper also concludes that while banks themselves have received a significant subsidy due to financial repression, banks have also suffered decreased asset returns as a result of the low interest rates policies and open market operations of the Federal Open Market Committee.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130017943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inflation Anchoring, Real Borrowing Costs, and Growth: Evidence from Sectoral Data","authors":"Sangyup Choi, D. Furceri, Prakash Loungani","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3401446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3401446","url":null,"abstract":"Central bankers often assert that anchoring of inflation expectations and reducing inflation uncertainty are good for economic outcomes. We test this claim and search for a relevant channel using panel data on sectoral growth for 22 manufacturing industries from 36 advanced and emerging market economies over the period 1990-2014. Our difference-in-difference strategy is based on the theoretical prediction that inflation uncertainty has larger effects in industries that are more credit constrained by increasing effective real borrowing costs. The results show that industries characterized by high external financial dependence, low asset tangibility, and high R&D intensity tend to grow faster in countries with well-anchored inflation expectations. The results are robust to controlling for the interaction between these characteristics and a broad set of macroeconomic variables over the sample period, including the level of inflation and output volatility. The results are also robust to IV techniques, using indicators of monetary policy transparency and independence as instruments.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133700927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Zenios, A. Consiglio, M. Athanasopoulou, Edmund Moshammer, Angel Gavilan, Aitor Erce
{"title":"Risk Management for Sovereign Debt Financing with Sustainability Conditions","authors":"S. Zenios, A. Consiglio, M. Athanasopoulou, Edmund Moshammer, Angel Gavilan, Aitor Erce","doi":"10.24149/gwp367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24149/gwp367","url":null,"abstract":"We develop a model of debt sustainability analysis with optimal financing decisions in the presence of macroeconomic, financial and fiscal uncertainty. We define a coherent measure of refinancing risk, and trade off the risks of debt stock and flow dynamics, subject to debt sustainability constraints and endogenous risk and term premia. We optimize both static and dynamic financing strategies, compare them with several simple rules and consol financing to demonstrate economically significant effects of optimal financing, and show that the stock-flow tradeoff can be critical for sustainability. We quantify the minimum refinancing risk and the maximum rate of debt reduction that a sovereign can achieve given its economic fundamentals, and extend the model to identify optimal timing for debt flow adjustments that allow the sovereign to go beyond these limits. We put the model to the data on three real-world cases: a representative euro zone crisis country, a low-debt country (Netherlands) and a high-debt country (Italy). These applications illustrate the use of the model in informing diverse policy decisions on sustainable public finance. The model is part of the European Stability Mechanism toolkit to assess debt sustainability and repayment capacity of member states in the context of financial assistance.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134329250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Federal Reserve's Current Framework for Monetary Policy: A Review and Assessment","authors":"Janice C. Eberly, J. Stock, Jonathan H. Wright","doi":"10.3386/W26002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W26002","url":null,"abstract":"The Federal Reserve's current monetary policy framework combines conventional policy that sets the level of the federal funds rate with policies that operate through the slope of the term structure, including forward guidance and large-scale asset purchases. These slope policies are particularly important when the federal funds rate is at the zero lower bound. We assess the performance of counterfactual monetary policies since the Great Recession using a structural vector autoregression, identified using high-frequency jumps in asset prices around FOMC meetings as external instruments. We find that slope policies played an important role in supporting the recovery, but only partially circumvented the zero lower bound. In our simulations, earlier and more aggressive use of slope policies supports a faster recovery. The recovery would also have been faster, with the unemployment gap closing seven quarters earlier, if the Fed had inherited a higher level of inflation and nominal interest rates consistent with a 3 percent inflation target coming into the financial crisis recession.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121849026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of U.S. Monetary Policy in Global Banking Crises","authors":"C. B. Durdu, Alex Martin, Ilknur Zer","doi":"10.17016/FEDS.2019.039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2019.039","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the role of U.S. monetary policy in global financial stability by using a cross-country database spanning the period from 1870-2010 across 69 countries. U.S. monetary policy tightening increases the probability of banking crises for those countries with direct linkages to the U.S., either in the form of trade links or significant share of USD-denominated liabilities. Conversely, if a country is integrated globally, rather than having a direct exposure, the effect is ambiguous. One possible channel we identify is capital flows: If the correction in capital flows is disorderly (e.g., sudden stops), the probability of banking crises increases. These findings suggest that the effect of U.S. monetary policy in global banking crises is not uniform and largely dependent on the nature of linkages with the U.S.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114464852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why We Fail to Catch Money Launderers 99.9 Percent of the Time","authors":"Ken J. Comeau","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3388049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3388049","url":null,"abstract":"The fight against money laundering in Canada will require tougher measures that shine a light on the perpetrators who now operate in the shadows, says a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Why We Fail to Catch Money Launderers 99.9 percent of the Time,” author Kevin Comeau supports the creation of a publicly accessible registry of beneficial ownership, and mandatory declarations of beneficial ownership with meaningful sanctions for false declarations.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"172 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129450447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conceptual Issues in Calibrating the Basel Iii Countercyclical Capital Buffer","authors":"Torsten Wezel","doi":"10.5089/9781498312097.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5089/9781498312097.001","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses issues in calibrating the countercyclical capital buffer (CCB) based on a sample of EU countries. It argues that the main indicator for buffer decisions under the Basel III framework, the credit-to-GDP gap, does not always work best in terms of covering bank loan losses that go beyond what could be expected from economic downturns. Instead, in the case of countries with short financial cycles and/or low financial deepening such as transition and developing economies, the Basel gap is shown to work best when computed with a low, smoothing factor and adjusted for the degree of financial deepening. The paper also analyzes issues in calibrating an appropriate size of the CCB and, using a loss function approach, points to a tradeoff between stability of the buffer size and cost efficiency considerations.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"110 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125909596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should Central Banks Issue Digital Currency?","authors":"Todd Keister, Daniel Sanches","doi":"10.21799/frbp.wp.2019.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21799/frbp.wp.2019.26","url":null,"abstract":"We study how the introduction of a central bank-issued digital currency affects interest rates, the level of economic activity, and welfare in an environment where both central bank money and private bank deposits are used in exchange. Banks in our model are financially constrained, and the liquidity premium on bank deposits affects the level of aggregate investment. We study the optimal design of a digital currency in this setting, including whether it should pay interest and how widely it should circulate. We highlight an important policy tradeoff: while a digital currency tends to promote efficiency in exchange, it can also crowd out bank deposits, raise banksfunding costs, and decrease investment. Despite these effects, introducing a central bank digital currency often raises welfare.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116310581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perspectives on U.S. Monetary Policy Tools and Instruments","authors":"James D. Hamilton","doi":"10.3386/W25911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W25911","url":null,"abstract":"The Federal Reserve characterizes its current policy decisions in terms of targets for the fed funds rate and the size of its balance sheet. The fed funds rate today is essentially an administered rate that is heavily influenced by regulatory arbitrage and divorced from its traditional role as a signal of liquidity in the banking system. The size of the Fed’s balance sheet is at best a very blunt instrument for influencing interest rates. In this paper I compare the current operating system with the historical U.S. system and the procedures of other central banks. I then examine strategies for transitioning from the current system to one that would give the Federal Reserve more accurate tools with which to achieve its strategic objective of influencing inflation and output.","PeriodicalId":145273,"journal":{"name":"Monetary Economics: Central Banks - Policies & Impacts eJournal","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123566664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}