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Author: Paul De Grauwe Publisher: ISBN: Category : Economics Languages : en Pages : 27
Book Description
We analyze the relation between the level of the inflation target and the zero lower bound (ZLB) imposed on the nominal interest rate. We analyze this relation in the framework of a behavioral macroeconomic model in which agents experience cognitive limitations. The model produces endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism (animal spirits) that, because of their self-fulfilling nature, drive the business cycle and in turn are influenced by the business cycle. We find that when the inflation target is too close to zero, the economy can get gripped by "chronic pessimism" that leads to a dominance of negative output gaps and recessions, and in turn feeds back on expectations producing long waves of pessimism. The simulations of our model, using parameter calibrations that are generally found in the literature, suggests that an inflation target of 2% is too low, i.e. produces negative skewness in the distribution of the output gap. We find that an inflation target in the range of 3% to 4% comes closer to producing a symmetric distribution of the output gap and avoids the economy being trapped in a region of chronic pessimism.
Author: Paul De Grauwe Publisher: ISBN: Category : Economics Languages : en Pages : 27
Book Description
We analyze the relation between the level of the inflation target and the zero lower bound (ZLB) imposed on the nominal interest rate. We analyze this relation in the framework of a behavioral macroeconomic model in which agents experience cognitive limitations. The model produces endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism (animal spirits) that, because of their self-fulfilling nature, drive the business cycle and in turn are influenced by the business cycle. We find that when the inflation target is too close to zero, the economy can get gripped by "chronic pessimism" that leads to a dominance of negative output gaps and recessions, and in turn feeds back on expectations producing long waves of pessimism. The simulations of our model, using parameter calibrations that are generally found in the literature, suggests that an inflation target of 2% is too low, i.e. produces negative skewness in the distribution of the output gap. We find that an inflation target in the range of 3% to 4% comes closer to producing a symmetric distribution of the output gap and avoids the economy being trapped in a region of chronic pessimism.
Author: Paul De Grauwe Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
We analyse the relationship between the level of the inflation target and the zero lower bound imposed on the nominal interest rate in the framework of a behavioural New-Keynesian macroeconomic model in which agents, experiencing cognitive limitations, use adaptive learning forecasting rules. The model produces endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism (animal spirits) that lead to non-normal distributions of the output gap. We find that when the inflation target is too close to zero, the economy can get gripped by 'chronic pessimism' that leads to a dominance of negative output gaps and recessions, and in turn feeds back on expectations producing long waves of pessimism. Low inflation targets create the risk of persistence of recessions and low growth. In conclusion, our framework suggests that the 2% inflation target, now pursued by many central banks, is too low.
Author: Flora Budianto Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Does a higher inflation target for central banks help to reduce the risk of hitting the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates? In the standard New Keynesian model, a higher inflation target changes the price-setting behavior of firms in a substantial way. Specifically, firms become more forward-looking, inflation is more volatile and, thereby, the nominal interest rate fluctuates more. I show that even with more "room-to-manoeuvre" for the nominal interest rate due to a higher inflation target, the higher volatility of the nominal interest rate implies that the economy can end up - on net - more often at the ZLB. I provide an example in which a 4% inflation target can, in fact, increase the risk of hitting the ZLB relative to a 2% inflation target.
Author: Johannes Friedrich Wieland Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 426
Book Description
What policies are effective at combatting recessions when the zero lower bound (ZLB) binds? This dissertations contributes to this question in at least three ways. First, it examines several such policies in a standard macroeconomic framework. Second, it uses extensive robustness checks as well as macroeconomic and financial data to validate or reject the key mechanisms that are at work in these models. Third, in the case of rejection, the standard framework is modified to match the data and this improved framework is used to re-evaluate the policies in question. This produces new insights relative to existing literature that has largely remained within the standard macroeconomic framework. This dissertation first analyzes whether central banks should raise their inflation targets in light of the ZLB. It explicitly incorporates positive steady-state (or ``trend'') inflation in standard macroeconomic models as well as the ZLB on nominal interest rates. For plausible calibrations with costly but infrequent episodes at the zero-lower bound, the optimal inflation rate is low, typically less than two percent, even after considering a variety of extensions, including endogenous and state-dependent price stickiness and downward nominal wage rigidities. The key intuition behind this result is that the unconditional cost of the zero lower bound is small even though each individual ZLB event is quite costly. In short, raising the inflation target is too blunt an instrument to efficiently reduce the severe costs of zero-bound episodes. Second, this dissertation considers whether fiscal policy be effective in an open economy with flexible exchange rates. Standard open economy models suggest that the open economy fiscal multiplier is small when exchange rates are flexible. This premise is reassessed by explicitly incorporating the ZLB on nominal interest rates in a small open economy New Keynesian model. It finds (1) when the ZLB binds and uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) holds, then the open economy fiscal multiplier is larger than 1 and bigger than the closed economy fiscal multiplier, (2) these conclusions can be reversed given significant violations of UIP, and (3) for estimated departures from UIP, the open economy fiscal multiplier at the ZLB is above 1 but smaller than the closed economy fiscal multiplier. Third, this dissertation tests for a key propagation mechanism in standard macroeconomic models -- the inflation expectations channel. Accordingly, government spending multipliers are large and negative supply shocks are expansionary at the ZLB because they lower expected real interest rates, which stimulates consumption. The second prediction is tested with oil supply shocks, an earthquake, and inflation risk premia, demonstrating that negative supply shocks are contractionary at the ZLB despite also lowering expected real interest rates. These facts are rationalized in a model with financial frictions. In this model demand-side policies, such as fiscal stimulus through government spending, are substantially less effective at the ZLB than in standard sticky-price models, because raising inflation expectations by raising production costs is no longer a source of stimulus.
Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135179778 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 402
Book Description
Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.
Author: Christian Proaño Acosta Publisher: ISBN: 9783943153828 Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
In this paper we study the implementation of a state-dependent inflation target in a two-country monetary union model characterized by boundedly rational agents. In particular, we use the spread between the actual policy rate (which is constrained by the zero-lower-bound) and the Taylor rate (which can become negative) as a measure for the degree of ineffectiveness of conventional monetary policy as a stabilizing mechanism. The perception of macroeconomic risk by the agents is assumed to vary according to this measure by means of the Brock-Hommes switching mechanism. Our numerical simulations indicate a) that a state-dependent inflation target may lead to a better macroeconomic and inflation stabilization, and b) the perceived risk-sharing among the monetary union members influences the financing conditions of the member economies of the monetary union.
Author: Matteo Cacciatore Publisher: International Monetary Fund ISBN: 1484324269 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 65
Book Description
This paper studies the impact of product and labor market reforms when the economy faces major slack and a binding constraint on monetary policy easing. such as the zero lower bound. To this end, we build a two-country model with endogenous producer entry, labor market frictions, and nominal rigidities. We find that while the effect of market reforms depends on the cyclical conditions under which they are implemented, the zero lower bound itself does not appear to matter. In fact, when carried out in a recession, the impact of reforms is typically stronger when the zero lower bound is binding. The reason is that reforms are inflationary in our structural model (or they have no noticeable deflationary effects). Thus, contrary to the implications of reduced-form modeling of product and labor market reforms as exogenous reductions in price and wage markups, our analysis shows that there is no simple across-the-board relationship between market reforms and the behavior of real marginal costs. This significantly alters the consequences of the zero (or any effective) lower bound on policy rates.
Author: Jonathan Benchimol Publisher: International Monetary Fund ISBN: 1498324584 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 52
Book Description
The form of bounded rationality characterizing the representative agent is key in the choice of the optimal monetary policy regime. While inflation targeting prevails for myopia that distorts agents' inflation expectations, price level targeting emerges as the optimal policy under myopia regarding the output gap, revenue, or interest rate. To the extent that bygones are not bygones under price level targeting, rational inflation expectations is a minimal condition for optimality in a behavioral world. Instrument rules implementation of this optimal policy is shown to be infeasible, questioning the ability of simple rules à la Taylor (1993) to assist the conduct of monetary policy. Bounded rationality is not necessarily associated with welfare losses.
Author: Marc Dordal-i-Carreras Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Countries rarely hit the zero lower bound (ZLB) on interest rates, but when they do, these episodes tend to be very long-lived. These two features are difficult to incorporate jointly into macroeconomic models using typical representations of shock processes. We introduce a regime-switching representation of risk premium shocks into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model to generate a realistic distribution of ZLB durations. We discuss what different calibrations of this model imply for optimal inflation rates.
Author: Paul De Grauwe
Author: Paul De Grauwe
Author: Paul De Grauwe
Author: Flora Budianto
Author: Johannes Friedrich Wieland
Author: Guido Ascari
Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair
Author: Christian Proaño Acosta
Author: Matteo Cacciatore
Author: Jonathan Benchimol
Author: Marc Dordal-i-Carreras