Price-level Determinacy, Lower Bounds on the Nominal Interest Rate, and Liquidity Traps PDF Download

Author: Ragna Alstadheim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Interest rates
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Author: Fernando Duarte
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
I study how central banks should communicate monetary policy in liquidity trap scenarios in which the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is binding. Using a standard New Keynesian model, I argue that the key to anchoring expectations and preventing self-fulfilling deflationary spirals is to promise to keep nominal interest rates pegged at zero for a length of time that depends on the state of the economy. I derive necessary and sufficient conditions for this type of state-contingent forward guidance to implement the welfare-maximizing equilibrium as a globally determinate (that is, unique) equilibrium. Even though the zero lower bound prevents the Taylor principle from holding, determinacy can be obtained if the central bank sufficiently extends the duration of the zero interest rate peg in response to deflationary or contractionary changes in expectations or outcomes. Fiscal policy is passive, so it plays no role for determinacy. The interest rate rules I consider are easy to communicate, require little institutional change, and do not entail any unnecessary social welfare losses.

Author: Bennett T. McCallum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capital movements
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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The paper reviews issues related to the zero lower bound (ZLB) on interest rates and argues that all of the following propositions are invalid: (i) in a ZLB situation, "shaping interest rate expectations is essentially the only tool that central bankers have"(Bernanke, et.al., 2004); (ii) fiscal policy actions such as "helicopter drops" are in theory more effective than monetary policy actions; (iii) the prominent "foolproof way" policy rule of Svensson (2001, 2003) is applicable more generally -i.e., even when exact uncovered interest parity holds- than the alternative exchange-rate rule of McCallum (2000); (iv) both of the exchange-rate strategies described in (iii) are open to the objection that they constitute "beggar-thy-neighbor" approaches, and (v) there is a significant danger of ZLB difficulties stemming from a "deflationary trap" type of equilibrium, as distinct from a "liquidity trap."

Author: John H. Cochrane
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691242240
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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"Inflation, in which all prices and wages in an economy rise, is mysterious. If a war breaks out in the Middle East, and the price of oil goes up, the mechanism is no great mystery-supply and demand often work pretty visibly. But if you ask the grocer why the price of bread is higher, he or she will blame the wholesaler, who will blame the baker, who will blame the wheat supplier, and so on. Perhaps the ultimate cause is a government printing more money, but there is really no way to know this for certain but to sit down in an office with statistics, armed with some decent economic theory. But current economic theory doesn't really explain why we haven't seen inflation for so long, and more and more economists think that current theory doesn't hold together, or provide much guidance for how central banks should behave if inflation does break out. Many also worry that central banks have much less power over the economy than they think they do, and much less understanding of the mechanism behind what power they do have. The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level is a comprehensive new approach to monetary policy. Economist John Cochrane argues that money has value because the government accepts it for tax payments. This insight, he argues, leads to a deep re-reading of monetary policy and institutions. Inflation comes when a government is unable to repay its debts, rather than from mismanagement of the split of debt between money and bonds. In the book, he will analyze institutional design, historical episodes, and compare fiscal theory to the Keynesian and new-Keynesian theory based on interest rate targets, and to monetarism. The book offers an overview and introduction to the range of contemporary monetary economics and history of thought as well as the fiscal theory"--

Author: Taisuke Nakata
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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A key result of a recent literature that focuses on the global consequences of Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules is that such rules in combination with the zero bound on nominal interest rates can lead to unintended liquidity traps. An immediate question posed by this result is whether the government could avoid liquidity traps by ignoring the zero bound, that is, by threatening to set the nominal interest rate at a negative value should the inflation rate fall below a certain threshold. This paper shows that even if the government could credibly commit to setting the interest rate at a negative value, self-fulfilling liquidity traps can still emerge. That is, deflationary equilibria originating arbitrarily near the intended equilibrium and leading to low (possibly zero) interest rates and low (and possibly negative) rates of inflation cannot be ruled out by lifting the zero bound on the monetary policy rule. This result obtains in models with flexible and sticky prices and under continuous and discrete time.

Author: Fernando Duarte
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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We propose a new interest rate rule that implements the optimal equilibrium and eliminates all indeterminacy in a canonical New Keynesian model in which the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates (ZLB) is binding. The rule commits to zero nominal interest rates for a length of time that increases in proportion to how much past inflation has deviated--either upward or downward--from its optimal level. Once outside the ZLB, interest rates follow a standard Taylor rule. Following the Taylor principle outside the ZLB is neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure uniqueness of equilibria. Instead, the key principle is to respond strongly enough to deviations of past inflation from optimal levels by sufficiently increasing the amount of time interest rates are promised to be kept at zero.

Author: Mr.Marco Airaudo
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1475546416
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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We present an extensive analysis of the consequences for global equilibrium determinacy in flexible-price open economies of implementing active interest rate rules, i.e., monetary rules where the nominal interest rate responds more than proportionally to inflation. We show that conditions under which these rules generate aggregate instability by inducing liquidity traps, endogenous cycles, and chaotic dynamics depend on specific characteristics of open economies. In particular, rules that respond to expected future inflation are more prone to induce endogenous cyclical and chaotic dynamics the more open the economy to trade.

Author: Ben S. Bernanke
Publisher: www.bnpublishing.com
ISBN: 9781607961055
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The success over the years in reducing inflation and, consequently, the average level of nominal interest rates has increased the likelihood that the nominal policy interest rate may become constrained by the zero lower bound. When that happens, a central bank can no longer stimulate aggregate demand by further interest-rate reductions and must rely on "non-standard" policy alternatives. To assess the potential effectiveness of such policies, we analyze the behavior of selected asset prices over short periods surrounding central bank statements or other types of financial or economic news and estimate "noarbitrage" models of the term structure for the United States and Japan. There is some evidence that central bank communications can help to shape public expectations of future policy actions and that asset purchases in large volume by a central bank would be able to affect the price or yield of the targeted asset.

Author: Ben S. Bernanke
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226044734
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
Over the past fifteen years, a significant number of industrialized and middle-income countries have adopted inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policymaking. As the name suggests, in such inflation-targeting regimes, the central bank is responsible for achieving a publicly announced target for the inflation rate. While the objective of controlling inflation enjoys wide support among both academic experts and policymakers, and while the countries that have followed this model have generally experienced good macroeconomic outcomes, many important questions about inflation targeting remain. In Inflation Targeting, a distinguished group of contributors explores the many underexamined dimensions of inflation targeting—its potential, its successes, and its limitations—from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint, and for both developed and emerging economies. The volume opens with a discussion of the optimal formulation of inflation-targeting policy and continues with a debate about the desirability of such a model for the United States. The concluding chapters discuss the special problems of inflation targeting in emerging markets, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.