Research

Link to article in European Economic Review (2023)

Link to ECB Working Paper (2020)

We study the effects of macroprudential commercial bank regulation on the shadow banking sector via an estimated New Keynesian DSGE model that differentiates between monopolistically competitive commercial banks and shadow banks that rely on funding in a perfectly competitive market for investments. We find that tighter capital requirements on commercial banks increase shadow bank lending, which may have adverse financial stability effects. Coordinating macroprudential tightening with monetary easing can limit this leakage mechanism, while overall maintaining a reduction in aggregate lending. In a counterfactual analysis we compare how macroprudential policy implemented before the 2008 financial crisis would have affected business and lending cycles.

JEL Codes: E32, E58, G23

Link to ECB Working Paper

We study alternative monetary policy strategies in the presence of the lower bound on nominal interest rates and a low equilibrium real rate using an estimated DSGE model for the euro area. We find that simple feedback rules that implement inflation targeting result in a binding lower bound one-fourth of the time as well as inflation and output exhibiting large downward biases and heightened volatility. Rule-based asset purchases that are activated once the policy rate reaches the lower bound are not able to fully offset the destabilizing effects of the lower bound if we assume plausible limits on the size of purchases. Makeup strategies, especially average inflation targeting with a long averaging window, perform better than inflation targeting. However, differences in performance across strategies become small if the response coefficients of the feedback rules are optimized. In addition, we find that the benefits of makeup strategies tend to vanish if agents exhibit a degree of inattention to central bank policies as estimated in the data.

JEL Codes: E31, E32, E37, E52, E58, E61, E71

Link to Economics Letters article (2023)

We provide evidence on how banks and non-bank financial intermediaries differ in their response to monetary policy. Our findings are based on a standard empirical macro model for the euro area, augmented with balance sheet data for banks and investment funds. The model is estimated via local projections, using high-frequency methods to identify different types of monetary policy shocks. Short-rate shocks lead to a significant balance sheet response of banks and investment funds, with a slightly swifter and more persistent reaction of banks. Long-rate shocks instead exert only short-lived effects on bank balance sheets, whereas investment fund balance sheets exhibit a stronger and more persistent response. The relative role of different types of financial intermediaries hence emerges as a relevant factor in shaping the transmission process for conventional and non-standard monetary policy measures.

JEL Codes: E44, E52, G23 

Link to Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control article (2022)

Link to ECB Working Paper (2020)

Forward guidance operates via the expectations formation process of the agents in the economy. In standard quantitative macroeconomic models, expectations are unobserved variables formed endogenously via the dynamics of the model and little scrutiny is devoted to analysing the behaviour of these expectations. We show that the introduction of survey and financial market-based forecast data in the estimation of the model disciplines the expectations formation process in DSGE models. When the model-implied expectations are matched to observed expectations, the additional information of the forecasts restrains the agents’ expectations formation. We argue that the reduced volatility of the agents’ expectations dampens the model reactions to forward guidance shocks and improves the out-of-sample forecast accuracy of the model. Furthermore, we evaluate the case for introducing a discount factor as a reduced form proxy for a variety of microfounded approaches, proposed to mitigate the forward guidance puzzle. Once data on expectations is considered, the empirical support to introduce a discount factor dissipates.

JEL Codes: C13, C52, E3, E47, E52

Toolkit available on GitHub 

Link to ECB Working Paper

This paper presents a toolkit for generating optimal policy projections. It makes five contributions. First, the toolkit requires a minimal set of inputs: only a baseline projection for target and instrument variables and impulse responses of those variables to policy shocks. Second, it solves optimal policy projections under commitment, limited-time commitment, and discretion. Third, it handles multiple policy instruments. Fourth, it handles multiple constraints on policy instruments such as a lower bound on the policy rate and an upper bound on asset purchases. Fifth, it allows alternative approaches to address the forward guidance puzzle. The toolkit that accompanies this paper is Dynare compatible, which facilitates its use. Examples replicate existing results in the optimal monetary policy literature and illustrate the usefulness of the toolkit for highlighting policy trade-offs. We use the toolkit to analyse US monetary policy at the height of the Great Financial Crisis. Given the Fed's early-2009 baseline macroeconomic projections, we find the Fed's planned use of the policy rate was close to optimal whereas a more aggressive QE program would have been beneficial.

JEL Codes: C61, C63, E52, E58

Link to Journal of Macroeconomics article (Volume 70, December 2021)

Link to ECB Working Paper

We analyse the implications of asymmetric monetary policy rules by estimating Markov-switching DSGE models for the euro area (EA) and the US. The estimations show that until mid-2014 the ECB’s response to inflation was more forceful when inflation was above than below the central bank’s aim. Since then, the ECB’s policy can be characterised as symmetric, and we quantify the macroeconomic implications of this policy change. We uncover asymmetries also in the Fed’s policy, which has responded more strongly in times of crisis. We compute optimal simple rules for the EA and the US in an environment with the effective lower bound and a low neutral real rate, and find that it prescribes a stronger response to inflation and the output gap when inflation is below target compared to when it is above target. We document its stabilisation properties had this optimal rule been implemented over the last two decades.

JEL Codes: E52, E58, E31, E32

Link to ECB Working Paper

This paper develops a simple, consistent methodology for generating empirically realistic forward guidance simulations using existing macroeconomic models by modifying expectations about policy announcements. The main advantage of our method lies in the exact preservation of all other shock transmissions. We describe four scenarios regarding how agents incorporate information about future interest rate announcements: “inattention”, “credibility”, “finite planning horizon”, and “learning”. The methodology consists of describing a single loading matrix that augments the equilibrium decision rules and can be applied to any standard DSGE, including large-scale policy-institution models. Finally, we provide conditions under which the forward guidance puzzle is resolved.

JEL Codes: C63, E32, E52

Link to ECB Working Paper

We estimate the effects of interest rate forward guidance (FG) using a parsimonious VAR, augmented with survey forecast data. The identification strategy of FG shocks via sign and zero restrictions is successfully tested by the recovery of true IRFs from simulated data. The identified shocks from the VAR suggest that FG has a stronger effect on macro variables and deviations are more instantaneous compared to the hump-shaped response following unanticipated changes in monetary policy. We apply this evidence to calibrate free parameters of an otherwise estimated DSGE model in order to dampen the FG Puzzle. 

JEL Codes: C54, E43, E58

Link to ECB Working Paper

We estimate the natural rate of interest for the US and the euro area in a semi-structural model comprising a Taylor rule. Our estimates feature key elements of Laubach and Williams (2003), but are more consistent with using conventional policy rules: we model inflation to be stationary, with the output gap pinning down deviations of inflation from its objective (rather than relative to a random walk). We relax some constraints on the correlation of latent factor shocks to make the original unobserved-components framework more amenable to structural interpretation and to reduce filtering uncertainty. We show that resulting natural rate metrics are more consistent with estimates from structural models.

JEL Codes: C11, E32, E43, E52

Link to paper

Empirical evidence shows that monetary policy tightening affects three types of financial institutions in different ways: banks decrease lending, while shadow banks and investment funds increase lending. I develop an estimated monetary DSGE model with funding market frictions that is able to replicate these empirical facts. In a counterfactual exercise I study how the regulation of shadow banks affects an economy at the zero lower bound (ZLB). Consumption volatility is reduced when shadow bank assets are directly held by commercial banks. Alternatively, regulating shadow banks like investment funds results in a milder recession during, and a quicker escape from, the ZLB. The reason is that a recessionary demand shock that moves the economy to the ZLB has similar effects to a monetary tightening due to the inability to reduce the policy rate below zero.

JEL Codes: E32, E44, E52, G11

How do different types of financial institutions respond to changes in the monetary policy rate? Counter to the credit channel of monetary transmission, I show in a Bayesian Vector Autoregression that an increase in the monetary policy rate of 100 basis points raises credit intermediation by two different types of non-bank financial institutions (NBFI): investment funds increase lending by 4% and shadow banks increase lending by 2%. Credit intermediation by banks is reduced by about 3%. The movement in opposite directions is explained by the difference in funding between banks and NBFI. This finding suggests that the existence of NBFI may decrease aggregate volatility following monetary policy shocks. In addition, it offers an explanation for why lending since the financial crisis has been sluggish and suggests potential options for relief in case the lower bound on monetary policy is binding.

JEL Codes: C11, C32, E44, G23

Does the financial accelerator still hold if the key variable, net worth of entrepreneurs, is endogenously chosen conditional on the business cycle? The answer is yes. I microfound the mechanism in Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999) whereby new net worth in firms is created. Households face a portfolio choice between state contingent and non-contingent assets. Although the propagation of some key variables is significantly altered, the macroeconomic consequences remain broadly the same. The analysis suggests that models using the financial accelerator should include endogenous firm entry if firm capital and investment as well as household portfolio decisions are analyzed.

JEL Codes: E21, E32, E44, E52

This paper studies the role of uncertainty in the corporate cash hoarding puzzle. The baseline model is a stochastic neoclassical growth model featuring idiosyncratic and uninsurable productivity shocks and a cash-in-advance constraint on new investments on the individual firm level. Individual agents’ choices regarding cash holdings are analyzed. After a wealth threshold is reached, the cash-in-advance constraint ceases to have an effect on the agent’s behavior. The resulting aggregate cash holdings of households increases with uncertainty. Aggregate consumption is also higher, but the added volatility of consumption decreases lifetime utility. Allowing firms to borrow and lend available unused cash increases average variables. An exogenous increase in the interest rate at which they intermediate funds leads to increased intermediation activity, corresponding to the lending channel of monetary policy transmission.

JEL Codes: C63, E21, E41, D81

Link to Occasional Paper

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, central banks started being confronted with severe challenges that led to an unprecedented policy response in terms of the size and variety of monetary policy measures. One such measure centred on central banks communicating to the public more explicitly their future policy actions in order to influence expectations. In the case of interest rates, as the standard policy rate approached the effective lower bound, major central banks began providing forward guidance (FG) on interest rates with the intention of lowering expectations of future short-term rates. While FG had been used in certain jurisdictions before the crisis, its prominence in the monetary policy toolkit grew substantially in the aftermath of the crisis. This occasional paper summarises the work carried-out by the Eurosystem Taskforce on the macroeconomic impact of rate forward guidance (FG) in an environment of large central bank balance sheets. The analysis presented covers the period up to February 2020 so the implications of the pandemic as well as the ECB’s strategy review are beyond the scope of the Taskforce’s mandate. The paper describes the analytical challenges associated with assessing rate FG on account of the relative novelty of these policies, the lack of well-established empirical results and the sensitivity of model predictions to the expectations formation process. To overcome and address these challenges, the Taskforce took stock of all the available infrastructure and analysis within in the Eurosystem, and where needed, developed structural and empirical models and approaches to assess the macroeconomic impact of rate FG in an environment of large central bank balance sheets.

JEL Codes: E37, E43, E52, E58

Link to Occasional Paper

The ECB’s price stability mandate has been defined by the Treaty. But the Treaty has not spelled out what price stability precisely means. To make the mandate operational, the Governing Council has provided a quantitative definition in 1998 and a clarification in 2003. The landscape has changed notably compared to the time the strategy review was originally designed. At the time, the main concern of the Governing Council was to anchor inflation at low levels in face of the inflationary history of the previous decades. Over the last decade economic conditions have changed dramatically: the persistent low-inflation environment has created the concrete risk of de-anchoring of longer-term inflation expectations. Addressing low inflation is different from addressing high inflation. The ability of the ECB (and central banks globally) to provide the necessary accommodation to maintain price stability has been tested by the lower bound on nominal interest rates in the context of the secular decline in the equilibrium real interest rate. Against this backdrop, this report analyses: the ECB’s performance as measured against its formulation of price stability; whether it is possible to identify a preferred level of steady-state inflation on the basis of optimality considerations; advantages and disadvantages of formulating the objective in terms of a focal point or a range, or having both; whether the medium-term orientation of the ECB’s policy can serve as a mechanism to cater for other considerations; how to strengthen, in the presence of the lower bound, the ECB’s leverage on private-sector expectations for inflation and the ECB’s future policy actions so that expectations can act as ‘automatic stabilisers’ and work alongside the central bank.

JEL Codes: E31, E52, E58

Link to Occasional Paper

The financing structure of the euro area economy has evolved since the global financial crisis with non-bank financial intermediation taking a more prominent role. This shift affects the transmission of monetary policy. Compared with banks, non-bank financial intermediaries are more responsive to monetary policy measures that influence longer-term interest rates, such as asset purchases. The increasing role of debt securities in the financing structure of firms also leads to a stronger transmission of long-rate shocks. At the same time, short-term policy rates remain an effective tool to steer economic outcomes in the euro area, which is still highly reliant on bank loans. Amid a low interest rate environment, the growth of market-based finance has been accompanied by increased credit, liquidity and duration risk in the non-bank sector. Interconnections in the financial system can amplify contagion and impair the smooth transmission of monetary policy in periods of market distress. The growing importance of non-bank financial intermediaries has implications for the functioning of financial market segments relevant for monetary policy transmission, in particular the money markets and the bond markets.

JEL Codes: E4, E5, G2, G38

Link to Occasional Paper

Since the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) 2003 strategy review, the importance of macro-financial amplification channels for monetary policy has increasingly gained recognition. This paper takes stock of this evolution and discusses the desirability of further incremental enhancements in the role of financial stability considerations in the ECB’s monetary policy strategy. The paper starts with the premise that macroprudential policy, along with microprudential supervision, is the first line of defence against the build-up of financial imbalances. It also recognises that the pursuit of price stability through monetary policy, and of financial stability through macroprudential policy, are to a large extent complementary. Nevertheless, macroprudential policy may not be able to ensure financial stability independently of monetary policy, because of spillovers originating from the common transmission channels through which the two policies produce their effects. For example, a low interest rate environment can create incentives to engage in more risk-taking, or can adversely impact the profitability of financial intermediaries and hence their capacity to absorb shocks. The paper argues that the existence of such spillovers creates a conceptual case for monetary policy to take financial stability considerations into account. It then goes on to discuss what this conclusion might imply in practice for the ECB. One option would be to exploit the flexible length of the medium-term horizon over which price stability is to be achieved. Longer deviations from price stability could occasionally be tolerated, if they resulted in materially lower risks for financial stability and, ultimately, for future price stability. 

JEL Codes: E3, E44, G01, G21

Link to Occasional Paper

The last review of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy in 2003 followed a period of predominantly upside risks to price stability. Experience following the 2008 financial crisis has focused renewed attention on the question of how monetary and fiscal policy should best interact, in particular in an environment of structurally low interest rates and persistent downside risks to price stability. This debate has been further intensified by the economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In the euro area, the unique architecture of a monetary union consisting of sovereign Member States, with cross-country heterogeneities and weaknesses in its overall construction, poses important challenges. Against this background, this report revisits monetary-fiscal policy interactions in the euro area from a monetary policy perspective and with a focus on the ramifications for price stability and maintaining central bank independence and credibility. The report consists of three parts. The first chapter presents a conceptual framework for thinking about monetary-fiscal policy interactions, thereby setting the stage for a discussion of specifically euro area aspects and challenges in subsequent parts of the report. In particular, it reviews the main ingredients of the pre-global financial crisis consensus on monetary-fiscal policy interactions and addresses significant new insights and refinements which have gained prominence since 2003. In doing so, the chapter distinguishes between general conceptual aspects – i.e. those aspects that pertain to an environment characterised by a single central bank and a single fiscal authority and those aspects that pertain to an environment characterised by a single central bank and many fiscal authorities (a multi-country monetary union). 

JEL Codes: E52, E58, E62, E63, F45

Link to Occasional Paper

This report discusses the role of the European Union’s full employment objective in the conduct of the ECB’s monetary policy. It first reviews a range of indicators of full employment, highlights the heterogeneity of labour market outcomes within different groups in the population and across countries, and documents the flatness of the Phillips curve in the euro area. In this context, it is stressed that labour market structures and trend labour market outcomes are primarily determined by national economic policies. The report then recalls that, in many circumstances, inflation and employment move together and pursuing price stability is conducive to supporting employment. However, in response to economic shocks that give rise to a temporary trade-off between employment and inflation stabilisation, the ECB’s medium-term orientation in pursuing price stability is shown to provide flexibility to contribute to the achievement of the EU’s full employment objective. Regarding the conduct of monetary policy in a low interest rate environment, model-based simulations suggest that history-dependent policy approaches − which have been proposed to overcome lasting shortfalls of inflation due to the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates by a more persistent policy response to disinflationary shocks − can help to bring employment closer to full employment, even though their effectiveness depends on the strength of the postulated expectations channels. Finally, the importance of employment income and wealth inequality in the transmission of monetary policy strengthens the case for more persistent or forceful easing policies (in pursuit of price stability) when interest rates are constrained by their lower bound.

JEL Codes: E52, E24

Link to Occasional Paper

This paper summarises the work done by Eurosystem staff in the context of the Strategy Review Seminar on Monetary Policy Instruments. More specifically, it focuses on the efficacy, efficiency and potential side effects of the key monetary policy instruments employed by the European Central Bank since 2014. The following main findings emerge from the analysis. First, instruments have been effective in easing financing conditions and supporting economic growth, employment and inflation. Second, considering the effective lower bound on policy rates, a combination of instruments is generally more efficient than relying on a single tool. Third, side effects have been generally contained so far, but they are found to vary over time and need to be closely monitored on an ongoing basis. Fourth, the monetary policy toolkit needs to remain innovative, diversified, and flexible, i.e. reviewed regularly to ensure that it remains fit for purpose against the backdrop of evolving financial and macroeconomic conditions.

JEL Codes: E52, E58, E43, E44, E47

Link to Technical Paper

This paper examines the interactions of macroprudential and monetary policies. We find, using a range of macroeconomic models used at the European Central Bank, that in the long run, a 1% bank capital requirement increase has a small impact on GDP. In the short run, GDP declines by 0.15-0.35%. Under a stronger monetary policy reaction, the impact falls to 0.05-0.25%. The paper also examines how capital requirements and the conduct of macroprudential policy affect the monetary transmission mechanism. Higher bank leverage increases the economy's vulnerability to shocks but also monetary policy's ability to offset them. Macroprudential policy diminishes the frequency and severity of financial crises thus eliminating the need for extremely low interest rates. Countercyclical capital measures reduce the neutral real interest rate in normal times. 

JEL Codes: E4, E43, E5, E52, G20, G21

Link to Occasional Paper

Using a wide range of models we document a protracted fall in the natural (or neutral) rate of interest in advanced economies, driven by ageing, waning productivity growth, a rise in mark-ups, and a surge in risk aversion in the wake of the global financial crisis. While our neutral rate estimates are highly uncertain and model dependent, most of them have been negative in the wake of the financial crisis. This observation is highly relevant for assessing the monetary policy stance and the risk of monetary policy becoming constrained by the lower bound on nominal interest rates. We highlight model dependence of natural rate estimates by illustrating large differences in their stabilising properties, depending on the context chosen. We also emphasise high statistical uncertainty of natural rate estimates within models. Looking ahead, a return to higher levels would have to come from a reversal in risk aversion and flight to safety and a boost in productivity. To achieve this, structural reforms are crucial. 

JEL Codes: E52, E43