Domenico Lombardi

The Government Bond Buying Programmes of the European Central Bank: An Analysis of Their Policy Settings

ABSTRACT This article investigates why the European Central Banks (ECBs) unconventional monetary policies were relatively modest during the crisis, focusing specifically on the design of its government bond purchase programmes. Building from available explanations of the ECBs behaviour in the political science and public policy literature, we extrapolate a number of testable propositions with a view to helping to account for the specific features of the policies under investigation. These propositions build from scholarly works that emphasize three distinct fundamentals of the ECBs behaviour: legal; doctrinal; and institutional. We then provide evidence supporting our propositions by evaluating the ECBs policy settings during the crisis. In addition, we identify other factors that have shaped the design of the ECBs bond buying policies, namely the ECBs conception of its own independence.

The symbolic politics of delegation: macroprudential policy and independent regulatory authorities

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the motivations that led policy-makers to delegate macroprudential authorities to newly created independent systemic regulatory authorities (SRAs). Three case studies are examined: the US Financial Stability Oversight Council, the European Systemic Risk Board and the UK’s Financial Policy Committee. Policy-makers’ motivations are captured by examining the specific institutional features of the newly created SRAs and by tracing the legislative debates that surrounded their creation. The findings of this empirical analysis call into question several of the conventional claims that are used to justify delegation to technocratic agencies from the functionalist and ideational scholarship. Given the limitations of the explanations based on efficiency considerations and socialisation of welfare losses, this paper suggests that the delegation of powers to SRAs was ultimately motivated by what is referred to as the ‘logic of symbolic politics.’ It is argued that the main motivation that emerges from the legislative debates for delegating this important task is that the SRAs provided a quick institutional ‘fix’ to signal to the public that in the wake of the international crisis of 2007–2009, policy-makers were redressing regulatory mistakes made prior to and during the crisis that had caused a severe deterioration of public’s wealth.

Domestic preferences and European banking supervision: Germany, Italy and the Single Supervisory Mechanism

Abstract What explains regulators’ preferences concerning the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM)? The paper answers this question by providing an alternative account of the creation of the SSM using an institutionalist perspective. It is argued that the creation of the SSM does not simply reflect the material interests of governments and domestic financial firms, but that regulators’ positions were also significantly affected by the institutional environment in which they operated. Two characteristics of domestic supervisory governance are identified: the institutional responsibilities of banking regulators (microprudential and/or macroprudential) and the fragmentation of supervisory and monetary policies. The empirical analysis demonstrates the relevance of these factors for shaping regulators’ preferences both within and across countries.

Rmbi or Rmbr: Is the Renminbi Destined to Become a Global or Regional Currency?

Previous studies have focused on when the renminbi will play a significant role as an international currency, but less attention has been paid to where. We fill this gap by contrasting two answers to the question. One is that the renminbi will assume the role of a global currency similar to the U.S. dollar. Supporters point to Chinas widely diversified trade and financial flows and to its institutional initiatives, not just in Asia but around the world. The other is that the renminbi will play a regional role in Asia equivalent to that of the euro in Greater Europe. Proponents of this view argue that China has a natural advantage in leveraging regional supply chains and deepening its links with other Asian countries as well as in developing regional institutions. Asia, they argue on these grounds, will become the natural habitat for the renminbi.

Governing Sovereign Debt Restructuring Through Regulatory Standards

Abstract In recent years, a number of costly and destabilizing sovereign debt crises – from Argentina and Greece to Ukraine – have served as a forceful reminder that the international community lacks an agreed-upon framework for resolving debt crises and, when necessary, restructuring sovereign debt in a timely, orderly, and equitable manner. To help address this apparent governance gap, the paper argues that there is an important but underutilized role for the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in governing sovereign debt restructuring. More specifically, in a governance domain that is relatively fragmented between uncoordinated, even sometimes competing, rules and rule-makers, the FSB could serve as the focal institution responsible for overseeing the coordination and further development of soft law regulatory standards for sovereign debt restructuring. The reasons for FSB governance in this domain are simple and compelling, relating to both the nature of the debt restructuring regime and its evolution to date, as well as the specific institutional features of the FSB and the core tasks it performs. Although there remains room for treaty-based organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and United Nations (UN) to develop a hard law approach to sovereign debt restructuring, the FSB, we argue, is best positioned to strengthen and oversee the existing soft law approach, which currently prevails as the modus operandi of the present debt restructuring framework.

Exchange rates, central bank news and the zero lower bound*

ABSTRACT The zero lower bound (ZLB) may restrict the responsiveness of exchange rates to news. A proxy for central bank communication is added as a determinant in a model of exchange rate movements. Two reserve currencies, the British pound and euro, and two currencies of small open economies, the Canadian dollar and Swedish krona, are examined. Reserve currencies are more vulnerable to the ZLB constraint, while the currencies of small open economies become more responsive to foreign central bank announcements. Certain unconventional monetary policy announcements were found to significantly impact exchange rates at the ZLB.

A SURVEY OF THE INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE AND LESSONS LEARNED ABOUT UNCONVENTIONAL MONETARY POLICIES: IS A ‘NEW NORMAL’ IN OUR FUTURE?: LESSONS FROM UNCONVENTIONAL POLICIES

This study examines the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policies (UMP). It considers whether these policies have been successful and where their effects remain uncertain. We survey both the domestic financial market and macro‐economic effects of UMP in the economies where these policies were introduced and their international spillover effects. The paper considers the impact of a wide range of UMP rather than the effects of specific policy instruments. We also provide a retrospective on the important case of Japan beginning in the late1990s and ask whether the Eurozones experience with UMP is substantively different given its structure of policymaking. Finally, we ask: if the ‘old normal’ is not in our future, should the ‘new normal’ in monetary policy routinely include what we now refer to as UMP? We conclude that UMP can prevent economic collapse but are not designed to promote stronger long‐term economic growth. Apart from new communication strategies, the use of UMP under normal circumstances does not appear to be a sound monetary policy strategy. Failure to learn this lesson might also enable future policy makers to ask or expect too much from their central banks.

Multilayered Governance and the International Financial Architecture: The Erosion of Multilateralism in International Liquidity Provision

We analyze the ‘plurilateralization’ of global financial governance, defined as the proliferation of bilateral, regional and global governance arrangements, exploring how these have shaped international monetary and financial relations. We argue that the added layers of governance are the outgrowth of four factors: the demand for an international lender of last resort, the need to manage cross†border financial and monetary policy spillovers, the desire for policy ownership and flexibility in an increasingly globalized world, and the confluence of bilateral liquidity provision policies with countries’ strategic foreign economic policy goals. Despite the desire to rationalize and streamline an increasingly complex international financial architecture, we argue that plurilateral governance is here to stay. We therefore offer some guidelines for living with this complexity.

Government Bond Yields at the Effective Lower Bound: International Evidence

Empirical evidence on the potential impact of central bank policies on government bond yields at the effective lower bound (ELB) is presented for nine economies. We quantify the content of central bank communications and consider international policy spillovers. At the ELB, yields at the medium-to-longer end of the yield curve remain responsive to news for a few years after the ELB is reached. Yields become more sensitive to the content central bank communication at the ELB. Our results provides further evidence that central bank communication is an important element of monetary policy making when the interest rate tool loses efficacy.

Domestic Politics and External Financial Liberalization in China: The Capacity and Fragility of External Market Pressure

Abstract This article explores how the Chinese Communist Party has relied in part on making global financial markets and institutions a source of external pressure to help pass domestic economic and financial reform. We explore two case studies of external financial liberalization: the listing of Chinese state-owned enterprises on foreign stock exchanges and the financial reform aspects of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. These studies show that external liberalization policies are interlinked with both micro- and macro-level reforms in the domestic economy. We conclude that, after 2005, this strategy of applying external pressure, in fact, did not lead to more comprehensive economic restructuring because the agents of external pressure—in this instance, foreign banks and accounting firms—were themselves party to the reinforcement of state control and ultimately did not (or could not) promote further external liberalization. Domestic agents that supported external liberalization were also quick to abandon it when external pressure conflicted with other domestic policy objectives.