Gert Peersman

What caused the early millennium slowdown? Evidence based on vector autoregressions

This paper uses a number of simple VAR models for the industrialised world, the United States and the euro area respectively to analyse the underlying shocks that may have caused the recent slowdown. The results of two identification strategies are compared. One is based on traditional zero restrictions and, as an alternative, an identification scheme based on more recent sign restrictions is proposed. The main conclusion is that the recent slowdown was caused by a combination of several shocks: a negative aggregate supply and aggregate spending shock, the increase of oil prices in 1999, and restrictive monetary policy in 2000. These shocks were more pronounced in the United States than the euro area. The results are somewhat different depending on the identification strategy. It is illustrated that traditional zero restrictions can have an influence on the estimated impact of certain shocks.

A VAR Description of the Effects of Monetary Policy in the Individual Countries of the Euro Area

This paper presents a complete set of results describing the effects of monetary policy in 10 countries of the euro area for the pre-EMU period. For each country, we impose one of three identification schemes depending on its monetary integration with Germany, the nominal anchor of the ERM. The first identification scheme applies to Germany, the second to countries of the core EMS (Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands) and the third to all the other countries. An unexpected rise in the short-term interest rate leads to a decrease in GDP, (with investment and exports falling more than consumption) and a gradual decrease in prices for all countries. We also show that, given the width of the error bands around the estimate, we cannot reject that the effects of monetary policy on GDP and on prices are broadly similar in the individual countries of the euro area JEL Classification: E52

The Role of Time-Varying Price Elasticities in Accounting for Volatility Changes in the Crude Oil Market

There has been a systematic increase in the volatility of the real price of crude oil since 1986, followed by a decline in the volatility of oil production since the early 1990s. We explore reasons for this evolution. We show that a likely explanation of this empirical fact is that both the short-run price elasticities of oil demand and of oil supply have declined considerably since the second half of the 1980s. This implies that small disturbances on either side of the oil market can generate large price responses without large quantity movements, which helps explain the latest run-up and subsequent collapse in the price of oil. Our analysis suggests that the variability of oil demand and supply shocks actually has decreased in the more recent past preventing even larger oil price fluctuations than observed in the data.

The Taylor Rule: A Useful Monetary Policy Benchmark for the Euro Area?

This paper explores the Taylor rule--defined as an instrument rule linking the central banks policy rate to the current inflation rate and the output gap--as a benchmark for analysing monetary policy in the euro area. First, it analyses the stabilization properties of the Taylor rule in a closed economy model of the euro area, estimated using aggregate data from five EU countries. An optimized Taylor rule performs quite well compared to the unconstrained optimal feedback rule. Second, the robustness of these results to estimation error in the output gap and model uncertainty is examined. Copyright 1999 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Is the Exchange Rate a Shock Absorber or a Source of Shocks? New Empirical Evidence

This paper analyses the role of the real exchange rate in a structural vector autoregression framework for the United Kingdom, Euro area, Japan, and Canada vis-a´-vis the United States. A new identification strategy is proposed building on sign restrictions. The results are compared to the benchmark conventional approach of Clarida and Gali (1994) based on longrun zero restrictions. Although the restrictions are derived from the same theoretical model, the results are strikingly different. In contrast to the benchmark model, an important role for nominal shocks in explaining real exchange rate fluctuations is found. Hence, the exchange rate can rather be considered as a source of shocks instead of a shock absorber.

Are the Effects of Monetary Policy in the Euro Area Greater in Recessions than in Booms

This paper investigates whether monetary policy impulses have asymmetric effects on output growth in seven countries of the euro area (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands). First, it is shown that these seven countries share the same business cycle. Next, strong evidence is presented that area-wide monetary policy impulses, measured as the contribution of monetary policy shocks to the short-term interest rate in a simple VAR for the euro area economy, have significantly larger effects on output growth in recessions than in booms. These differences are most pronounced in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Belgium, while they are much smaller in Austria and the Netherlands JEL Classification: E4, E5

Monetary Policy Transmission in the Euro Area: The monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area: evidence from VAR analysis

This paper applies the identified VAR methodology to synthetic euro area data from 1980 till 1998 to study the macro-economic effects of an unexpected change in monetary policy in the euro area. The focus is on the area-wide monetary transmission. It is shown that the overall macro-economic effects of a monetary policy shock in the euro area are very similar to those estimated for the United States and are surprisingly stable over time. In addition, the paper contains a number of robustness checks with alternative identification schemes and examines how various real and financial variables (such as the GDP or money components) respond to an area-wide monetary policy impulse JEL Classification: E52

Putting the New Keynesian Model to a Test

In recent years, New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (NK DSGE) models have become increasingly popular in the academic literature and in policy analysis. However, the success of these models in reproducing the dynamic behavior of an economy following structural shocks is still disputed. This paper attempts to shed light on this issue. We use a VAR with sign restrictions that are robust to model and parameter uncertainty to estimate the effects of monetary policy, preference, government spending, investment, price markup, technology, and labor supply shocks on macroeconomic variables in the United States and the euro area. In contrast to the NK DSGE models, the empirical results indicate that technology shocks have a positive effect on hours worked, and investment and preference shocks have a positive impact on consumption and investment, respectively. While the former is in line with the predictions of Real Business Cycle models, the latter indicates the relevance of accelerator effects, as described by earlier Keynesian models. We also show that NK DSGE models might overemphasize the contribution of cost-push shocks to business cycle fluctuations while, at the same time, underestimating the importance of other shocks such as changes to technology and investment adjustment costs.

Sources of the Volatility Puzzle in the Crude Oil Market

A remarkable but unnoticed feature of the crude oil market is that the dramatic rise in oil price volatility over time has been accompanied by a substantial fall in oil production volatility. We investigate the reasons for this opposite evolution of both oil market variables. Our main finding is that the observed volatility puzzle can be rationalized by the fact that the price elasticities of both oil supply and oil demand have decreased considerably over time. This implies that small disturbances on either side of the oil market currently generate large price reactions but only modest quantity adjustments. We further document that the variance of innovations which shift oil demand and supply has even become smaller in the more recent past thereby mitigating oil price fluctuations.

Liquidity, Inflation and Asset Prices in a Time-Varying Framework for the Euro Area

In this paper, we investigate how the dynamic effects of excess liquidity shocks on economic activity, asset prices and inflation differ over time. We show that the impact varies considerably over time, depends on the source of increased liquidity (M1, M3-M1 or credit) and the underlying state of the economy (asset price boom-bust, business cycle, inflation cycle, credit cycle and monetary policy stance).