Richhild Moessner

Macroprudential Policy – A Literature Review

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the need to go beyond a purely micro approach to financial regulation and supervision. In recent months, the number of policy speeches, research papers and conferences that discuss a macro perspective on financial regulation has grown considerably. The policy debate is focusing in particular on macroprudential tools and their usage, their relationship with monetary policy, their implementation and their effectiveness. Macroprudential policy has recently also attracted considerable attention among researchers. This paper provides an overview of research on this topic. We also identify important future research questions that emerge from both the literature and the current policy debate.

What Do We Know About the Effects of Macroprudential Policy

The literature on the effectiveness of macroprudential policy tools is still in its infancy and has so far provided only limited guidance for policy decisions. In recent years, however, increasing efforts have been made to fill this gap. Progress has been made in embedding macroprudential policy in theoretical models. There is increasing empirical work on the effect of some macroprudential tools on a range of target variables, such as quantities and prices of credit, asset prices, and on the amplitude of the financial cycle and financial stability. In this paper we review recent progress in theoretical and empirical research on the effectiveness of macroprudential instruments.

Effects of Explicit FOMC Policy Rate Guidance on Market Interest Rates

We quantify the impact of explicit FOMC policy rate guidance used as an unconventional monetary policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on market interest rates. We study the impact on short- to medium-term interest rates implied by Eurodollar interest rate futures contracts, and on near- to long-term interest rates implied by US Treasury securities. We find that explicit policy rate guidance announcements significantly reduced interest rates implied by Eurodollar futures at horizons of 1 to 5 years ahead, with the largest effect at the intermediate horizon of 3 years. We also find that they significantly reduced forward interest rates implied by US Treasuries at horizons of 1 to 7 years ahead, with the largest effect at the intermediate horizons of 4 and 5 years. Moreover, we find that explicit FOMC policy rate guidance led to a significant reduction in the term spread, ie to a fiattening of the yield curve, both for the Eurodollar futures curve and the US Treasury yield curve.

Communication About Future Policy Rates in Theory and Practice: A Survey

We discuss the theoretical rationale for central bank communication about future policy rates as part of inflation targeting or of forward guidance. We also summarize actual central bank communication about future policy rates in major advanced countries as well as empirical evidence on the effectiveness of both types of communication. We argue that there is a disconnect between the theory and practice of forward guidance, with theory assuming commitment by the central bank, while in practice central banks generally do not commit. Future theoretical research on forward guidance should therefore take the absence of commitment by central banks into account.

Effects of ECB Balance Sheet Policy Announcements on Inflation Expectations

We investigate whether ECB balance sheet policy announcements in the wake of the global financial crisis have affected the ECBs monetary policy credibility as measured by long-term inflation expectations, by looking at their effects on euro area inflation swap rates of maturities up to 10 years. We consider asset purchase programmes and long-term refinancing operations with maturities above 6 months. We find that these announcements only led to a slight increase in long-term inflation expectations. We therefore find no strong evidence to suggest that ECB balance sheet policy announcements have led to much higher long-term inflation expectations, suggesting that the monetary policy credibility of the ECB has not been harmed by these policies.

Effects of Explicit FOMC Policy Rate Guidance on Equities and Risk Measures

We quantify the impact of explicit Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy-rate guidance used as an unconventional monetary-policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on US equity prices, as well as on the risk indicators of credit and CDS spreads, implied volatilities and US equity index risk reversals. We find that explicit FOMC policy-rate guidance announcements at the zero lower bound led to a significant increase in US equity prices, for an aggregate equity index as well as for US commercial bank and US nonfinancial equities. Moreover, we find that they led to a significant reduction in some credit spreads. They also led to a significant reduction in an implied volatility index for US government bonds, as well as in the absolute value of US equity risk reversals, implying a lower perceived risk attached to a large fall in the equity index.

How Do Inflation Expectations Form? New Insights from a High-Frequency Survey

We provide new insights on the formation of inflation expectations - in particular at a time of great financial and economic turmoil - by evaluating results from a survey conducted from July 2009 through July 2010. Participants in this survey answered a weekly questionnaire about their short-, medium- and long-term inflation expectations. Participants received common information sets with data relevant to euro area inflation. Our analysis of survey responses reveals several interesting results. First, our evidence is consistent with long-term expectations having remained well anchored to the ECBs definition of price stability, which acted as a focal point for long-term expectations. Second, the turmoil in euro area bond markets triggered by the Greek fiscal crisis influenced short- and medium-term inflation expectations but had only a very small impact on long-term expectations. By contrast, longterm expectations did not react to developments of the euro area wide fiscal burden. Third, participants changed their expectations fairly frequently. The longer the horizon, the less frequent but larger these changes were. Fourth, expectations exhibit a large degree of timevariant non-normality. Fifth, inflation expectations appear fairly homogenous across groups of agents at the shorter horizon but less so at the medium- and long-term horizons.

Competitiveness, Inflation, and Monetary Policy

This paper examines the way in which structural changes in the level of steady-state competitiveness and the trend rate of inflation affect inflation responses to monetary policy shocks, in scenarios chosen to capture broadly the conditions of the UK economy in the early 1990s and more recently. Cyclical changes in competitiveness are also considered, since it is not clear empirically whether changes in competitiveness have been predominantly structural or cyclical. A model based on work by Woodford is used, allowing for positive trend inflation and cyclical variations in competitiveness in a tractable manner. This extension enables the separate quantification of the impact of differences in the steady-state level of and cyclical changes in competitiveness on inflation in the short term, in high and low inflation environments. The paper quantifies the extent to which procyclical (countercyclical) changes in competitiveness dampen (amplify) the impulse responses of inflation to a given monetary policy shock. In the calibration used, the inflation response to monetary policy shocks in a low inflation/high competitiveness environment is dampened compared with a high inflation/low competitiveness environment. By contrast, inflation responses to monetary policy shocks in a low inflation/low competitiveness environment are similar to those in a high inflation/high competitiveness environment.

Reactions of Real Yields and Inflation Expectations to Forward Guidance in the United States

We study the impact of forward policy rate guidance by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) used as an unconventional monetary policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on real and breakeven US Treasury yield curves. We find that explicit FOMC policy rate guidance announcements led to a significant reduction in real yields at horizons of 2 to 5 years ahead. By contrast, long-term breakeven inflation rates were little affected, suggesting that inflation expectations have remained well anchored, and that explicit FOMC policy rate guidance has not adversely affected central bank credibility.

International Spillovers from US Forward Guidance to Equity Markets

We quantify the international spillovers of explicit FOMC policy rate guidance used as an unconventional monetary policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on international equity markets, considering equity indices of both advanced and emerging economies. We find that explicit FOMC policy rate guidance announcements at the zero lower bound led to higher equity prices in a number of advanced and emerging economies. Moreover, we find that equity indices of economies with lower sovereign ratings rose by more, consistent with the risk-taking channel of monetary policy.