Tommaso Monacelli

Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Volatility in a Small Open Economy

We lay out a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a tractable canonical system in domestic inflation and the output gap. We employ this framework to analyze the macroeconomic implications of three alternative monetary policy regimes for the small open economy: domestic inflation targeting, CPI targeting and an exchange rate peg. We show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail. We also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy, and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with suboptimal regimes.

Monetary Policy in a Low Pass-Through Environment

In a dynamic New Keynesian optimizing model, we introduce incomplete exchange rate pass-through on import prices. Three results stand out. First, unlike canonical models with perfect pass-through which emphasize a type of isomorphism, incomplete pass-through renders the analysis of monetary policy of an open economy fundamentally different from the one of a closed economy. Second, productivity-driven deviations from the law of one price assume the interpretation of endogenous cost-push shocks. Third, the optimal commitment policy, relative to discretion, entails a smoothing of the deviations from the law of one price and requires more stable nominal and real exchange rates.

Optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a currency union

We lay out a tractable model for fiscal and monetary policy analysis in a currency union, and analyze its implications for the optimal design of such policies. Monetary policy is conducted by a common central bank, which sets the interest rate for the union as a whole. Fiscal policy is implemented at the country level, through the choice of government spending level. The model incorporates country-specific shocks and nominal rigidities. Under our assumptions, the optimal monetary policy requires that inflation be stabilized at the union level. On the other hand, the relinquishment of an independent monetary policy, coupled with nominal price rigidities, generates a stabilization role for fiscal policy, one beyond the efficient provision of public goods. Interestingly, the stabilizing role for fiscal policy is shown to be desirable not only from the viewpoint of each individual country, but also from that of the union as a whole. In addition, our paper offers some insights on two aspects of policy design in currency unions: (i) the conditions for equilibrium determinacy and (ii) the effects of exogenous government spending variations.

Into the Mussa Puzzle: Monetary Policy Regimes and the Real Exchange Rate in a Small Open Economy

Industrial countries moving from fixed to floating exchange rate regimes experience dramatic rises in the variability of the real exchange rate. This evidence, forcefully documented by Mussa (1986), is a puzzle to the extent that it is hard to reconcile with the assumption of flexible prices. This paper shows that a model that combines nominal rigidities with a systematic behavior of monetary policy approximating a managed-fixed exchange rate regime is consistent with Mussas findings: the real exchange rate is between three and six times more variable under floating than under fixed rates, and this holds independently of the underlying shocks. The impact of the change in regime on the volatility of other real macroeconomic variables, however, depends crucially on the specification of the monetary policy rule and on the source of fluctuations. The model takes also a theoretical stand on other issues raised in the empirical literature, like the so-called exchange rate anomaly, and the international monetary policy shock transmission sign.

How much (a)symmetry in Europe? Evidence from industrial sectors

Abstract To what extent do European countries differ with respect to the sources of cyclical fluctuations of industrial output? We look at output data disaggregated by industry for 11 European countries, and on the basis of a cointegrated vector autoregression model we examine the correlation of output innovations at the industry and country levels. We also discuss to what extent output innovations can be considered ‘symmetric’ or ‘asymmetric’. Our results point to the fact that, on average, more variance of output innovations is explained at the country, rather than the industry level. We also find that the importance of asymmetric disturbances is quite varied among the 11 countries, and we identify a ‘core’ of countries with a higher degree of symmetry.

Fiscal Policy Rules and Regime (In)Stability: Evidence from the U.S.

We employ Markov-switching regression methods to estimate fiscal policy feedback rules in the U.S. for the period 1960-2002. Our approach allows to capture policy regime changes endogenously. We reach three main conclusions. First, fiscal policy may be characterized, according to Leeper (1991) terminology, as active from the 1960s throughout the 1980s, switching gradually to passive in the early 1990s and switching back to active in early 2001. Second, regime-switching fiscal rules are capable of tracking the time-series behaviour of the U.S. primary deficit better than rules based on a constant parameter specification. Third, regime-switches in monetary and fiscal policy rules do not exhibit any degree of synchronization. Our results are at odds with the view that the post-war U.S. fiscal policy regime may be classified as passive at all times, and seem to pose a challenge for the specification of the correct monetary-fiscal mix within recent optimizing macroeconomic models considered suitable for policy analysis.

Monetary-fiscal Mix and Inflation Performance: Evidence from the U.S.

There has been a lot of interest recently in developing small-scale rule-based empirical macro models for the analysis of monetary policy. These models, based on the conventional view that inflation stabilization should be a concern of monetary policy only, have typically neglected the role of fiscal policy. We start with the evidence that a baseline VAR-augmented Taylor rule can deliver recurrent mispredictions of inflation in the US before 1987. We then show that a fiscal feedback rule, in which the primary deficit reacts to both the output gap and the government debt, can well characterize the behaviour of fiscal policy throughout the sample. By employing Markov-switching methods, however, we find evidence of substantial instability across fiscal regimes. Yet precisely this happens before 1987. We then augment the monetary VAR with a fiscal policy rule and control for the endogenous regime switches for both rules. We find that in the pre-1987 period the model based on the two rules predict the behaviour of inflation better than the one based just on the monetary policy rule. After 1987, when fiscal policy is estimated to switch to a regime of fiscal discipline, the monetary-fiscal mix can be appropriately described as a regime of monetary dominance. Over this period a monetary policy rule based model is always a better predictor of the inflation behaviour than the one comprising both a monetary and a fiscal rule.

Optimal Monetary Policy Rules, Asset Prices and Credit Frictions

We study optimal monetary policy in two prototype economies with sticky prices and credit market frictions. In the first economy, credit frictions apply to the financing of the capital stock, generate acceleration in response to shocks and the ‘financial markup’ (i.e., the premium on external funds) is countercyclical and negatively correlated with the asset price. In the second economy, credit frictions apply to the flow of investment, generate persistence, and the financial markup is procyclical and positively correlated with the asset price. We model monetary policy in terms of welfare-maximizing interest rate rules. The main finding of our analysis is that strict inflation stabilization is a robust optimal monetary policy prescription. The intuition is that, in both models, credit frictions work in the direction of dampening the cyclical behaviour of inflation relative to its credit-frictionless level. Thus neither economy, despite yielding different inflation and investment dynamics, generates a trade-off between price and financial markup stabilization. A corollary of this result is that reacting to asset prices does not bear any independent welfare role in the conduct of monetary policy.

Commitment, Discretion and Fixed Exchange Rates in an Open Economy

Within a small open economy we derive a tractable framework for the analysis of the optimal monetary policy design problem as well as of simple feedback rules. The international relative price channel is emphasized as the one peculiar to the open economy dimension of monetary policy. Hence flexibility in the nominal exchange rate enhances such channel. We first show that a feature of the optimal policy under commitment, unlike the one under discretion, is to entail stationary nominal exchange rate and price level. We show that this property characterizes also a regime of fixed exchange rates. Hence, in evaluating the desirability of such a regime, this benefit needs to be weighed against the cost of excess smoothness in the terms of trade. We show that there exist combinations of the parameter values that make a regime of fixed exchange rates more desirable than the discretionary optimal policy. When the economy is sufficiently open, this happens for a high relative weight assigned to output gap variability in the Central Bank’s loss function and for high values of the elasticity substitution between domestic and foreign goods. We draw from this interesting conclusions for a modern version of the optimal currency area literature.

How Institutions Shape the Distributive Impact of Macroeconomic Shocks: A DSGE Analysis

This paper examines how the the distributive impact of macroeconomic shocks is shaped by selected institutions. It uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework with heterogeneous agents and an endogenous collateral constraint. The model is based on the “credit view” of business cycles, where shocks affect the real economy also via their impact on the borrowing capacity of economic agents. In this framework a positive shock to credit spreads, as seen in the recent crisis, redistributes from capital to labour as well as from from equity to bond holders. In contrast, both productivity and inflation shocks redistribute towards capital or equity holders. Distributive impacts are shown to be shaped by institutions. More sophisticated financial markets are found to amplify the redistributive impact of shocks, whereas more flexible wages, a more elastic labour supply, and a more reactive central bank are found to dampen it.