Macroeconomic effects of unconventional monetary policy in the euro area

I find that the Eurosystem can stimulate the economy beyond the policy rate by increasing the size of its balance sheet or the monetary base. The transmission mechanism turns out to be different compared to traditional interest rate innovations: (i) whilst the effects on economic activity and consumer prices reach a peak after about one year for an interest rate innovation, this is more than six months later for a shift in the monetary base that is orthogonal to the policy rate (ii) interest rate spreads charged by banks decline persistently after a rise in the monetary base, whereas the spreads increase significantly after a fall in the policy rate (iii) there is no significant short-run liquidity effect after an interest rate innovation, that is additional bank loans are generated by a greater credit multiplier. In contrast, the multiplier declines considerably after an expansion of the Eurosystem’s balance sheet. JEL Classification: C32, E30, E44, E51, E52SVARs, Unconventional monetary policy

Macroeconomic Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policy in the Euro Area

I find that the Eurosystem can stimulate the economy beyond the policy rate by increasing the size of its balance sheet or the monetary base, that is so-called quantitative easing. The transmission mechanism turns out to be different compared to traditional interest rate innovations: (i) whilst the effects on economic activity and consumer prices reach a peak after about one year for an interest rate innovation, this is more than six months later for a shift in the monetary base that is orthogonal to the policy rate (ii) interest rate spreads charged by banks decline persistently after quantitative easing policies, whereas the spreads increase significantly after a fall in the policy rate (iii) there is no significant short-run liquidity effect after an interest rate innovation, that is additional bank loans are generated by a greater credit multiplier. In contrast, the multiplier declines considerably after an expansion of the Eurosystem’s balance sheet.unconventional monetary policy, SVARs

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 are

Macroeconomic effects of disruptions in global food commodity markets

We use two approaches to examine the macroeconomic consequences of disruptions in global food commodity markets. First, we embed a novel quarterly composite global production index for the four basic staples (corn, wheat, rice and soybeans) in a standard vector autoregression (VAR) model, and we estimate the dynamic effects of global food commodity supply shocks on the US economy. As an alternative, we also estimate the consequences of thirteen narratively identified global food commodity price shocks. Both approaches deliver similar conclusions. Specifically, an unfavorable food commodity market shock raises food commodity prices, and leads to a rise in food, energy and core inflation, and to a persistent fall in real GDP and consumer expenditures. A closer inspection of the pass-through reveals that households do not only reduce food consumption. In fact, there is a much greater decline in durable consumption and investment. Overall, the macroeconomic effects turn out to be a multiple of the maximum impact implied by the share of food commodities in the consumer price index and household consumption

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: E52Euro area countries, monetary policy, VARs

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.Econometric and statistical methods; International topics

The industry effects of monetary policy in the euro area

We first estimate the effects of an euro area-wide monetary policy change on output growth in eleven industries of seven euro area countries over the period 1980-1998. On average the negative effect of an interest rate tightening on output is significantly greater in recessions than in booms. There is, however, considerable cross-industry heterogeneity in both the overall policy effects and the degree of asymmetry across the two business cycle phases. We then explore which industry characteristics can account for this cross-industry heterogeneity. Differences in the overall policy effects can mainly be explained by the durability of the goods produced in the sector. In contrast, differences in the degree of asymmetry of policy effects seem to be related to differences in financial structure, in particular the maturity structure of debt, the coverage ratio, financial leverage and firm size. JEL Classification: E4, E5euro area, financial accelerator, monetary transmission mechanism

The monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area: more 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: E52monetary transmission mechanism, vector autoregressions

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, E5monetary policy