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Report
U.S. Monetary Policy Spillovers to Emerging Markets: Both Shocks and Vulnerabilities Matter
We use a macroeconomic model to explore how policy drivers and country vulnerabilities matter for the transmission of U.S. monetary policy shifts to emerging markets. Our model features imperfections in domestic and international financial markets and imperfectly anchored inflation expectations. We show that higher U.S. interest rates arising from stronger U.S. demand generate modestly positive spillovers to activity in emerging markets with stronger fundamentals, but can be adverse for vulnerable countries. In contrast, U.S. monetary tightenings driven by a more-hawkish policy stance cause a ...
Discussion Paper
Modeling the Global Effects of the COVID-19 Sudden Stop in Capital Flows
The COVID-19 outbreak has triggered unusually fast outflows of dollar funding from emerging market economies (EMEs). These outflows are known as “sudden stop” episodes, and they are typically followed by economic contractions. In this post, we assess the macroeconomic effects of the COVID-induced sudden stop of capital flows to EMEs, using our open-economy DSGE model. Unlike existing frameworks, such as the Federal Reserve Board’s SIGMA model, our model features both domestic and international financial constraints, making it well-suited to capture the effects of an outflow of ...
Discussion Paper
Global Supply Chain Pressure Index: The China Factor
In a January 2022 post, we first presented the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI), a parsimonious global measure designed to capture supply chain disruptions using a range of indicators. In this post, we review GSCPI readings through December 2022, and then briefly discuss the drivers of recent moves in the index. While supply chain disruptions have significantly diminished over the course of 2022, the reversion of the index toward a normal historical range has paused over the past three months. Our analysis attributes the recent pause largely to the pandemic in China amid an easing ...
Working Paper
Banks, Capital Flows and Financial Crises
This paper proposes a macroeconomic model with financial intermediaries (banks), in which banks face occasionally binding leverage constraints and may endogenously affect the strength of their balance sheets by issuing new equity. The model can account for occasional financial crises as a result of the nonlinearity induced by the constraint. Banks' precautionary equity issuance makes financial crises infrequent events occurring along with "regular" business cycle fluctuations. We show that an episode of capital infl ows and rapid credit expansion, triggered by low country interest rates, ...
Report
Good news is bad news: leverage cycles and sudden stops
We show that a model with imperfectly forecastable changes in future productivity and an occasionally binding collateral constraint can match a set of stylized facts about ?sudden stop? events. ?Good? news about future productivity raises leverage during times of expansion, increasing the probability that the constraint binds, and a sudden stop occurs, in future periods. The economy exhibits a boom period in the run-up to the sudden stop, with output, consumption, and investment all above trend, consistent with the data. During the sudden stop, the nonlinear effects of the constraint induce ...
Discussion Paper
Monetary Policy Spillovers and the Role of the Dollar
In the literature on monetary policy spillovers considered in the two previous posts, countries that would otherwise operate independently are connected to one another through bilateral trade relationships, and it is assumed that there are no frictions in currency, financial, and asset markets. But what if we introduce a number of real-world complexities, such as a dominant global currency and tight linkages across international capital markets? Given these additional factors, is it still possible to draw generalized conclusions about international policy spillovers—and can we still think ...
Working Paper
U.S. Monetary Policy Spillovers to Emerging Markets: Both Shocks and Vulnerabilities Matter
Using a macroeconomic model, we explore how sources of shocks and vulnerabilities matter for the transmission of U.S. monetary changes to emerging market economies (EMEs). We utilize a calibrated two-country New Keynesian model with financial frictions, partly-dollarized balance sheets, and imperfectly anchored inflation expectations. Contrary to other recent studies that also emphasize the sources of shocks, our approach allows the quantification of effects on real macroeconomic variables as well, in addition to financial spillovers. Moreover, we model the most relevant vulnerabilities ...
Report
The Dollar’s Imperial Circle
In this paper we highlight a new channel through which dollar fluctuations can become a self-fulfilling pro-cyclical force. We call this mechanism “Imperial Circle” as it makes the dollar the dominant macroeconomic variable in the context of the current international monetary system. At the core of it, there is a fundamental asymmetry between the shrinking exposure of the “real” U.S. economy to global developments versus the growing global role of the U.S. dollar. Dollar appreciation leads to a decline in global economic activity, which in turn benefits, in relative terms, the dollar ...
Working Paper
The Financial (In)Stability Real Interest Rate, R**
We introduce the concept of financial stability real interest rate using a macroeconomic banking model with an occasionally binding financing constraint as in Gertler and Kiyotaki (2010). The financial stability interest rate, r**, is the threshold interest rate that triggers the constraint being binding. Increasing imbalances in the financial sector measured by an increase in leverage are accompanied by a lower threshold that could trigger financial instability events. We also construct a theoretical implied financial condition index and show how it is related to the gap between the natural ...