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Working Paper
The Global Financial Cycle and Capital Flows During the COVID-19 Pandemic
We estimate the heterogeneous effect of the global financial cycle on exchange rates and cross-border capital flows during the COVID-19 pandemic, using weekly exchange rate and portfolio flow data for a panel of 48 advanced and emerging market economies. We begin by estimating the global financial cycle at a weekly frequency with data through 2021 and observe the two standard deviation fall in our global financial cycle index over a period of four weeks in March 2020. We then estimate the country-specific sensitivities of exchange rates and capital flows to fluctuations in the global ...
Risks Abound If China Uses Debt to Stimulate Economy from Current Downturn
The Chinese economy is losing steam. As China considers how to work through its difficulties, its chances of success may depend on how it finances the debt it incurs while attempting to boost economic activity.
Working Paper
Inflation targeting and the anchoring of inflation expectations: cross-country evidence from consensus forecasts
Using survey data of inflation expectations across a 36 developed and developing countries, this paper examines whether the adoption of inflation targeting has helped to anchor inflation expectations. We examine the response of inflation expectations following a shock to inflation, inflation expectations, and oil prices. For the 13 countries that adopted inflation targeting midway through the time period used in this study, there is a significant difference in the responses between the earlier and the later subperiods. A shock leads to a positive, significant, and persistent increase ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy Divergence, Net Capital Flows, and Exchange Rates: Accounting for Endogenous Policy Responses
This paper measures the effect of monetary tightening in key advanced economies on net capital flows and exchange rates around the world. Measuring this effect is complicated by the fact that the domestic monetary policies of affected economies respond endogenously to the foreign tightening shock. Using a structural VAR framework with quarterly panel data we estimate the impulse responses of domestic policy variables and net capital flows to a foreign monetary tightening shock. We find that the endogenous responses of domestic monetary policy depends on each economy?s capital account openness ...
Working Paper
Central bank credibility and the persistence of inflation and inflation expectations
This paper introduces a model where agents are unsure about the central bank's inflation target. They believe that the central bank's inflation target could lie between two extremes, and their beliefs vary depending on the central bank's stock of credibility. They form the expectations used in price and wage setting using this perceived inflation target, and they use past observations of inflation to update their beliefs about the credibility of the central bank. Thus a series of high inflation observations can lead them to believe (incorrectly) that the central bank has adopted a high ...
Working Paper
The asymmetric effects of deflation on consumption spending: evidence from the Great Depression
Does expected deflation lead to a fall in consumption spending? Using data for U.S. grocery store sales and department store sales from 1919 to 1939, this paper shows that expected price changes have asymmetric effects on consumption spending. Department store sales (durable consumption) react negatively to the expectation of falling prices, but grocery store sales (non-durable consumption) do not react to expected price changes.
Working Paper
The macroeconomic effects of debt- and equity-based capital inflows
This paper will consider whether debt- and equity-based capital inflows have different macroeconomic effects. Using external instruments in a structural VAR, we first identify the component of capital inflows that is driven not by domestic economic and financial conditions but by conditions in the rest of the world. We then estimate the response to an exogenous shock to debt or equity-based capital inflows in a structural VAR model that includes domestic variables like GDP, inflation, the exchange rate, stock prices, credit growth, and interest rates. An exogenous increase in debt inflows ...
Working Paper
The effect of commodity price shocks on underlying inflation: the role of central bank credibility
This paper seeks to document and explain the effect of a commodity price shock on underlying core inflation, and how that effect changes both across time and across countries. Impulse responses derived from a structural VAR model show that across many countries there was a break in the response of core inflation to a commodity price shock. In an earlier period, a shock to commodity prices would lead to a large and significant increase in core inflation, but in later periods, the effect was insignificant. ; To explain this, we construct a large-scale DSGE model with both headline and core ...
Working Paper
Sudden Stops in Emerging Economies: The Role of World Interest Rates and Foreign Exchange Intervention
Emerging economies are prone to ‘sudden stops’, characterized by a collapse in external borrowing and aggregate demand. Sudden stops may be triggered by a spike in world interest rates, which causes rapid private sector deleveraging. In response to a rise in interest rates, deleveraging is individually rational, but in the aggregate, the effect on the real exchange rate may tighten borrowing constraints so much that it precipitates a large crisis. A central bank can intervene by selling foreign reserves when world interest rates are rising, and prevent excess aggregate deleveraging. But ...
Working Paper
Economic fundamentals and monetary policy autonomy
During a time of rising world interest rates, the central bank of a small open economy may be motivated to increase its own interest rate to keep from suffering a destabilizing outflow of capital and depreciation in the exchange rate. This is especially true for a small open economy with a current account deficit, which relies on foreign capital inflows to finance this deficit. This paper will investigate the underlying structural characteristics that would lead an economy with a floating exchange rate to adjust their interest rate in line with the foreign interest rate, and thus adopt a de ...