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AbstractThe "irrational exuberance" of the stock market in the late 1990s led to a discussion of the appropriate policy response by monetary authorities. Any response would be contingent on the stock market reaction to policy shocks. In this study, I employ a structural vector autoregression to estimate the response of the stock market returns to innovations in the federal funds rate. The role of the stock market in the Federal Reserve policy rule can also be examined empirically.

More than 80 central banks use a committee to take monetary policy decisions. The composition of the committee and the structure of the meeting can affect the quality of the decision making. In this paper we review economic, experimental, sociological and psychological studies to identify criteria for the optimal institutional setting of a monetary committee. These include the optimal size of the committee, measures to encourage independent thinking, a relatively informal structure of the meeting, and abilities to identify and evaluate individual members' performances. Using these criteria, we evaluate the composition and operation of monetary policy committees in various central banks. Our findings indicate that e.g. the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England follows committee best-practice, while the committee structure of other major central banks could be improved.

"The desirability of fiscal constraints in monetary unions depends critically on whether the monetary authority can commit to follow its policies. If it can commit, then debt constraints can only impose costs. If it cannot commit, then fiscal policy has a free-rider problem, and debt constraints may be desirable. This type of free-rider problem is new and arises only because of a time inconsistency problem"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

The co-movements of nominal exchange rates and short-term interest rates as the economy is hit by shocks is a potential source of ex post deviations from uncovered interest rate parity. This paper investigates whether an established model of endogenous monetary policy in an open economy is capable of explaning the exchange rate risk premium puzzle. Time series on interest differentials and exchange rate changes are generated from the Svensson (2000) model. Uncovered interest rate parity is tested on the simulated data and the b-coefficients are investigated. For most realistic choices of parameter values, the b-coefficients are positive but much smaller than the unity value expected from UIP. It is however also possible to obtain large, negative b-coefficients if the central bank is engaged in interest rate smoothing.

The effects of different institutional arrangements for the central bank are examined in the presence of economic shocks and uncertainty about the central banker's and the medianvoter's inflation target. A contract which is based on self-imposed monetary target announcements proves to be superior to the best monetary rule if conflicts about the inflation target within society are relatively small compared to the initial uncertainty about the medianvoter's objective. It is superior to the laissez faire solution if unemployment exceeds a certain threshold level. The optimal choice of costs of deviations from auto-imposed targets depends on the type of conflict within society, whether the individuals disagree on the weight of the inflation versus the employment target or on the value of the inflation target itself.

The present study attempts measure the transmission of monetary impulse from the USA to India by trying to quantify the extent of volatility spillover from the US monetary policy to the exchange rate and interest rate of India. By applying a t-DCC MGARCH model to daily data on Fed Funds Rate, Rupee Dollar Exchange Rate and the Call Money rate of India it was found that there is considerable volatility spillover from the Fed Rate to the exchange rate. Spillover is also clearly evident in case of the call rate. The extent of spillover is higher for the foreign exchange rate than the call money rate. However, it was also noticed that the spillover is asymmetric in either of the cases and is higher during phases of high volatility. In an era of flexible exchange rates excessive dependence of the Indian Economy on short term capital flows to finance the current account deficits which raises the dollar demand and exposes the Indian economy to the Monetary Policy of the US, needs to be reduced. Reforms in the nature of capital flows is also the need of the hour.

AbstractA rough description of macroeconomic policy in South Africa would be that monetary policy concentrates on building nominal credibility through focusing on inflation, while the brunt of the responsibility for output stabilization rests on fiscal policy. This aricle discusses the convenience of such a policy mix. First, we estimate the business cycle impact of fiscal and monetary policy to find that so far fiscal policy has been mostly pro‐cyclical, whereas monetary policy has been, over the last couple of years, mildly counter‐cyclical. We argue that fiscal policy should be made significantly more counter‐cyclical than it has been – a strategy that would deliver more macroeconomic stability and potentially higher growth. Furthermore, we believe the Central Bank has earned the credibility to operate macro policy with a more decisive output stabilization objective, and we discuss several reinterpretations of the inflation targeting regime that provide the flexibility to do so without risking the strong anti‐inflationary credibility of the SARB. On exchange rate policy we recommend that the authorities take a pragmatic approach to floating, mostly allowing the currency to move freely, but intervening to avoid overvaluation. We explain why and discuss how this objective could be achieved.

AbstractRecent evidence shows that monetary policy announcements convey significant information about expected market returns and are therefore good candidates for innovations in intertemporal asset pricing state variables. I propose an asset pricing model with the market return and a mimicking portfolio for unexpected changes in the federal funds rate on days of Federal Open Market Committee announcements. This economically motivated two‐factor model prices portfolios formed on size, value, momentum, investment, and profitability with an R2 of 80% and an average annual pricing error of 0.93%, performing as well as standard four‐, five‐, and six‐factor models designed to price these assets.

The paper considers optimal monetary stabilization policy in a forward-looking model, when the central bank recognizes that private sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any beliefs that are close enough to model-consistency. It is found that commitment continues to be important for optimal policy, that the optimal long-run inflation target is unaffected by the degree of potential distortion of beliefs, and that optimal policy is even more history-dependent than if rational expectations are assumed. (JEL C62, D84, E13, E31, E32, E52)

Abstract.  This paper examines the role of transparency in a benevolent monetary authority's policies. Each firm's payoff depends on unobservable macroeconomic conditions and firms may incur a cost to acquire private information about macroeconomic conditions. The policy authority attempts to infer the underlying macroeconomic conditions from a noisy measure of aggregate actions and makes a public announcement to inform firms of this inference. High‐quality announcements provide firms the incentive not to gather private information and base actions solely on information contained in policy announcements. However, this makes the observed actions of firms less informative to the policy authority.

ABSTRACTWe examine the real option implicit in countries' decisions on whether to join a monetary union when future benefits of this move are uncertain. Our theoretical model is calibrated for the current Euro‐12 area and EU‐15 outs, proxying policymakers' inflation preferences with unemployment rates, debt‐to‐GDP and potential‐to‐actual‐GDP ratios. The Euro‐12 area is generally ready or close to wanting to expand, whereas the EU‐15 outs are unready to make that move at present and have widely varying probabilities of wanting to do so in the future, depending on the measure used.

The paper considers optimal monetary stabilization policy in a forward-looking model, when the central bank recognizes that private-sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any beliefs that are close enough to model-consistency. It is found that commitment continues to be important for optimal policy, that the optimal long-run inflation target is unaffected by the degree of potential distortion of beliefs, and that optimal policy is even more history-dependent than if rational expectations are assumed. JEL Classification: E52, E58, E42

In the worldwide economic and debt crisis of the eighties the International Monetary Fund increasingly became the "lender of last resort" for a great many Third World countries. With world trade weak and interest rates high, a considerable number of developing countries got into serious balance-of-payments difficulties. The demand for stand-by and extended arrangements with the Fund rose dramatically. The conditions or adjustment programmes linked to this lending not infrequently led to serious social and political tensions in the countries concerned. The term "IMF riots" was coined, and the conditionality of credit again became the subject of political and academic debate.

Introduction -- The context -- The case for making the IMF the lender of last resort -- How to adjust -- When to adjust -- The question of reserves -- A logical extension: SDRs as the only reserve asset -- Negotiating the reforms -- Legislating the reforms -- The reformed system in action -- Reform by US unilaterlism? -- Concluding remarks