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This paper analyzes the implications of price-setting and incomplete financial markets for optimal monetary cooperation. The main objective is to provide the basic intuitions concerning the role of the main international frictions on optimal policy within a simple Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model. We concentrate on a symmetric two-country DSGE with home bias, incomplete financial markets internationally and imperfect competition together with nominal price rigidities in which the export prices can be denominated either in the producer currency (PCP) or in the consumer currency (LCP). In addition, the model can account both for efficient and inefficient shocks. Our main results are derived in polar cases with efficient steady state and for which the design of the optimal policy is specifically illustrative and can be expressed in terms of targeting rules. In particular, the paper gives some new insights on the optimal exchange rate regime given the structure of shocks and the exchange rate pass-through, as well as on the optimal stabilization of CPI and PPI inflation. We also put into perspective the implication of financial autarky on the optimal management of international spillovers.

Durant la crise financière, la BCE a été amenée à élargir le champ de ses instruments de politique monétaire, prenant des mesures non-conventionnelles dont le but premier était de répondre au processus de fragmentation financière entre les différentes juri-dictions de la zone euro et de restaurer un degré approprié d'assouplissement des conditions monétaires. La propagation de ces mesures au sein de l'union monétaire dépend largement de la structure du système financier des différentes régions. Cet article explore justement les canaux de transmission de certaines mesures non-conventionnelles de la BCE, tout en tenant de l'hétérogénéité au sein de la zone euro et en utilisant un modèle DSGE global avec spécification granulaire et réaliste du secteur financier. L'analyse est basée sur le modèle multi-pays à 6 régions de Darracq Pariès et al. [2019] et se concentre notamment sur l'étude d'impact macroéconomique des achats de titres de la BCE depuis 2014. Le modèle peut rendre compte à la fois du canal du crédit des politiques non-conventionnelles mais aussi de leur transmission via l'environnement international et the taux de change. Les résultats de simulations indiquent une transmission domestique significative des achats de titres par la banque centrale via le canal de crédit. L'impact macroéconomique s'avère tout de même hétérogène entre les États membre de la zone euro. L'introduction de frictions sur les choix de portefeuille d'actifs reste-du-monde modifie la transmission des politiques d'achats d'actifs par la banque centrale : cela implique une plus forte dépréciation de l'euro, renforçant les effets expansionnistes des mesures et atténuant les différences de transmission entre pays.

Through the euro area crisis, financial fragmentation across jurisdictions became a prime concern for the single monetary policy. The ECB broadened the scope of its instruments and enacted a series of non-standard measures to engineer an appropriate degree of policy accommodation. The transmission of these measures through the currency union remained highly dependent on the financial structure and conditions prevailing in various regions. This paper explores the country-specific macroeconomic transmission of selected non-standard measures from the ECB using a global DSGE model with a rich financial sector: we extend the six-region multi-country model of Darracq Pariès et al. (2016), introducing credit and exchange rate channels for central bank asset purchases. The portfolio rebalancing frictions are calibrated to match the sovereign yield and exchange rate responses after ECB's Asset Purchase Programme (APP) first announcement. The domestic transmission of the APP through the credit intermediation chain is significant and quite heterogenous across the largest euro area countries. The introduction of global portfolio frictions on euro area government bond holdings by international investors opens up for a larger depreciation of the euro. The interaction between international and domestic channels affect the magnitude and the cross-country distribution of the APP impact.

We analyse the effects of central bank government bond purchases in an estimated DSGE model for the euro area. In the model, central bank asset purchases are relevant in so far as agency costs distort banks' asset allocation between loans and bonds, and households face transaction costs when trading government bonds. Such frictions in the banking sector induce inefficient time-variation in the term premia and allow for a credit channel of central bank government bond purchases. Considering ad hoc asset purchase programmes like the one implemented by the ECB, we show that their macroeconomic multipliers get stronger when the lower bound on the policy rate becomes binding and when the purchasing path is fully communicated and anticipated by the agents. From a more normative standpoint, interest rate policy and asset purchases feature strong strategic complementarities during both normal and crisis times. In an environment when nominal interest rates reach their effective lower bound, optimal monetary policy is to keep the policy rate low for a longer period in time and to engage in asset purchases. Our results also point to a clear sequencing of the exit strategy, first stopping the asset purchases and later raising the policy rate. In terms of macroeconomic stabilisation, optimal asset purchase strategies deliver sizeable benefits and have the potential to largely offset the costs of the lower bound on the policy rate.

We analyse the effects of central bank government bond purchases in an estimated DSGE model for the euro area. In the model, central bank asset purchases are relevant in so far as agency costs distort banks asset allocation between loans and bonds, and households face transaction costs when trading government bonds. Such frictions in the banking sector induce inefficient time-variation in the term premia and open up for a credit channel of central bank government bond purchases. Considering first ad hoc asset purchase programmes like the one implemented by the ECB, we show that their macroeconomic multipliers are stronger as the lower bound on the policy rate becomes binding and when the purchasing path is fully communicated and anticipated by economic agents. From a more normative standpoint, interest rate policy and asset purchases feature strong strategic complementarities during both normal and crisis times. In a lower bound environment, optimal policy conduct features long lower bound periods and activist asset purchase policy. Our results also point to a clear sequencing of the exit strategy, stopping first the asset purchases and later on, lifting off the policy rate. In terms of macroeconomic stabilisation, optimal asset purchase strategies bring sizeable benefits and have the potential to largely offset the costs of the lower bound on the policy rate.

Epstein-Zin preferences have attracted significant attention within the macro-finance literature based on DSGE models as they allow to substantially increase risk aversion, and consequently generate non-trivial risk premia, without compromising the ability of standard models to achieve satisfactory macroeconomic data coherence. Such appealing features certainly hold for structural modelling frameworks where monetary policy is set according to Taylor-type rules or seeks to minimize an ad hoc loss function under commitment. However, Epstein-Zin preferences may have significant quantitative implications for both asset pricing and macroeconomic allocation under a welfare-based monetary policy conduct. Against this background, the paper focuses on the impact of such preferences on the Ramsey approach to monetary policy within a medium-scale model based on Smets and Wouters (2007) including a wide range of nominal and real frictions that have proven to be relevant for quantitative business cycle analysis. After setting an empirical benchmark that generates a mean value of 100 bp for the ten-year term premium, we show that Epstein-Zin preferences significantly affect the macroeconomic outcome when optimal policy is considered. The level and the dynamic pattern of risk premia are also markedly altered. We show that the effect of Epstein-Zin preferences is extremely sensitive to the presence of real rigidities in the form of quasi-kinked demands. We also analyse how this effect can be linked to a combined e¤ect of capital accumulation and wage rigidities.

This paper quantifies the deterioration of achievable tabilization outcomes when monetary policy operates under imperfect credibility and weak anchoring of long-term expectations. Within a medium-scale DSGE model, we introduce through a simple signal extraction problem, an imperfect knowledge configuration where rice and wage setters wrongly doubt about the determination of the central bank to leave unchanged its long-term inflation objective in the face of inflationary shocks. The magnitude of private sector learning has been calibrated to match the volatility of US inflation expectations at long horizons. Given such illustrative calibrations, we find that the costs of aintaining a given inflation volatility under weak credibility could amount to 0.25 pp of output gap standard deviation.

We estimate a two-country Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model for the US and the euro area including relevant housing market features and examine the monetary policy implications of housing-related disturbances. In particular, we derive the optimal monetary policy cooperation consistent with the structural specification of the model. Our estimation results reinforce the existing evidence on the role of housing and mortgage markets for the US and provide new evidence on the importance of the collateral channel in the euro area. Moreover, we document the various implications of credit frictions for the propagation of macroeconomic disturbances and the conduct of monetary policy. We find that allowing for some degree of monetary policy response to fluctuations in the price of residential goods improves the empirical fit of the model and is consistent with the main features of optimal monetary policy response to housing-related shocks.

This paper presents first the estimation of a two-country DSGE model for the euro area and the rest-of-the-world including relevant oil-price channels. We then investigate the optimal resolution of the policy tradeoffs emanating from oil-price disturbances. Our simulations show that the inflationary forces related to the use of oil as an intermediate good seem to require specific policy actions in the optimal allocation. However, the direct effects of oil prices should be allowed to exert their mechanical influence on CPI inflation and wage dynamics through the indexation schemes. We also illustrate that any fine-tuning strategy which tries to counteract the direct effects of oil-price changes in headline inflation would prove counterproductive both in terms to stabilization of underlying inflation and by causing unnecessary volatility in the macroeconomic landscape. Finally, it appears that perfect foresight on future oil price developments allows a more rapid absorption of the steady state decline in purchasing power and real national income in the optimal allocation. Through the various expectation channels, economic agents facilitate the necessary adjustments and optimal monetary policy can still tolerate the direct effects of oil price changes on CPI inflation as well as some degree of underlying inflationary pressures in the view of easing partly the burden of downward real wage shifts. Our monetary policy prescriptions have been derived in a modeling framework where oil-price fluctuations are essentially exogenous to policy actions and where expectations are formed under the rational expectations paradigm. Notably, the extension of such conclusions to imperfect knowledge and weak central bank credibility configurations remain challenging fields for further research.