November 13, 2014
E52 - Monetary Policy
-
-
On the Importance of Sales for Aggregate Price Flexibility
Macroeconomists have traditionally ignored the behavior of temporary price markdowns (“sales”) by retailers. Although sales are common in the micro price data, they are assumed to be unrelated to macroeconomic phenomena and generally filtered out. -
International Transmission Channels of U.S. Quantitative Easing: Evidence from Canada
The U.S. Federal Reserve responded to the great recession by reducing policy rates to the effective lower bound. In order to provide further monetary stimulus, they subsequently conducted large-scale asset purchases, quadrupling their balance sheet in the process. -
The Neutral Rate of Interest in Canada
A measure of the neutral policy interest rate can be used to gauge the stance of monetary policy. We define the neutral rate as the real policy rate consistent with output at its potential level and inflation equal to target after the effects of all cyclical shocks have dissipated. -
Housework and Fiscal Expansions
We build an otherwise-standard business cycle model with housework, calibrated consistently with data on time use, in order to discipline consumption-hours complementarity and relate its strength to the size of fiscal multipliers. -
May 13, 2014
Measuring Uncertainty in Monetary Policy Using Realized and Implied Volatility
Uncertainty surrounding the Bank of Canada’s future policy rates is measured using implied volatility computed from interest rate options and realized volatility computed from intraday prices of interest rate futures. Both volatility measures show that uncertainty decreased following major policy actions taken by the Bank in response to the 2007–09 financial crisis. Findings also indicate that, on average, uncertainty decreases following the Bank’s policy rate announcements. -
Labor Market Participation, Unemployment and Monetary Policy
We incorporate a participation decision in a standard New Keynesian model with matching frictions and show that treating the labor force as constant leads to incorrect evaluation of alternative policies. -
Search-for-Yield in Canadian Fixed-Income Mutual Funds and Monetary Policy
This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy on the risk-taking behavior of fixed-income mutual funds in Canada. We consider different measures of the stance of monetary policy and investigate active variation in mutual funds’ risk exposure in response to monetary policy. -
Household Risk Management and Actual Mortgage Choice in the Euro Area
Mortgages constitute the largest part of household debt. An essential choice when taking out a mortgage is between fixed-interest-rate mortgages (FRMs) and adjustable-interest-rate mortgages (ARMs). However, so far, no comprehensive cross‐country study has analyzed what determines household demand for mortgage types, a task that this paper takes up using new data for the euro area. -
Expectations and Monetary Policy: Experimental Evidence
The effectiveness of monetary policy depends, to a large extent, on market expectations of its future actions. In a standard New Keynesian business-cycle model with rational expectations, systematic monetary policy reduces the variance of inflation and the output gap by at least two-thirds.