Endogenous growth and monetary policy: How do interest-rate feedback rules shape nominal and real transitional dynamics?

Abstract

Monetary authorities have followed interest-rate feedback rules in apparently different ways over time and across countries, with the literature distinguishing, in particular, between active and passive monetary policies. We address the transitional-dynamics implications of these different types of monetary policy, in the context of a monetary growth model of R&D and physical capital accumulation. In this setup, well-behaved saddle-path transitional dynamics occurs under both active and (sufficiently) passive monetary policies – a relevant result little emphasised in the literature. We carry out our study from the perspective of a one-off shift in the structural stance of monetary policy (i.e., a change in the long-run inflation target) and a one-off shift in real industrial policy (i.e., an R&D or a manufacturing subsidy). We uncover a new channel through which institutional factors (the characteristics of the monetary-policy rule) influence the economies' convergence behaviour and through which monetary authorities may leverage (transitional) growth triggered by structural shifts.