Has Fed's Policy Hurt the World Economy?

Abstract

In an attempt to rescue the U.S. financial market and to stimulate the economy, the Federal Reserve introduced a number of non-conventional monetary policy tools. Termed as and aimed at lowering both the short-term and the long-term interest rates and thereby boosting the consumption and investment demand and, in turn, stimulating the economy, this policy had the effect of altering both the size and composition of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. These nonconventional policy tools were thought to be necessary when conventional policy tool, such as, the federal funds rate target had almost reached zero. These policy tools were implemented in the forms of: (a) lending to financial institutions, (b) providing liquidity to key credit markets, and (c) purchasing longer-term securities. There have been several studies on the impact of the recent U.S. monetary policy. But these studies mainly focus on its effect on the interest rate, the commodity prices, and the exchange rates. None of these studies have examined the impact of U.S. monetary policy on a specific country, a specific group of countries, or the world economy. Also, these studies do not use a general equilibrium model that takes into account both the goods market and the money market equilibrium condition. We develop a general equilibrium model of income, in which the domestic real GDP is a function of domestic currency's exchange rate and the foreign monetary base. We, then, apply the model on a panel data on the United States and the BRICS countries to see if U.S. credit easing has any effect on BRICS countries' real GDP. Our study finds that the recent U.S. monetary policy of credit (quantitative) easing has an adverse effect on BRICS countries' real GDP. This finding seems intuitive, because, the increase in the U.S. money supply caused by its pursuance of the credit easing policy will lower the interest rate in the U.S. increasing the relative prospective rate of return on investment in the United States. This increased relative rate of return causes increased capital flow into the U.S. from abroad including the BRICS countries. The capital outflows, in turn, lower the investment and, consequently the real GDP in BRICS countries. Also, the random effect is negative for Brazil and Russia, while it is positive for China, India, and South Africa, suggesting that the U.S. monetary policy has a greater negative impact on the real GDP of Brazil and Russia than on that of other BRICS countries. The policy implication of our finding is that an easy monetary policy, such as, quantitative easing does lower the interest rate and increase domestic investment and thereby stimulate the economy. Therefore, some of the policy measures the BRICS countries can take to insulate their economies from a negative impact of the U.S. monetary policy is to implement a similar (easy) monetary policy in their own countries or exercise a direct control on capital outflow.