Ability Of Central Bank Research Articles

From Cash to Central Bank Digital Currency: Can Gen Z Adopt It?

This study aims to examine the intention of youth in Indonesia to adopt Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). A sample of 285 respondents was analyzed using SEM-PLS and in-depth interviews. The results of the study found that involvement facilitation, institutional trust, and technology trust had a significant effect on youth's intention to use CBDC. These findings emphasize the importance of building trust in technology and institutions, as well as increasing public confidence in the ability of central banks to launch and regulate CBDC systems. Empirical evidence also shows that facilitation and literacy provided by the authorities need to be a significant focus in addressing potential barriers to technology use among the public. Furthermore, there are maximum literacy facilities and consultation given can increase public confidence in CBDC provider authorities to continue to develop technology to the fullest.

Climate actions, market beliefs, and monetary policy

This paper studies the role of expectations and monetary policy in the economy's response to climate actions. We show that in a stochastic environment, without the standard assumption of the perfect rationality of agents, there is more uncertainty regarding the path and the economic impact of a climate policy, with a potential threat to the ability of central banks to maintain price stability. Market beliefs and behavioral agents increase the trade-offs inherent to the chosen mitigation tool, with a carbon tax entailing more emissions uncertainty than in a rational expectations model and a cap-and-trade scheme implying a more pronounced pressure on allowance prices and inflation. The impact on price stability is worsened by delays in the implementation of stringent climate policies, the lack of confidence in the ability of central banks to keep inflation under control, and the adoption of monetary rules tied to expectations rather than current macroeconomic conditions. Central banks can implement successful stabilization policies that reduce the uncertainty surrounding the impact of climate actions and support the greening process while remaining within their mandate.

Monetary policy implementation: Which “new normal”?

This article provides a simple model of monetary policy implementation, analyzing both the interest rate steering (IRS) and the quantitative easing (QE) policies. The model shows that the “floor system”, introduced with QE policies, is preferable to the traditional “corridor system”, for two reasons. First, it endows central banks with one more degree of freedom, since the interest rate and the balance sheet policies become two independent instruments. Second, it enhances the ability of central banks to keep the money market rates in line with their target level. This second prediction is confirmed by an empirical analysis of the money market in the euro area. Therefore, in the “new normal” monetary policy should be implemented by steering the level of interest rates within a floor system, instead of relying on the corridor system used in the old IRS framework.11I wish to thank the Reviewer and the Editor for their very useful comments on a previous version of this article.

The monetization of economy: An indicator that indicates nothing

The indicator of monetization of the economy; equal to the ratio of nominal money supply to nominal GDP; is very popular among Russian economists and is used to assess the effectiveness of the monetary policy pursued and is often employed in cross-country comparisons. Many economists believe that the monetization of the Russian economy is excessively low; which reflects the underdevelopment of the national financial system and requires steps towards monetary expansion. According to this view insufficient monetization of the Russian economy is as an obstacle to its rapid development; therefore increase in monetization should be made a key priority of the Bank of Russia’s policy. Although widely accepted; the complex of theories; ideas and assumptions behind these recommendations; however; has never been adequately empirically tested. In this paper we formulate several statements that are shared by the majority of economists in this area; based on a review of relevant publications; and then test the statements on cross-country data. As a result of empirical testing; it was shown that most of the statements are not supported by evidence. The monetization indicator does not carry any additional relevant information about the macroeconomics conditions; having other indicators considered. High monetization does not create additional stimulus for economic growth; and the ability of central banks to affect monetization is limited significantly. In countries with low monetization; inflationary risks of monetary expansion are sharply higher. The conducted empirical study provides arguments against the broad use of the monetization indicator in macroeconomic analysis and casts doubt on the idea of laying responsibility for increasing the level of Russian economy monetization on the Bank of Russia.

The Inevitability of Escalating Energy Usage for Popular Proof-of-Work Cryptocurrencies

Few financial market innovations offer the opportunities to enhance transaction efficiency, as does the potential of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The author demonstrates that this industry's unusual demand and supply relationship results in ever-increasing energy consumption if Proof-of-Work currencies rise in price faster than mining rewards decay. This previously undocumented challenge poses global warming risk. In addition, the accessibility and opacity of many cryptocurrencies create financial risks for inexperienced speculators. Digital currencies also reduce the ability of central banks to conduct monetary policy and challenge regulatory authorities to promulgate rules to protect the economy and consumers. The author explores these various risks, demonstrates how the design of Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining frustrates the efficiency they promise and describes mechanisms that would allow cryptocurrencies based on the blockchain to live up to their immense potential.

Climate change and central banks: what role for monetary policy?

ABSTRACT Climate change has profound effects not only on societies and economies, but also for the ability of central banks to deliver price stability in the future. Among others, climate change impacts the monetary transmission mechanism, the policy space available to central banks, and has implications for the design of the monetary policy framework. Thus, taking no action is not a viable option, even for central banks without an explicit sustainability mandate. This article establishes a framework for the integration of climate change objectives into monetary policy in the context of the existing central bank mandates. Currently, only in a few cases do such mandates refer explicitly to sustainable growth and development as a policy objective for the central bank. The article discusses several possible ways central banks can respond to climate change, ranging from protective actions to more proactive measures aimed at mitigating climate change by supporting green finance and the transition to a low carbon economy. It also focuses on understanding the constraints and opportunities for action in this arena. Key policy insights Increasingly, central banks are being called upon to support an orderly transition to a low-carbon economy, not only in their financial stability capacity, but also with monetary policy measures. Independently of their specific mandate, central banks should consider protective and awareness raising actions, to ensure resilience vis-à-vis emerging climate-related risks and to safeguard the continued smooth conduct of monetary policy. Subject to their mandates, central banks should also consider designing monetary operations with green features to proactively support the environmental goals of their respective government. While proactive measures have the potential to be more impactful, they are also more controversial unless the central bank has a clear mandate to act on climate.

Reallocating Liquidity to Resolve a Crisis: Evidence from the Panic of 1873

In environments where aggregate liquidity is insufficient, the prevention of bank failures requires either a liquidity injection by the central bank or a suspension of convertibility. Suspensions lock savers out of their funds, undermining the liquidity service that banks exist to provide. At the same time, post-crisis reforms are deliberately curtailing the ability of central banks to create new, stigma-free lending facilities that inject emergency liquidity, especially for shadow banks. This raises a critical question: Can anything be done to mitigate bank failures when neither a suspension of convertibility nor a liquidity injection by the central bank is viable? In this paper, we show that there is a forced reallocation of existing liquidity that achieves fewer bank failures than a decentralized interbank market. We also show that this reallocation can be implemented through the issuance of centralized loan certificates, which were a policy instrument utilized by the New York Clearinghouse (NYCH) during the Panic of 1873. Using a novel, hand-collected data set, we find that the NYCH issued loan certificates to banks in the way our model suggests they should have, helping to resolve the panic. We also consider alternative policies in a quantitative extension and find that none do uniformly better than loan certificates.

Revisiting the inflation perception conundrum

Households' inflation perceptions and expectations play a key role in many dynamic macroeconomic and monetary models and are important for the ability of central banks to reach their objective of price stability. This paper revisits the issue of overestimation bias in inflation perceptions and expectations based on new and unique microdata from the Danish part of the EU-Harmonised Consumer Expectations Survey linked to rich household-level data from administrative registers. The analysis shows that accounting for even several of the household characteristics and social gradients usually addressed in the literature is far from sufficient to explain the inflation perception bias. Furthermore, we find that respondents participating in the survey more than once tend to be persistent in their degree of perception bias and that overpessimistic households have larger perception bias than other households. This indicates that inflation perception bias is related to fundamental personality traits. Finally, households' expectations of the future inflation level tend to be mean reverting and associated with the same types of bias as inflation perceptions.

Monetary policy and long‐term interest rates: Evidence from the U.S. economy

AbstractThis paper addresses the ability of central banks to affect the structure of interest rates. We assess the causal relationship between the short‐term Effective Federal Funds Rate (FF) and long‐term interest rates associated with both public and private bonds and specifically, the 10‐Year Treasury Bond (GB10Y) and the Moody's Aaa Corporate Bond (AAA). To do this, we apply Structural Vector Autoregressive models to U.S. monthly data for the 1954–2018 period. Based on results derived from impulse response functions and forecast error variance decomposition, we find: a bidirectional relationship whenGB10Yis considered as the long‐term rate and a unidirectional relationship that moves from short‐ to long‐term interest rates whenAAAis considered. These conclusions show that monetary policy is able to permanently affect long‐term interest rates and the central bank has a certain degree of freedom in setting the levels of the short‐term policy rate.

HOUSING MARKETS, EXPECTATION FORMATION AND INTEREST RATES

Based on a behavioral stock-flow housing market model in which the expectation formation behavior of boundedly rational and heterogeneous investors may generate endogenous boom-bust cycles, we explore whether central banks can stabilize housing markets via the interest rate. Using a mix of analytical and numerical tools, we find that the ability of central banks to tame housing markets by increasing the base (target) interest rate, thereby softening the demand pressure on house prices, is rather limited. However, central banks can greatly improve the stability of housing markets by dynamically adjusting the interest rate with respect to mispricing in the housing market.

Una nota sobre los bancos centrales en el centro y en la periferia: estancamiento secular y restricción externa

Históricamente los bancos centrales fueron instrumentos de desarrollo económico, pero en países avanzados su función de guardianes de la ortodoxia macroeconómica y de la estabilidad de precios ha tomado un papel predominante. En un mundo interconectado, eso limita la habilidad de los bancos centrales de los países en desarrollo de cumplir el mismo rol que sus pares de países avanzados cumplieron en el pasado. Los límites de los modernos bancos centrales son discutidos en el contexto del supuesto estancamiento secular y del renovado problema externo que algunos países en desarrollo enfrentan con el final del súper-ciclo de los precios de las commodities. En tiempos recientes, sin embargo, todo se complica en el corto plazo por la crisis del coronavirus (COVID-19).

The central banks’ ability to control variability of money market interest rates: The case of inflation targeting countries

It is well known that variability of money market interest rates is time variant. Further, the ability to control money market interest rates by central bank is also important for effectiveness of inflation targeting. As a contribution to understanding the transmission between main monetary policy rate and money market interest rates an innovative formal framework of money market interest rate variability reflecting variety of macroeconomic shocks was developed. Subsequently, a middle size macro-financial model with exogenous variables is estimated by the Bayesian method with sign restriction to identify main sources of macroeconomic shocks. Parameters of this model are estimated from a dataset of six countries with long-lasting history of inflation targeting. Using the estimation results, three measures of ability to control of money market interest rates are derived and they are used to compare time and country specific conditions of the effects of main policy rate on money market interest rates. We consider these measures as an important contribution for evaluating suitability of VAR models as well as the one for measuring the ability of central bank to control money market rates. Our findings are interesting and the novel approach is applicable to solve similar problem.

Potencijalni efekti kriptovaluta na monetarnu politiku

All current cryptocurrencies are controlled by private entities, so that the issue of impact on monetary system becomes very important. Autonomous decisions by private entities concerning the money supply could diminish the ability of central banks to implement monetary policy effectively. The subject of this paper is the influence of alternative cryptocurrency forms on the monetary system. The aim of this paper is to determine the ability of central banks to conduct monetary policy successfully in conditions of widespread use of cryptocurrencies in payment transactions. The situation in the cryptocurrency market is compared with the phases of Internet development and the current situation on other markets of electronic payment systems. It is concluded that cryptocurrencies do not have the capacity to endanger the traditional monetary system at the current level. Bearing in mind the early maturity of this market, certain predictions of possible future trends have been made. In the case of private cryptocurrency usage growth, central banks could partially or completely lose influence over monetary policy. The proposed solution is the development of national cryptocurrencies that would ensure the retention of seigniorage to central banks and the prevention of further use of private cryptocurrencies in criminal activities.

Distortions in Macroeconomics

Distortions in Macroeconomics

Should a Central Bank Transfer Its Profits to the Treasury?

In this paper we show how two seemingly irrelevant accounting principles for central banks—namely, the choice of the unit of account for its balance sheet and the method of inventory valuation of foreign currency reserves—can overstate or understate profits transferred to the treasury and how this can threaten the ability of central banks to control inflation. We show the first point through Monte Carlo experiments calibrated for the Venezuelan economy and the second point in an infinitely lived representative agent model that illustrates the problem of the joint determination of the level of central bank assets and the size of profits transferred to the treasury when the objective of the central bank is to eliminate the possibility of hyperinflation.

Potential Impact of Financial Innovation on Financial Services and Monetary Policy

The recent wave of financial innovation, particularly innovation related to the application of information and communication technologies, poses a serious challenge to the financial industry’s business model in both its banking and non-banking components. It has already revolutionised financial services and, most likely, will continue to do so in the future. If not responded to adequately and timely by regulators, it may create new risks to financial stability, as occurred before the global financial crisis of 2007-2009. However, financial innovation will not seriously affect the process of monetary policymaking and is unlikely to undermine the ability of central banks to perform their price stability mission. The recent wave of financial innovation, particularly innovation related to the application of information and communication technologies, poses a serious challenge to the financial industry’s business model in both its banking and non-banking components. It has already revolutionised financial services and, most likely, will continue to do so in the future. If not responded to adequately and timely by regulators, it may create new risks to financial stability, as occurred before the global financial crisis of 2007-2009. However, financial innovation will not seriously affect the process of monetary policymaking and is unlikely to undermine the ability of central banks to perform their price stability mission.

Is Globalization Reducing the Ability of Central Banks to Control Inflation? A Literature Review with an Application to the Euro Area

Abstract Globalization influences inflation and the transmission channels of monetary policy in various ways. The effects of globalization on the ability of monetary policy to control inflation have been discussed intensively. However, in the light of recent experiences following the global financial crisis with extended periods of disinflation in many advanced economies, the question whether the ability of monetary policy to control inflation has suffered significantly from increasing globalization has received new relevance. Based on a review of the literature, this paper discusses whether globalization is reducing the ability of central banks to control inflation and draws conclusion for the current situation in the euro area. We find that globalization has made it more complicated for central banks to ensure price stability and that it has tended to reduce the ability of monetary policy to control inflation in the short- to medium-run. However, in principle the ECB is still able to control inflation but may have to tolerate deviations from its inflation target for somewhat longer periods.

Much Ado about Something Important: How do Exchange Rate Movements Affect Inflation?

Understanding how exchange rate movements ‘pass‐through’ to prices and inflation is critically important for monetary policy. Yet key tenets of our standard framework for analyzing this ‘pass‐through’ have recently not performed well in the UK. Instead, a new framework is needed—of incorporating the cause of the exchange rate movement when analyzing its effects. This new framework can explain why sterling's movements have had such different effects on import prices and inflation over time. It should also improve the ability of central banks to predict inflation and set monetary policy appropriately.

Financial Independence of Central Bank through the Balance Sheet Prism

Abstract The main reason for central bank independence lies in the fact that it is necessary to clearly distinguish spending money from the ability of making money. Independence of central banks is now a characteristic of almost all developed and highly industrialized countries. In this respect, it represents an essential part of the overall economic reality of these countries. Over the past decade or somewhat earlier, the issue of importance of central bank independence has been raised in developing countries, making the institutional, functional, personal and financial independence of central banks current topics for consideration. The key reason for the growing attention to financial independence of central banks is due to the effects of the global financial crisis on their balance sheets and therefore the challenges related to achieving the basic goals of the functioning of central banks - financial stability and price stability. Financial strength and independence of central banks must be developed relative to the policy and tasks that are carried out and risks they face in carrying out of these tasks. Financial independence represents a key base for credibility of a central bank. On one hand, the degree of credibility is associated with the ability of central banks to carry out their tasks without external financial assistance. In order to enhance the credibility of central bank in this regard, it must have sufficient financial strength to absorb potential losses and that power must be continuously strengthened by increasing capital and rearranging profit allocation arrangements. This is particularly important in times of crisis.

Why Does the Interest Rate Decline Over the Day? Evidence from the Liquidity Crisis

We provide a simple model, able to explain why the overnight (ON) rate follows a downward intraday pattern, implicitly creating a positive intraday interest rate. While this normally reflects only some frictions, a liquidity crisis introduces a new component: the chance of an upward jump of the ON rate, which must be compensated by an intraday decline of the ON rate. By analyzing real time data for the e-MID interbank market, we show that the intraday rate has increased from a negligible level to a significant one after the start of the liquidity crisis in August 2007, and even more so since September 2008. The intraday rate is affected by the likelihood of a dry-up of the ON market, proxied by the 3M Euribor—Eonia swap spread. This evidence supports our model and it shows that a liquidity crisis impairs the ability of central banks to curb the market price of intraday liquidity, even by providing free daylight overdrafts. Such results have implications for the efficiency of the money market and of payment systems, as well as for the operational framework of central banks.