Keynesian Open Economy Model Research Articles

Financial globalization and monetary transmission

AbstractThis article studies the way in which international financial integration affects the domestic transmission of monetary policy in a standard New Keynesian open economy model. It extends Woodford's (2010) model to a framework, in which not only a global integration of goods and factor markets, but also financial markets might matter for the monetary transmission mechanism. The article considers two broad types of experiments meant to capture financial integration, a decrease in the costs of international asset trading and an increase in the level of gross foreign asset holdings. The main finding is that none of the analyzed forms of financial integration undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy in influencing domestic output and inflation. On the contrary, under a wide array of parameterizations, and even in an environment where the exchange rate pass‐through elasticity is very low and the Home country's traded goods sector is very small compared to world markets, monetary policy is more, rather than less, effective as the positive impact of strengthened exchange rate and wealth channels more than offsets the negative impact of weakened interest rate channels. Monetary policy is most effective in simulations interacting the highest degrees of the two forms of financial integration.

Intervention instruments, demand, output, and inflation

This paper estimates a SVAR to assess Mexican monetary policy responses and effects. To build it Gali & Monacelli (2005) New Keynesian Open Economy Model represents the main tool, but investment and international reserves are artificially added because of its empirical relevance to explain Mexican economy. Using monthly data from January 2002 to September 2018, evince that Mexican government intervenes markets using interest rate and international reserves. Interest rate prioritizes exchange rate stability, but it barely affects it. Both instruments effects on aggregate demand are limited, as income is the main explanatory variable according to variance decomposition, suggesting fiscal policy relevance to explicate aggregate demand.

Risk-premium shocks and the prudent exchange rate policy

Using a medium-size New Keynesian open economy model, we examine the issue of a prudent exchange rate policy when the economy encounters an adverse risk-premium shock. We show that the shock leads to terms of trade (ToT) deterioration and an increase in both the aggregate output and inflation. While examining the choice of an appropriate exchange rate policy to deal with the effects of the shock, analytical results of our baseline model show that neither a fully flexible nor a fully pegged exchange rate policy can yield the desired outcome. In the absence of the supply-side effects of ToT and a cost channel of monetary policy, a managed exchange rate policy can stabilize both domestic inflation and aggregate output. However, in the presence of either a cost channel of monetary policy or supply-side effects of the ToT or both, the central bank faces a trade-off between aggregate output and domestic inflation stabilization. We find that the presence of a cost channel of monetary policy gives rise to a pro-cyclical exchange rate policy. Simulation of a more general model suggests that, instead of using the conventional Taylor rule, the central bank should follow a ToT-augmented Taylor rule, which involves further monetary tightening as the ToT deteriorates. We find that the need for monetary tightening is linked to both the nominal and real rigidities in economy, which gives rise to increased exchange rate volatility. We also briefly consider the case of a productivity shock.

Models of international fiscal spillovers

The paper explores the implications for fiscal policy spillovers that are implied by some of the more widely used open economy macroeconomic models. Starting from the basic New Keynesian open economy model, we look at how different assumptions about price adjustment, size and openness, and the relevance of the zero bound affect the predictions for fiscal spillovers. Our analysis indicates that the direction and magnitude of fiscal spillovers depends sensitively on many structural factors and the stance of monetary policy. Any argument for the use of fiscal policy must take these features into account.

Pricing behavior and the role of trade openness in the transmission of monetary shocks

The empirical evidence on the role of trade openness in the monetary transmission is not conclusive: some studies find that it increases the sensitivity of output to monetary shocks, others find that it does not. Using a New Keynesian open economy model, I show that the role of trade openness in the transmission of monetary shocks can be reversed completely by the degree of exchange-rate pass-through into import prices. If the pass-through is complete, traded output increases more than nontraded output after a positive monetary shock, if the pass-through is zero, traded output increases less. Moreover, ignoring sectoral heterogeneity in price rigidity leads to an incorrect assessment of the role of trade openness in the transmission of monetary shocks.

Exchange rate pass through, cost channel to monetary policy transmission, adaptive learning, and the price puzzle

Using a New Keynesian open economy model, where the supply side effects of the exchange rate pass through as well as the cost channel of monetary policy transmission are taken into account, this paper evaluates the possibility of the price puzzle, which refers to anomalous behavior of inflation to a monetary shock. Unlike the existing studies, we consider the possibility of the price puzzle when agent expectations are based on adaptive learning and three monetary policy alternatives (the optimal monetary policy, money growth targeting, and a Calvo-type policy rule) are available to the central bank. Furthermore, we use two alternative measures of inflation. Calibration of our medium scale model, using plausible parameter values, reveals that irrespective of how the inflation rate is measured and the policy rule used by the central bank, the puzzle fades away when a sufficiently strong exchange rate pass through is present in the economy. We also find that a decrease in inflation is associated with a cost to the society in the form of lower aggregate output but this loss is minimum when the central bank uses the optimal monetary policy.

Monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a post Keynesian open-economy model

ABSTRACTUsing a post Keynesian model, this study aims to analyze the stabilizing role of fiscal and monetary policies in an open economy with a managed exchange rate regime. The real exchange rate is modeled as an endogenous variable and inflation explained using the conflicting claims approach. The dynamic properties of macroeconomic equilibrium are evaluated in different regimes of fiscal and monetary policies. The main result of this study suggests that the preferred policy regime is the one in which economic authorities are complementary and fiscal policy plays an explicitly active role. In this regime, the fiscal policy must commit to the target for the rate of capacity utilization and the monetary authority must commit to the inflation target.

Pricing Behaviour and the Role of Trade Openness in the Transmission of Monetary Shocks

External demand is considered to be one of the channels of transmission of monetary policy to aggregate demand. If external demand matters in the monetary transmission, then the response of output to monetary shocks must be more pronounced in the sectors that are more open to trade and exposed to foreign competition. However, the empirical evidence is not conclusive. Using a New Keynesian open economy model, I show that the role of trade openness in the transmission of monetary shocks can be reversed completely by the degree of exchange-rate pass-through into import prices. If the pass-through is complete, traded output increases more than nontraded output after a positive monetary shock, if the pass-through is zero, traded output increases less. The lack of conclusive evidence on the role of external demand in the transmission of monetary shocks may also be explained by sectoral heterogeneity in price rigidity: if prices are more rigid in the nontraded sector, then it is not possible to find a positive correlation between the response of output to monetary shocks and the degree of openness, regardless of the degree of exchange rate pass-through.

Assessing Bayesian Model Comparison in Small Samples

We investigate the Bayesian approach to model comparison within a two-country framework with nominal rigidities using the workhorse New Keynesian open-economy model of Martinez-Garcia and Wynne (2010). We discuss the trade-offs that monetary policy — characterized by a Taylor-type rule — faces in an interconnected world, with perfectly flexible exchange rates. We then use posterior model probabilities to evaluate the weight of evidence in support of such a model when estimated against more parsimonious specifications that either abstract from monetary frictions or assume autarky by means of controlled experiments that employ simulated data. We argue that Bayesian model comparison with posterior odds is sensitive to sample size and the choice of observable variables for estimation. We show that posterior model probabilities strongly penalize overfitting, which can lead us to favor a less parameterized model against the true data-generating process when the two become arbitrarily close to each other. We also illustrate that the spill-overs from monetary policy across countries have an added confounding effect.The Technical Note for this paper is available at the following URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2485465

Globalisation, pass-through and the optimal policy response to exchange rates

In this paper we examine how monetary policy should respond to nominal exchange rates in a New Keynesian open economy model that allows for a non-trivial role for sterilised intervention. The paper develops the argument against the backdrop of the evolving policy-making environment of Asian economies. Sterilised intervention can be a potent tool that offers policymakers an additional degree of freedom in maximising global welfare. We show that the gains to sterilised intervention are greater when goods market integration is low and exchange rate pass-through is high. However, increased financial internationalisation reduces the effectiveness of sterilised intervention, as the international policy trilemma becomes more relevant. Unsterilised intervention may also have a role to play, although the potential welfare gains from this are generally smaller.Most central banks in Asia have actively used sterilised foreign exchange intervention as a policy tool to smooth exchange rates. But, over time, declining exchange rate pass-through and the increasing international integration of financial and goods markets will tend to reduce the efficacy of sterilised intervention. Given the limited effectiveness of unsterilised intervention, our model implies that the role of exchange rate movements in the optimal setting of monetary policy in Asia is decreasing.

Energy Prices and Business Cycles

Despite energy price hikes in recent years, growth rates turned out to be high in most industrialised countries. This pattern starkly contrasts the adverse effects that energy price shocks exerted on growth in the 1970s and 1980s. This study investigates whether a reduction in the energy cost share or different sources of energy price hikes are responsible for this divergence. By adding an exogenous twovariable VAR to a new open economy model for Germany, both energy prices and global economic activity are specified to be independent from domestic variables but assumed to influence each other. We show that it is sensible to calibrate the model in accordance with long-run fluctuations in important, observable, structural parameters and VAR coefficients on a period by period basis. Increases in energy prices and in global output serve as supply side and demand side shocks respectively. Our results suggest that the effects of recent energy price hikes have been different from past experiences because they were demand driven. Therefore, supply driven energy price increases could still be an important source of business cycle fluctuations. JEL Classifications: E31, E32, F41 Keywords: Oil prices, new Keynesian open economy model

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A Medium-Scale New Keynesian Open Economy Model of Australia

We estimate a new Keynesian open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of Australia with a large number of shocks, frictions and rigidities, matching a large number of observable time series. We find that both foreign and domestic shocks are important drivers of the Australian business cycle. We also find that the initial impact on inflation of an increase in demand for Australian commodities is negative, because of an improvement in the real exchange rate, although there is a persistent positive effect on inflation that dominates at longer horizons.

Monetary Policy and Unemployment in Open Economies

After an expansionary monetary policy shock employment increases and unemployment falls. In standard New Keynesian models the fall in aggregate unemployment does not affect employed workers at all. However, Luchinger, Meier and Stutzer (2010) found that the risk of unemployment negatively affects utility of employed workers: An increases in aggregate unemployment decreases workers' subjective well-being, which can be explained by an increased risk of becoming unemployed. I take account of this effect in an otherwise standard New Keynesian open economy model with unemployment as in Gali (2010) and fi nd two important results with respect to expansionary monetary policy shocks: First, the usual wealth effect in New Keynesian models of a declining labor force, which is at odds with the data as highlighted by Christiano, Trabandt and Walentin (2010), is shut down. Second, the welfare effects of such shocks improve considerably, modifying the standard results of the open economy literature that set off with Obstfeld and Rogoff's (1995) redux model.

Expectation traps in a new Keynesian open economy model

This paper illustrates that the presence of a money demand distortion in an otherwise standard new Keynesian open economy model results in multiple discretionary equilibria that arise in the form of expectations traps. If private sector inflation expectations become sufficiently unanchored, the model predicts that a monetary authority can easily be trapped into validating these expectations, thereby pushing the economy to a lower welfare equilibrium. Given the ease with which expectation traps arise in the presence of international linkages, the main result presented here suggests that maintaining well-anchored inflation expectations is a critically important policy goal for central banks in open economies.

Putting up a good fight: the Galí-Monacelli model versus "the six major puzzles in international macroeconomics"

In this paper, the following question is posed: Can the New Keynesian Open Economy Model by GalA­ and Monacelli (2005b) explain “Six Major Puzzles in International Macroeconomics†, as documented in Obstfeld and Rogoff (2000b)? The model features a small open economy with complete markets, Calvo sticky prices and monopolistic competition. As extensions, I explore the effects of an estimated Taylor rule and additional trade costs. After translating the six puzzles into moment conditions for the model, I estimate the five most effective parameters using simulated method of moments (SMM) to fit the moment conditions implied by the data. Given the simplicity of the model, its fit is surprisingly good: among other things, the home bias puzzles can easily be replicated, the exchange rate volatility is formidably increased and the exchange rate correlation pattern is relatively close to realistic values. Trade costs are one important ingredient for this finding.

Why are the Effects of Recent Oil Price Shocks so Small?

Recent oil price shocks have relatively small effects on real economic activity and inflation compared to the experiences of the seventies and the early eighties. In this paper we analyse possible reasons for these phenomena using the example of the German economy. At first, by estimating a VAR-model and calculating impulse responses to an oil price shock it is confirmed that the macroeconomic effects have become much smaller. Moreover, our simulations show that oil price hikes are more closely related to global economic activity since the early nineties. Then, to get a deeper understanding of the structural changes which are responsible for these results we utilize a new Keynesian open economy model. It becomes obvious that the small effects of the recent oil price shocks on the German economy can be explained by a combination of a reduced energy cost share and good luck in terms of a strong growing global economy. Hence, if global economic growth decreases, pure oil price shocks may still have substantial effects on the German economy, even if the energy price vulnerability has been reduced. These results should be valid also for other oil importing countries, at least from a qualitative point of view.

Stabilising Properties of Discretionary Monetary Policies in a Small Open Economy

This article sets out a simple New Keynesian open-economy model and shows that the conduct of discretionary monetary policy in an open economy differs substantially from the closedeconomy framework. The article shows analytically that the existence of the direct exchange rate channel in the open economy Phillips Curve impairs the perfect stabilising property of monetary policy in the face of demand-side disturbances under domestic inflation targeting. If CPI inflation is instead the target, then the perfect stabilising property of monetary policy breaks down even in the absence of the direct exchange rate channel in the Phillips Curve.

Expectation Traps in a New Keynesian Open Economy Model

This paper illustrates that the introduction of a money demand distortion into an otherwise standard New Keynesian Open Economy model generates multiple discretionary equilibria. These equilibria arise in the form of expectations traps whereby the monetary authority is trapped into validating expectations of the private sector because failing to do so is costly. One implication of the model is that provided initial inflation expectations are sufficiently anchored the global Friedman rule emerges as an equilibrium under discretion. It is therefore a time-consistent outcome and hence fully sustainable even in absence of a commitment device or reputational considerations.