Official Interest Rates Research Articles

Monetary Conditions Index: A Composite Measure of Monetary Policy in Pakistan

Accurate measures of the size and direction of changes in monetary policy are very important. A number of variables/indicators have been used as a measure of the stance of monetary policy the world over. These include growth rates of monetary aggregates and credit aggregates, short-term interest rate as used by Sims (1992), index of minutes of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), as suggested by Friedman and Schwartz (1963) and reintroduced by Romer and Romer (1989), monetary policy index constructed by employing Vector Autoregression (VAR) estimation technique with prior information from Central Bank such as Bernanke and Blinder (1992) and Bernanke and Mihov (1998), and Monetary Conditions Index (MCI)—which is the focus of this paper—constructed by and used by Bank of Canada [Freedman (1995)], taking into consideration the interest rate and exchange rate channel of monetary policy transmission mechanism in a small open economy. In case of open economy it is assumed that the monetary policy affects the economy and the prime objective of monetary policy, rate of inflation, through two important transmission mechanisms. These transmission channels are; interest rate channel and exchange rate channel. The working of the first channel is that the interest rate influences the level of expenditures, investment and subsequently domestic demand. The change in official interest rate effects the market rates of interest both short term as well as long term interest rates. This change in market rates of interest is transmitted to the bank lending rates and saving rates. The change in saving rate effects the spending behaviour of individuals (consumption) whereas the change in bank lending rate effects the investment behaviour of firms (investment). The change in aggregate consumption and investment has direct link to the gross domestic product (GDP).

Monetary policy in a world of radical uncertainty

Monetary policy in a world of radical uncertainty

INFLATION, CENTRAL BANK AND SHORT-TERM INTEREST RATES: A NEW MODEL WITH CALIBRATION TO MARKET DATA

In this paper, we propose a new model for the joint evolution of the inflation rate, the Central Bank official interest rate and the short-term interest rate. Our model takes into account the fact that the Central Bank interest rate changes at random times, inflation is measured at fixed, regular times, while the short-term interest rate evolves essentially continuously. We derive the valuation equation for a contingent claim and show that it has a unique solution. The payoff may depend on all three economic factors of the model and the discount factor is allowed to include inflation. Our model is not an affine model. Although in some special cases the solution of the valuation equation might admit a closed form, in general it has to be solved numerically. This can be done efficiently by the algorithm that we provide. Taking as a benchmark the model of [H. W. Ho, H. H. Huang & Y. Yildirim (2014) Affine model of inflation-indexed derivatives and inflation risk premium, European Journal of Operational Research 235, 159–169], we show that our model performs better on European market data from 2008 to 2015. Our model uses many fewer parameters than the benchmark model: This is advantageous from the numerical point of view and suggests that our model describes the behavior of the economic factors more closely.

An unwinding of QE won't be the end of this policy tool

▪ The BoE has updated its guidance for when it will begin to reverse asset purchases. If financial markets are functioning normally at that point, and the future path of interest rates is clearly signalled, the central bank thinks the macroeconomic consequences of quantitative tightening (QT) should be small. ▪ This seems a reasonable premise. If so, decisions around QT should not greatly affect the pace at which the official interest rate rises and, relatedly, the space to cut borrowing costs in the event of a future shock. ▪ But even allowing for a muted effect from QT, and scope to take Bank Rate negative, room to support the economy with rate cuts looks like staying very limited for years to come. So QE‐to‐QT is unlikely to be a one‐way street.

Are interest rate changes comoving with financial cycle?

AbstractWe explore to what extent official interest rate changes can potentially in a procyclical manner impact different financial cycle indicators (credit/GDP, debt service ratio, house prices and stock market indices). We test this on data covering 1995−2016 in 21 countries and the euro area using the Concordance index and Monetary policy procyclicality ratio. Results show that this was not a widespread phenomenon, but there was significant heterogenenity across countries. The procyclicality of interest rate changes was usually higher when financial cycle gaps were increasing and lower when they were decreasing. On average, central banks in several larger economies were running potentially less procyclical monetary policy than those in the smaller ones. The resulting propensity of conflicts between achieving price and financial stability by central banks was low, as only in 10% of the cases the objectives were conflicting (usually when inflation was below the target and the credit cycle was in an expansion phase).

Dating Structural Changes in UK Monetary Policy

Abstract The UK historical monetary policy experience is rich of institutional changes, but it remains unclear which of these many events dominated the policy actions and what timing characterised the inception of different policy regimes. We develop a new empirical approach to answer these questions and we identify in particular the historical institutional events that effectively translated into a shift of the systematic actions of the UK monetary authorities. We find that not all institutional events triggered a contemporaneous change in the actual policy conduct, although a coherent evolution in phases is evident since 1978, when a significant monetary policy rule emerges. These occasional but not sporadic regime changes explain a considerable share of the movements in the official interest rate, as well as an overstatement of the importance of policy inertia.

The Effect of Exchange Rates and Interest Rates of Four Large Economies on the Health of Banks in ASEAN-3

This study examines how the health of the banks in ASEAN-3 countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand respond to the change in exchange rates and foreign interest rates in four large economies. The transmissions of the two external factors through domestic factors in each ASEAN-3 countries eventually affects Non-Performing Loan (NPL) of commercial banks. This study uses the monthly time series data and the renowned Structural Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model comprising five variables, namely exchange rate, foreign interest rate, domestic interest rate, money supply, and non-performing loan (NPL). The results indicate that there are different effects between ASEAN-3 countries, which can be classified as short-run effect and long-run effect. In the long run effect, external factors have a dominant role in determining NPL in ASEAN-3 countries. Yuan has the biggest effect on Malaysia's NPL, while Indonesia is more affected by European interest rates rather than the fluctuation of the US currency and China's interest rates. Among ASEAN-3 countries, Malaysia is the one that is the most vulnerable to external factors. While Thailand's NPL is affected dominantly by domestic factors. This study shows that the Fed Funds Rate (US official interest rate) is not always the dominant factor affecting the health of domestic banks in ASEAN-3.

Factors Influencing the Green Bond Market Expansion: Evidence from a Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Expansion of green bond markets as an appropriate way to lower environmental pollution is one of the most debatable issues among scholars. However, the expansion of this market is not a simple matter and depends on several factors. The main purpose of this study is to carry out a multi-dimensional analysis using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to find and prioritize factors influencing the development of green bond markets. As a case, we do our analysis for Vietnam that, since the last years, has been trying to expand green bond market as an effective investment channel to finance low-carbon projects. The main findings revealed that legal infrastructure, official interest rate of green bonds, and economic stability are the most important factors directly affecting green bond market expansion. Therefore, economic and legal requirements should be addressed by policy makers. As major policy implications, we recommend an affordable price of green bonds and improvement of economic and financial stability to accelerate the development of green bond markets.

Size of Banks as a Factor Which Impacts the Efficiency of the Bank Lending Channel

Abstract In most economies the banking sector plays the major role in the financial system. Therefore, it is of great importance to analyse and understand the mechanism of transmission of monetary policy and its impact on the banking sector. One of the possible repercussions of changing the level of official interest rates is the ability to influence the size of bank lending, by means of the bank lending channel. The key aspect our research is a thorough understanding of the functioning of the bank lending channel, with the main goal of this study being an examination of the efficiency of monetary policy transmission through the bank lending channel depending on the size of banks in the sector. This paper examines the abovementioned relation using annual data from 1995-2015 by 1709 commercial and cooperative banks from 27 EU countries and analyzing them in various econometric models. The results indicate that there is a positive impact of a bank’s size on loan growth (defined as the bank size increases, the impact of changes in interest rates in the bank’s lending policy is getting smaller), however, interaction between the variables of size and the interest rate, was proved to be insignificant (in the group of all analysed banks, as well as in commercial and cooperative banks separately).

Investigating solutions for the development of a green bond market: Evidence from analytic hierarchy process

Green bonds are an important financial tool for funding environmental projects through a low-carbon financing approach. This study aims to investigate various solutions for the development of the green bond market in Vietnam, which the country is currently trying to establish as an effective investment channel to finance low–carbon projects. The study's major results revealed that the presence of an efficient legal framework for green bond operations, monetary policies of the State Bank of Vietnam, and the official interest rate of green bonds are important accelerators the country can utilize to strengthen its green bond market.

What Can We Learn About Mortgage Supply from Online Data?

We exploit a novel dataset on mortgages offered by banks through Italy’s main online mortgage broker, which works with banks representing over 80 per cent of mortgages granted, to gain an up-to-date assessment of loan supply conditions. Characteristics of mortgages are reported for about 85,000 borrower-contract profiles, constant over time, available at the beginning of each month starting from March 2018. We document that riskier applications, characterized by high loan-to-value ratios and long maturity, are, on average, offered by a smaller number of banks that charge higher interest rates. Online banks tend to provide better price conditions than traditional intermediaries. We use the online rates offered to nowcast bank-level official (MIR) interest rate statistics, available only several weeks later. By using both regression analysis and machine learning algorithms, we show that the rates offered have significant predictive content for fixed-rate contracts, also after controlling for time-varying demand conditions, market reference rates, and unobserved time-invariant bank characteristics. Machine learning algorithms provide further improvements over regression models in out of sample predictions.

Impact of global uncertainty on the global economy and large developed and developing economies

ABSTRACTGlobal uncertainty shocks are associated with a sharp decline in global inflation, growth and interest rate. Global uncertainty shocks have more protracted, statistically significant and substantial effects on global growth, inflation and interest rate than U.S. uncertainty shocks. When controlling for domestic uncertainty, the decline in output following a rise in global uncertainty is statistically significant in each large country, except for the decline for China. For most economies, a positive shock to global uncertainty has a depressing effect on prices and official interest rates – exceptions are Brazil, Mexico and Russia, which are economies with large capital outflows during financial crises.

The cross-border impacts of China’s official rate shocks on stock returns of Chinese concepts shares listed on U.S. market

This paper examines a new cross-border effect of an emerging country’s interest rate changes on the stock returns of its domestic firms listed overseas. First, we discover that the increase in China’s official interest rate greatly affects the NYSE-listed Chinese stocks, thereby suggesting that similar to Chinese domestic investors, the institutional investors in a mature market sometimes exhibit irrational sentiment driven by an emerging economy’s unexpected monetary policy shocks. Second, we highlight some novel asymmetric impacts of China’s official rate changes on Chinese concepts stock prices and reveal that these effects differ from the conventional nonlinear effects of monetary policies. For instance, a bull and bear regime has no statistically significant asymmetric effect on NYSE, whereas interest rate rise has different cross-border impact on Nasdaq and NYSE markets. These interesting findings are mainly driven by the smart investors in the U.S. stock market who are knowledgeable about the differences between NYSE- and Nasdaq-listed stocks and carefully analyze the different impacts of China’s official interest rate changes on the fundamentals of different types of Chinese concepts stocks.

Central bank target rates and term structure of interest rates: A study of six Asia-Pacific countries

Granger causality tests find that the official interest rate (OIR) changes made by the central banks of Australia, China, India, South Korea, Philippines, and Taiwan cause OIR changes at other central banks, but no central bank dominates in its impact. Event study tests show that OIR announcements impact short-term market interest rates more than long-term market interest rates in their own countries. Our study shows that announcements by India and China have the largest impact on the other four countries. Markets anticipate OIR changes consistent with the objective of transparency by monetary authorities to reduce economy uncertainty for market participants.

The evolution of monetary policy effectiveness under macroeconomic instability

This paper studies the evolution of the monetary policy transmission mechanisms in the US following the Great Recession. The implementation of a modified Dynamic Factor Model enables the identification of two different structural scenarios based on the information contained in a large dataset of 110 variables. Impulse Response Functions to an increase of official interest rate for this large dataset are estimated for each structural context. Three techniques are combined to deal with the dimensionality problems which emerge from an estimation procedure of this magnitude: (i) factor decomposition, (ii) an identification strategy independent of the number of variables included in the dataset and (iii) a blockwise optimization algorithm for the correct selection of the Bayesian priors. Results show the presence of a structural break in 2008 and the higher responsiveness of the economy to monetary policy after that date.

SOEs as intermediation: Leakage effect under financial repression

This article sheds new light on the puzzle why and how China's economy and private sector can grow so remarkably despite serious financial repression and credit control. We show that there exists a “leakage effect”: State-owned enterprises borrow from banks with the official interest rate, and then relend their loans to private firms with the (black) market interest rate. When doing so, all parties involved are better off, and the inefficiency of financial repression is mitigated.

Interest Liberalization and the Estimation of Implicit Interest Rates in China's Banking Sector

China's interest rate liberalization process has yet to be completed. Despite removal of deposit interest rate ceilings on 23 October 2015, controls like window guidance are still imposed to prevent commercial banks from setting interest rates freely. This paper estimates implicit interest rates in China (i.e., the additional yield to official interest rates that banks must pay to attract deposits) using headquarter-level data of 88 commercial banks from BankScope and branch-level data of 317 branches in 90 counties and 14 provinces for the period 2005–13. The econometric methods allow for both heterogeneity and spatial correlation in banks’ behavior to better capture the characteristics of the Chinese banking industry. Three main findings emerge from this study. First, the estimated mean implicit interest rate is between 70 percent and 78 percent of the explicit interest rate—ignoring implicit interest rates results in underestimation of funding costs. Second, a 1 percent increase in deposit interest rates is estimated to decrease implicit interest rates by 0.44 percent, implying that the cost of interest rate liberalization will be smaller than the increase in deposit interest rates. Third, small share-holding banks, city commercial banks and rural commercial banks pay higher implicit interest rates than large state-owned banks. To promote efficient resource allocation, therefore, interest rate liberalization needs to be firmly pursued but its impact on different types of banks needs to be closely monitored to minimize disruptions to the real economy.

The Impact of Global Uncertainty on the Global Economy, and Large Developed and Developing Economies

Global uncertainty shocks are associated with a sharp decline in global inflation, global growth and in the global interest rate. Over 1981 to 2014 global financial uncertainty forecasts 18.26% and 14.95% of the variation in global growth and global inflation respectively. Global uncertainty shocks have more protracted, statistically significant and substantial effects on global growth, inflation and interest rate than U.S. uncertainty shocks. U.S. uncertainty lags global uncertainty by one month. When controlling for domestic uncertainty, the decline in output following a rise in global uncertainty is statistically significant in each country, with the exception of the decline for China. The effects for the U.S. and for China are also relatively small. For most economies, a positive shock to global uncertainty has a depressing effect on prices and official interest rates. Exceptions are Brazil, Mexico and Russia, economies with large capital outflows during financial crises. Decomposition of global uncertainty shocks shows that global financial uncertainty shocks are more important than non-financial shocks.

The Impact of Global Uncertainty on the Global Economy, and Large Developed and Developing Economies

Global uncertainty shocks are associated with a sharp decline in global inflation, global growth and in the global interest rate. Over 1981 to 2014 global financial uncertainty forecasts 18.26% and 14.95% of the variation in global growth and global inflation respectively. Global uncertainty shocks have more protracted, statistically significant and substantial effects on global growth, inflation and interest rate than U.S. uncertainty shocks. U.S. uncertainty lags global uncertainty by one month. When controlling for domestic uncertainty, the decline in output following a rise in global uncertainty is statistically significant in each country, with the exception of the decline for China. The effects for the U.S. and for China are also relatively small. For most economies, a positive shock to global uncertainty has a depressing effect on prices and official interest rates. Exceptions are Brazil, Mexico and Russia, economies with large capital outflows during financial crises. Decomposition of global uncertainty shocks shows that global financial uncertainty shocks are more important than non-financial shocks.

Global Uncertainty and the Global Economy: Decomposing the Impact of Uncertainty Shocks

We constructed a new index of global uncertainty using the first principal component of the stock market volatility for the largest 15 economies. We evaluate the impact of global uncertainty on the global economy using the new global database from Global Economic Indicators (DGEI), Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Global uncertainty shocks are less frequent than those observed in data on the U.S. economy. Global uncertainty shocks are associated with a sharp decline in global inflation, global growth and in the global interest rate (based on official/policy interest rates set by central banks). Our decomposition of global uncertainty shocks shows that global financial uncertainty shocks are more important than non-financial shocks. Over the period 1981 to 2014 global financial uncertainty forecasts 18.26% and 14.95% of the variation in global growth and global inflation respectively. The non-financial uncertainty shocks have insignificant effects on global growth. The model for global variables shows more protracted and substantial negative effects of uncertainty on growth and inflation than does a panel model estimating associations of local country-level variables. This outcome is reversed for the effect of uncertainty on official interest rate.