Policy Surprises Research Articles

Does More Complex Language in FOMC Decisions Impact Financial Markets?

This paper is built around a simple premise that is based on the theoretical models of Harris and Raviv (1993) and Kandel and Pearson (1995). Complex statements are more difficult to interpret and may be construed in different ways by different agents. This creates heterogeneity of beliefs among market participants that manifests in increased market activity. We confirm existing results that show monetary policy surprises have a significant impact on financial markets. Importantly, we demonstrate that linguistic complexity (measured in terms of readability and number of words) of FOMC statements that accompany monetary policy decisions significantly increases the trading volume, and volatility of returns, in stock, bond, and currency markets. We also establish that financial markets are more responsive to monetary policy decisions (and the language of those statements) during recession.

The Time Varying Effect of Monetary Policy Surprise on Stock Returns: Bursting Bubble Beating Forward Guidance

We study the time varying effects of monetary policy on the stock returns in order to capture changes in the effectiveness of monetary policy over time. We find that a one percentage point surprise federal funds rate increase decreases the one-day stock return by 1.33% during the period 1989 to 2000, and by 7.47% during the period 2001 to 2007, i.e., over five times more. Also, surprises of monetary policy announcements do not have significant effects on the stock returns for most of the 1990s, but have significant effects during the 2000s. The significant period coincides with higher transparency and greater efforts from the Federal Reserve to communicate with the public, especially in the grounds of future policy, i.e., forward guidance. Higher transparency could increase the effectiveness of monetary policy. At the same time, the insignificant period coincides with the period of stock prices’ bubble. Recent work (Gali, 2014; Gali and Gambetti, 2015) has suggested that monetary policy might be ineffective during periods of bubbles. In order to distinguish between the two explanations, we explore the evolution effect of monetary policy surprise on bond returns. We find uniform response of bond returns before and after the 2000s. Thus, we conclude that our finding of low monetary policy effectiveness during the 1990s is specific to the stock market, making the theory of rational bubbles the prevailed explanation.

Unconventional monetary policy and the dollar: conventional signs, unconventional magnitudes

We examine the effects of unconventional monetary policy surprises on the value of the dollar using high-frequency intraday data and contrast them with the effects of conventional policy tools. Identifying monetary policy surprises from changes in interest rate future prices in narrow windows around policy announcements, we find that monetary policy surprises since the Federal Reserve lowered its policy rate to the effective lower bound have had larger effects on the value of the dollar. In particular, we document that the impact on the dollar has been roughly three to four times that following conventional policy changes prior to the 2007-08 financial crisis.

Can monetary policy surprises affect the term structure?

When monetary policy surprises financial markets, yields change but identifying the effects of these surprises on the yield curve is not a trivial exercise. Identification often involves assuming either that policy shocks are different to those on other news days (identification via heteroskedasticity) or, that they are the same (homogeneity). These monetary policy changes sometimes cause shifts in the yield curve and sometimes rotations. An additional identifying assumption is typically made whether this behavior reflects a single type of monetary policy shock or, whether two types of shocks are present. This paper applies a single theoretical framework to empirical evidence from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States prior to and following the crisis events of 2008. The results support a complex structure which varies across countries and evidence of distinct change across the crisis period.

Monetary policy surprises and jumps in interest rates: evidence from Brazil

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to consider a monetary-jump model to measure the contribution of jumps to the total volatility of interest rates in the Brazilian interbank market and to assess the extent to which the central bank’s unanticipated monetary policy decisions are driving these jumps.Design/methodology/approach– The authors use a sample of swap rates contracts with different maturities to estimate a mixture GARCH-jump model that disentangles two components of interest rate volatility: a GARCH-type specification that models conditional heteroskedasticity to account for the volatility during “normal” times and a Poisson process that models the occurrence of abrupt changes in interest rates.Findings– The contribution of jumps to the total volatility is substantial, and monetary policy decisions partly explain the occurrence of those jumps. In particular, the authors find that the likelihood of a jump occurring during a meeting day of the Brazilian central bank’s monetary policy committee (COPOM) is higher in comparison to that of a non-meeting day.Research limitations/implications– The occurrence of jumps in the term structure of interest rates raises the question of the transmission mechanism of the monetary policy through the asset price channel as well as the relation between jumps and economic fundamentals.Practical implications– Communication between the central bank and the market will affect expectations and asset values. If the central bank’s decisions generate fewer jumps, then the variance of the interest rate-linked asset values will also be reduced.Originality/value– The paper employs a new approach to assess monetary policy surprises to a set of Brazilian interest rate data and relates the occurrence of jumps to the macroeconomic environment.

Monetary policy's time-varying impact on the US bond markets: Role of financial stress and risks

This paper provides a novel analysis on the Treasury yield curve's response to monetary policy shocks and the role of financial market volatility and risks in assessment of the monetary policy impact. The results show that unlike the fixed coefficient approach usually used in the literature, the time varying parameter framework of the paper is needed to aptly unveil the latent dynamics of monetary policy impact on the bond markets. Wide time variation exists in the response of bond yields across all the maturities to the Federal Reserve's policy surprises. While the short-term rates respond more widely even the long-term rates show significant variation. Further, these time varying policy effects on interest rates are inversely related with the level of financial risks and economic uncertainty. These results are robust to several alternative aspects of risk and uncertainty.

Monetary Policy Surprises, Positions of Traders, and Changes in Commodity Futures Prices

Using futures data for the period 1990–2008, this paper finds evidence that expansionary monetary policy surprises tend to increase crude and heating oil prices, and contractionary monetary policy shocks increase gold and platinum prices. Our analysis uncovers substantial heterogeneity in the magnitude of this response to positive and negative surprises across different commodities and commodity groups. The results also suggest that the positions of futures traders for the metals and energy commodities strongly respond to monetary policy shocks. The adjustment of the net long positions of hedgers and speculators appears to be a channel through which the monetary policy shocks are propagated to commodity price changes.

ECB Monetary Policy Surprises: Identification Through Cojumps in Interest Rates

This paper proposes a new econometric approach to disentangle two distinct response patterns of the yield curve to monetary policy announcements. Based on cojumps in intraday tick-data of a short and long term interest rate, we develop a day-wise test that detects the occurrence of a significant policy surprise and identifies the market perceived source of the surprise. The new test is applied to 133 policy announcements of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the period from 2001-2012. Our main findings indicate a good predictability of ECB policy decisions and remarkably stable perceptions about the ECB’s policy preferences.

Nominal Interest Rates and the News

This paper provides new estimates of the impact of monetary policy actions and macroeconomic news on the term structure of nominal interest rates. The key novelty is to parsimoniously capture the impact of news on all interest rates using a simple no‐arbitrage model. The different types of news are analyzed in a common framework by recognizing their heterogeneity, which allows for a systematic comparison of their effects. This approach leads to novel empirical findings. First, monetary policy causes a substantial amount of volatility in both short‐term and long‐term interest rates. Second, macroeconomic data surprises have small and mostly insignificant effects on the long end of the term structure. Third, the term‐structure response to macroeconomic news is consistent with considerable interest‐rate smoothing by the Federal Reserve. Fourth, monetary policy surprises are multidimensional while macroeconomic surprises are one‐dimensional.

The impact of monetary policy on financial markets in small open economies: More or less effective during the global financial crisis?

This paper estimates the impact of monetary policy on exchange rates and stock prices of eight small open economies: Australia, Canada, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. On average across these countries in the full sample, a one percentage point surprise rise in official interest rates leads to a 1% appreciation of the exchange rate and a 0.5–1% fall in stock prices, with somewhat stronger effects in OECD countries than non-OECD countries (though differences are sometimes not significant). We find little robust evidence of a change in the effect of monetary policy surprises during the recent financial crisis.

Monetary Policy Surprises, Investment Opportunities, and Asset Prices

I propose an asset pricing model with the market return and a mimicking portfolio for monetary policy shocks measured on days of FOMC announcements. This economically motivated two-factor model prices portfolios formed on size, value, momentum, investment, and operating profitability with an R2 of 80% and an average annual pricing error of 0.96%-performing as well as the standard four- and five-factor models designed to price these assets. These results are consistent with intertemporal asset pricing theory and recent evidence that monetary policy shocks have a large impact on asset prices via an impact on expected future aggregate returns.

Can Monetary Policy Surprise the Market?

This paper extracts measures of monetary policy surprises for Australia, Canada and the United States using a latent factor framework. We distinguish monetary policy surprises which occur when central banks report new assessments of the economy (or do not reinforce changes expected by market assessments) from those when policy makers appear to change their preferences. Changing policy preferences are evident in all jurisdictions, particularly during periods of stress. No-change policy announcements have distinctly differing impacts across the three countries; in Canada these have the same impact as policy changes, in Australia they are not discernibly different to a normal trading day and the US market lies between these scenarios. The revealed differences in size and type of the policy surprise outcomes for these operationally similar central banks suggests that the role of transparency policy is more subtle than previously appreciated.

Evaluating asset-market effects of unconventional monetary policy: a multi-country review

This paper examines the effects of unconventional monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan on bond yields, stock prices and exchange rates. We use common methodologies for the four central banks, with daily and intradaily asset price data. We emphasize the use of intradaily data to identify the causal effect of monetary policy surprises. We find that these policies are effective in easing financial conditions when policy rates are stuck at the zero lower bound, apparently largely by reducing term premia. — John H. Rogers, Chiara Scotti and Jonathan H. Wright

The high-frequency response of energy prices to U.S. monetary policy: Understanding the empirical evidence

This paper examines the impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on energy prices using an event study with intraday data. Three measures for monetary policy surprises are used: 1) the surprise change to the current federal funds target rate, 2) the surprise component to the future path of policy, and 3) the unanticipated announcement of future large-scale asset purchases (LSAP). Estimation results show that monetary policy surprises have economically important and highly significant effects on the level and volatility of energy futures prices and their trading volumes. I find that, on average, a hypothetical unanticipated 100-basis-point hike in the federal funds target rate is associated with roughly a 3% decrease in West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices. I also document that, in a narrow window around the FOMC meeting, the Federal Reserve's LSAP1 and LSAP2 programs have a cumulative financial market impact on crude oil equivalent to an unanticipated cut in the federal funds target rate of 156 basis points.

Commodity Price Responses to Monetary Policy Surprises

AbstractInformation contained in high‐frequency financial market data reveals that a 10 basis‐point surprise increase in interest rates causes commodity prices to fall immediately by approximately 0.6%. This is similar to the estimated responses of both the Standard and Poor's 500 and a United States trade weighted exchange rate index, and approximately five times larger than the response in a standard vector autoregression, even twelve months after the shock. Metals prices tend to respond more than agricultural commodities. The point estimate for oil prices is similar to other commodities, but is estimated less precisely.

Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity

We provide evidence on the transmission of monetary policy shocks in a setting with both economic and financial variables. We first show that shocks identified using high frequency surprises around policy announcements as external instruments produce responses in output and inflation that are typical in monetary VAR analysis. We also find, however, that the resulting “modest” movements in short rates lead to “large” movements in credit costs, which are due mainly to the reaction of both term premia and credit spreads. Finally, we show that forward guidance is important to the overall strength of policy transmission. (JEL E31, E32, E43, E44, E52, G01)

Asset Markets and Monetary Policy Shocks at the Zero Lower Bound

This paper quantifies the impact of monetary policy shocks on asset markets in the United States and gauges the usefulness of a shadow short rate as a measure of conventional and unconventional monetary policy shocks. Monetary policy surprises are found to have had a larger impact on asset markets since short term interest rates reached the zero lower bound. Our results indicate that much of the increased reaction is due to changes in the transmission of shocks and only partly due to larger monetary policy surprises.

Asymmetric Effects of Fed Policy on Interest Rates

This paper estimates asymmetric effects of monetary policy actions on interest rates. I find that the response of interest rates to monetary policy surprises is large and highly significant in the low volatility state. In contrast, interest rates' response to monetary policy is insignificant in the high volatility periods during which the turbulence in the market hinders the ability of market participants to discern the monetary policy stance.

Monetary Policy and Real Borrowing Costs at the Zero Lower Bound

This paper compares the effects of conventional monetary policy on real borrowing costs with those of the unconventional measures employed after the target federal funds rate hit the zero lower bound (ZLB). For the ZLB period, we identify two policy surprises: changes in the two-year Treasury yield around policy announcements and changes in the ten-year Treasury yield that are orthogonal to those in the two-year yield. The efficacy of unconventional policy in lowering real borrowing costs is comparable to that of conventional policy, in that it implies a complete pass-through of policy-induced movements in Treasury yields to comparable-maturity private yields. (JEL E31, E43, E44, E52)

Evaluating Asset-Market Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policy: A Cross-Country Comparison

This paper examines the effects of unconventional monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan on bond yields, stock prices and exchange rates. We use common methodologies for the four central banks, with daily and intradaily asset price data. We emphasize the use of intradaily data to identify the causal effect of monetary policy surprises. We find that these policies are effective in easing financial conditions when policy rates are stuck at the zero lower bound, apparently largely by reducing term premia.