Reserve Bank Of Australia Research Articles

The information content of the Reserve Bank of Australia's inflation forecasts

In this article, the inflation forecasts produced by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and that generated by private forecasters, are used to assess whether the Reserve Bank possesses information about inflation that the private sector does not have. The results show that the Reserve Bank inflation forecasts embody useful predictive information about inflation, beyond that contained in private forecasts, over the recent inflation targeting period.

Currency Demand During the Global Financial Crisis: Evidence from Australia

Australian financial institutions remained healthy throughout the global financial crisis and their deposits were guaranteed by the Federal Government. Nevertheless, demand for currency increased abnormally quickly in late 2008, resulting in an additional $5 billion (or 12 per cent) of Australian banknotes on issue by the end of that year. The rise in currency demand began in mid October 2008, around four weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and concurrently with policy responses of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Federal Government. The surge in currency demand did not have any destabilizing effect on the banking system – indeed bank deposits also rose during the period. However, the rise in currency demand did raise some issues for the RBA's banknote distribution operations. Traditional methods of currency demand suggest a role for interest rate reductions and the Federal Government stimulus payments to households in explaining the increase in currency holdings. We estimate that these factors can only account for around 20 per cent of the observed increase in currency holdings. The remainder of the rise could be due to an increase in precautionary holdings by people concerned about the liquidity or solvency of financial institutions and by financial institutions as a contingency. This is consistent with the disproportionate rise in demand for high-denomination banknotes at this time.

Does the interest rate for business loans respond asymmetrically to changes in the cash rate?

This article examines the dynamic relationship between the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA's) cash rate and the variable interest rate for lending to small businesses. The relationship is evaluated via an asymmetric GARCH model using monthly data spanning from August 1990 to October 2012. Our results show that a 1 percentage point increase in the cash rate results in an instantaneous 1.086 percentage point rise in the variable rate for small businesses, whereas an equivalent 1 percentage point cut only leads to a 0.862 percentage point fall with a delay of up to 2 months. This outcome has obvious implications for the RBA's monetary policy transmission mechanism and the effectiveness of the expansionary policy versus contractionary policy.

The australian banking sector reforms: Progress and challenges

This paper gives an overview of the Australian banking sector; it highlights the reforms since the 1970s; it tracks the growth of the banking sector in response to the reforms implemented over the past five decades; and finally, it highlights the challenges facing the Australian banking sector. The country’s banking sector consists of more than 60 commercial banks, with the Reserve Bank of Australia, the country’s central bank, at the apex. Since the 1980s, the Australian government has implemented a number of banking sector reforms in order to safeguard and improve the banking sector. The response to these reforms by the banking sector has been varied. As a result of these reforms, there has been an increase in the number of banks and a decrease in the number of building societies and credit unions. There has also been an improvement in the central bank’s oversight of the financial institutions, and an enforcement of the banks’ capital-adequacy requirements. Currently, Australia has one of the most developed banking systems in the world. The country has enjoyed a substantial bank-based financial sector development over the years, and its institutional framework has also grown stronger. However, like any other country’s financial system, the Australian banking system still faces wide-ranging challenges, such as bank concentration and exposure.

The Treasury–Reserve Bank ATM Taskforce Report: Would it Pass a Cost–Benefit Analysis?

In December 2010 the Commonwealth Government announced that the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Treasury would establish a joint 'ATM Taskforce' to analyse reforms to Australia's ATM market in 2009 which aimed to improve the competition and efficiency of the market by removing interchange fees on ATM transactions, replacing them with direct charges, while at the same time improving the information given to consumers about the costs of transactions at 'foreign' ATMs.

Interest Rate Pass‐Through and the Asymmetric Relationship between the Cash Rate and the Mortgage Rate*

There is an ongoing controversy over whether banks’ mortgage rates rise more rapidly than they fall due to their asymmetric responses to changes in the cash rate. This paper examines the dynamic interplay between the cash rate and the standard‐variable mortgage rate using monthly data in the post‐1989 era. Unlike previous Australian studies, our proposed threshold and asymmetric error‐correction models account for both the amount and adjustment asymmetries. We found that the Reserve Bank of Australia’s rate rises have a much larger and more instantaneous impact on the mortgage rate than rate cuts.

RBA monetary policy communication: The response of Australian interest rate futures to changes in RBA monetary policy

This paper examines the Australian interest rate futures market reaction to changes in Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) monetary policy. Having determined market expectations from 30-day Interbank futures, the study finds evidence that interest rate futures react strongly to target rate announcements across the maturity spectrum, with a stronger reaction evident in short maturity futures. Further, there is evidence of an asymmetric news effect whereby volatility reacts more strongly to bad news. Disaggregation of the market reaction into target- and path-surprise factors demonstrates that the change in market expectations of future target rates plays a significant role in explaining changes in yield, particularly for bond futures. There is strong evidence that monetary policy statements drive the path-factor, while the December 2007 modification in policy communication has improved the ability of the RBA to influence market expectations.

30-Day Interbank futures: Investigating the process of price discovery following RBA cash target rate announcements

The article examines microstructure issues in the Australian Interbank futures market by analyzing the price adjustment process following scheduled cash target rate announcements by the Reserve Bank of Australia. In characterizing the market response, three distinct stages of price formation and liquidity provision are identified. Market expectations around the RBA decision are derived explicitly from 30-Day Interbank futures. The first trade following the RBA decision occurs after 220s on average, and after 234s (1.73 trades) the market has adjusted to the theoretical settlement price. Deviations from theoretical prices post-announcement are common, particularly when a large amount of uncertainty exists around the RBA decision. The potentially costly issue of stale price quotes is also addressed.

Loan and nonloan flows in the Australian interbank network

High-value transactions between banks in Australia are settled in the Reserve Bank Information and Transfer System (RITS) administered by the Reserve Bank of Australia. RITS operates on a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) basis and settles payments and transfers sourced from the SWIFT payment delivery system, the Austraclear securities settlement system, and the interbank transactions entered directly into RITS. In this paper, we analyse a dataset received from the Reserve Bank of Australia that includes all interbank transactions settled in RITS on an RTGS basis during five consecutive weekdays from 19 February 2007 inclusive, a week of relatively quiescent market conditions. The source, destination, and value of each transaction are known, which allows us to separate overnight loans from other transactions (nonloans) and reconstruct monetary flows between banks for every day in our sample. We conduct a novel analysis of the flow stability and examine the connection between loan and nonloan flows. Our aim is to understand the underlying causal mechanism connecting loan and nonloan flows. We find that the imbalances in the banks’ exchange settlement funds resulting from the daily flows of nonloan transactions are almost exactly counterbalanced by the flows of overnight loans. The correlation coefficient between loan and nonloan imbalances is about −0.9 on most days. Some flows that persist over two consecutive days can be highly variable, but overall the flows are moderately stable in value. The nonloan network is characterised by a large fraction of persistent flows, whereas only half of the flows persist over any two consecutive days in the loan network. Moreover, we observe an unusual degree of coherence between persistent loan flow values on Tuesday and Wednesday. We probe static topological properties of the Australian interbank network and find them consistent with those observed in other countries.

Estimates of Uncertainty Around the RBA's Forecasts

We use past forecast errors to construct confidence intervals and other estimates of uncertainty around the Reserve Bank of Australia’s forecasts of key macroeconomic variables. Our estimates suggest that uncertainty about forecasts is high. We find that the RBA’s forecasts have substantial explanatory power for the inflation rate but not for GDP growth.

30-Day Interbank Futures: Investigating the Process of Price Discovery Following RBA Cash Target Rate Announcements

The article examines microstructure issues in the Australian Interbank futures market by analyzing the price adjustment process following scheduled Cash Target Rate announcements by the Reserve Bank of Australia. In characterizing the market response, three distinct stages of price formation and liquidity provision are identified. Market expectations around the RBA decision are derived explicitly from 30-Day Interbank futures. The first trade following the RBA decision occurs after 220 seconds on average, and after 234 seconds and 1.73 trades the market has adjusted to the theoretical settlement price. Deviations from theoretical prices post-announcement are common, particularly when a large amount of uncertainty exists around the RBA decision. The potentially costly issue of stale price quotes is addressed. Acknowledgement: Data in this article is provided by SIRCA.

What do the RBA’s Forecasts Imply about its Preferences over Inflation and Output Volatility?*

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has recently commenced publishing its forecasts of inflation and output growth in their quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy. As the RBA can potentially influence future outcomes for inflation and output through its choice of cash rate target, we examine whether the RBA's forecasts reveal useful information about its tradeoff between inflation and output volatility. Our results suggest that the RBA targets a linear combination of deviations of inflation around target and output growth around potential growth - where the weight given to output growth deviations is about one-third that given to inflation deviations. If we interpret this weight as the ratio of a central bank's (relative) preference for output volatility and the slope parameter of the Phillips Curve; for typical values of the latter parameter we find the RBA - while not a strict inflation targeter - gives significantly less weight to minimising deviations in the output gap, than it does to minimising deviations of inflation around target.

Sterilised Interventions within a Heterogeneous Expectation Exchange Rate Model: Evidence from the Reserve Bank of Australia

In this article, we study the effectiveness of central bank intervention within a heterogeneous expectation exchange rate model for the Reserve Bank of Australia. The empirical evidence is gathered by applying a Markov-switching approach to daily A$/US$ exchange data from December 1983 to April 2008. Our results support both chartist and fundamentalist regimes. It is shown that the two regimes are persistent and that the fundamentalist regime is riskier. Moreover, interventions when the chartist regime prevails increase the proportion of fundamentalists and thus exert a stabilising effect on the foreign exchange market.

Impact of the regulatory regime on promoting the housing finance market in Australia

The purpose of this article is to analyse how Australia's regulatory framework for housing finance mitigates various risks in mortgage lending and promotes positive market outcomes and system stability. The article first considers the main bodies involved in the regulation of residential mortgages, their roles and the type of regulations enforced by each regulator in relation to housing finance in Australia. The key regulators identified in this article include the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. This part focuses on the post-financial crisis regulatory changes in housing finance, including revisions to existing regulations and introduction of new regulations. The article then discusses the implications of regulation for mortgage markets and players, practices and conduct. This section reviews mortgage lending practices in Australia that can be viewed as either particularly prudent or particularly risky. Finally, the article analyses the impact of regulation on promoting positive market outcomes, including housing finance system stability in Australia.

On the Nonlinear Influence of Reserve Bank of Australia Interventions on Exchange Rates*

This article applies nonlinear econometric models to empirically investigate the effectiveness of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) exchange rate policy. First, results from a STARTZ model are provided revealing nonlinear mean reversion of the Australian dollar exchange rate. Second, a STR-GARCH model suggests that RBA interventions account for this result by strengthening foreign exchange traders’ confidence in fundamental analysis. This is in line with the so-called coordination channel of intervention effectiveness.

Probabilistic Interest Rate Setting with a Shadow Board: A Description of the Pilot Project

This study aims to assess the scope for monetary policymakers to aggregate probabilistic interest rate advice. The members of a Shadow Board give probabilistic assessments of the appropriate (target) interest rate for Australia in real time. The pilot project will be running in August, September and October 2011, with the Shadow Board giving advice shortly before each decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Board.

Intraday timing of AUD intervention by the Reserve Bank of Australia: Evidence from microstructural analyses

We estimate the approximate intraday timing of interventions by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in the onshore and offshore USD/AUD markets for the period of 1996–2006. We use a more accurate measure of intervention that excludes transactions with the government as well as high frequency tick-by-tick quote data on the USD/AUD exchange rate. The RBA's interventions are detected in the late Sydney onshore period, early European market, and again in the early New York market hours. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the RBA chooses those hours of higher volume, lower volatility and lower bid/ask spreads to conduct its non-intervention transactions. These results have important implications not only for institutions and corporations with a need to transact in the market, but also for hedge funds and other traders that may profit by trading against the RBA.

Structure and Distribution of Household Wealth in Australia: Cohort Differences and Retirement Issues

Structure and Distribution of Household Wealth in Australia: Cohort Differences and Retirement Issues

A New Keynesian SVAR model of the Australian economy

We estimate an SVAR model for the Australian economy based on an open economy New Keynesian model that accounts for the forward-looking behaviour exhibited by economic agents. Deep structural parameters are identified by placing exclusion restrictions on the VAR residuals and the covariance matrix. Dynamic responses show no price and exchange rate puzzles and indicate that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stabilises output fluctuations in the short run while maintaining a medium-run inflation target since 1984. Aggregate demand shocks are found to be driven by external demands. The RBA exercises caution in responding to aggregate supply shocks.

On the Nonlinear Influence of Reserve Bank of Australia Interventions on Exchange Rates

This paper applies nonlinear econometric models to empirically investigate the effectiveness of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) exchange rate policy. First, results from a STARTZ model are provided revealing nonlinear mean reversion of the Australian dollar exchange rate in the sense that mean reversion increases with the degree of exchange rate misalignment. Second, a STR-GARCH model suggests that RBA interventions account for this result by strengthening foreign exchange traders' confidence in fundamental analysis. This in line with the so-called coordination channel of intervention effectiveness.