Exiting unconventional monetary policy


Book Description

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,0, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Economics), course: The Financial System, language: English, abstract: The paper analyzes the unconventional monetary policies that were implemented by the Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan during their post-crisis transitions. Next, potential challenges involved in the exit will be analyzed. During the financial crisis many central banks in the world implemented “unconventional monetary policy” measures, such as balance-sheet policies, forward guidance, and negative interest rates. Once the financial system stabilizes, the difficult process of returning back to conventional monetary policy begins. For this reason, this paper analyzes the unconventional monetary policies during post-crisis transitions and potential challenges involved in the exit. The analysis suggests that a transition from unconventional monetary policies should be accomplished smoothly, without exceeding inflation, harming economic recovery, or destabilizing financial markets. Furthermore, the analysis suggests to make use of forward guidance in order to prepare the market for the exit and to increase its potential speed. However, the optimal exiting policy depends largely on present and future economic conditions of the respective currency region. In order to analyze these conditions and determine the ideal exiting strategy for each central bank, further investigations need to be done.




Managing the Exit


Book Description

In responding to the global crisis, central banks in several advanced economies ventured beyond traditional monetary policy. A variety of unorthodox measures, including purchases of public and private assets, have significantly enlarged their balance sheets. As recoveries take hold, focus will increasingly shift from countering the Great Recession to orchestrating an exit and returning to a more normal monetary framework. Five years ago, as its economy recovered from a severe financial crisis, Japan attempted just such an exit. This note revisits the Bank of Japan’s experience and draws potential lessons for managing an orderly exit today, with a focus on technical aspects, practicalities, and communication strategies. While the nature of the assets acquired during the present crisis could pose additional complications, parts of Japan’s arsenal—communication, flexibility, a sufficient set of policy tools and a strategy for using them, safeguards against potential losses, the revival of risk appetite through decisive restructuring of balance sheets, and refinements to the monetary framework upon exit—also could be important this time around.




Looking Forward


Book Description




Global Impact and Challenges of Unconventional Monetary Policies


Book Description

This paper takes stock of unconventional monetary policies (UMP) and their impact so far, and looks ahead towards exit and prospects for policy coordination. It synthesizes earlier staff work on UMP,1 the findings of a substantial and growing academic and central banking literature, as well as further staff analysis contained in the Background Paper. While some widely accepted conclusions have emerged from the large and growing number of studies on UMP, many important questions remain unsettled, as enough time has not elapsed to draw definitive conclusions. In those cases, the paper will pose the relevant questions and provide possible nswers, while recognizing the uncertainty that remains.




Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve


Book Description

The "Great Recession" and the ensuing weak recovery have led the Federal Reserve (Fed) to re-evaluate its monetary policy. Since December 2008, overnight interest rates have been near zero; at this "zero bound," they cannot be lowered further to stimulate the economy. As a result, the Fed has taken unprecedented policy steps to try to fulfil its statutory mandate of maximum employment and price stability. Congress has oversight responsibilities for ensuring that the Fed's actions are consistent with its mandate. This book analyses the economic effects of these programs, the current economic context in which these policies have been adopted, policy alternatives that the Fed has not pursued to date and their potential effects, potential legislative options for restricting the Fed's pursuit of unconventional monetary policy, and issues surrounding the eventual "exit strategy" from unconventional policy.




Monetary Policy in an Uncertain World


Book Description

Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis we are again facing the possibility of economic turmoil as the Fed and other central banks exit their unconventional monetary policies by raising interest rates and shrinking their balance sheets. This book brings together leading scholars and former policymakers to draw lessons from the decade of unconventional monetary policies relied upon to stimulate the global economy in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The articles included in this book combine historical perspectives and forward-looking views of the Fed’s exit strategy and monetary normalization, along with the arguments for a rules-based monetary policy both at the domestic and international levels.




Unconventional Monetary Policy and Long-Term Interest Rates


Book Description

This paper examines the transmission mechanism through which unconventional monetary policy affects long-term interest rates. I construct a real-time measure summarizing market projections of the magnitude and duration of the Federal Reserve's Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP) program, and analyze the determination of term premiums and expectations of future short-term interest rates in a sample spanning more than two decades. Empirical findings suggest that the LSAP has effectively lowered the long-term Treasury bond yields, through both "signaling" and "portfolio balance" channels. On the other hand, the Fed's "forward guidance" also leads to gradual extension of market projections for the duration of the LSAP program, thereby enhancing the LSAP's effect to keep term premiums low. Estimation results also reveal a diminished effectiveness of the LSAP during QE III. Finally, model simulations underscore the importance of policy transparency in minimizing unnecessary market turbulence and ensuring a timely and smooth exit of the unconventional monetary policy stimulus.







Unconventional Monetary Policies - Recent Experiences and Prospects - Background Paper


Book Description

This paper provides background information to the main Board paper, “The Role and Limits of Unconventional Monetary Policy.” This paper is divided in five distinct sections, each focused on a different topic covered in the main paper, though most relate to bond purchase programs. As a result, this paper centers on the experience of the United States Federal Reserve (Fed), the Bank of England (BOE) and the Bank of Japan (BOJ), mostly leaving the European Central Bank (ECB) aside given its focus on restoring the functioning of financial markets and intermediation. Section A explores whether bond purchase programs were effective at decreasing bond yields and, if so, through which channels. Section B goes one step further in evaluating whether bond purchase programs had—or can be expected to have—significant effects on real growth and inflation. Section C studies the spillover effects of bond purchases on both advanced and emerging market economies, using very similar methods as introduced in the first section. Section D breaks from the immediate focus on bond purchases to discuss how inflation might decrease the debt burden in advanced economies, in light of possible pressures that could fall (or be perceived to fall) on central banks. Finally, Section E discusses the possible risks of exiting given the very large central bank balance sheets.




Financial Crises, Unconventional Monetary Policy Exit Strategies, and Agents' Expectations


Book Description

This paper considers a model with financial frictions and studies the role of expectations and unconventional monetary policy response to financial crises. During a financial crisis, the financial sector has reduced ability to provide credit to productive firms, and the central bank may help lessen the magnitude of the downturn by using unconventional monetary policy to inject liquidity into credit markets. The model allows parameters to change according to a Markov process, which gives agents in the economy expectations about the probability of the central bank intervening in response to a crisis, as well as expectations about the central bank's exit strategy post-crisis. Using this Markov regime switching.