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The aim of this thesis is to analyze the impact of globalization on the dynamics of inflation and monetary policy in a globalized world. It consists of three essays.In the first essay we investigate the impact of financial globalization on the behaviour of inflation targeting emerging market economies with respect to exchange rate - Do central banks respond to exchange rate movements or not? We use quarterly data for six emerging market inflation targeting economies from the date of their inflation targeting adoption to 2009 Q4. The chapter uses small open economy new Keynesian model à la Gali and Monacelli (2005), and employs multi-equation GMM technique to investigate the relationship. We find that the response of central bank to the exchange rate in case of Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Thailand is statistically significant while insignificant for Korea and Czech Republic. Theoretically, it should not be so as even under flexible inflation targeting central bank responds to inflation deviation and output gap; we think that the peculiar characteristics of emerging markets, like fear of floating, weak financial system and low level of central bank credibility make exchange rate important for these economies. In the second essay we investigate empirically the relative importance of monetary transmission channels for Brazil, Chile and Korea. This chapter uses monthly data from the inception of inflation targeting regime to 2009 M12. We use a SVAR model incorporating the main monetary transmission channels combined together instead of individual channels in isolation. The empirical results indicate that the exchange rate channel and the share price channel have higher relative importance than the traditional interest rate and credit channel for industrial production. The results are not much different in case of inflation, except for Korea. The high ranking of exchange rate and share price channel is in line with the results by Gudmundsson (2007), which finds that exchange rate channel might have overburdened in the wake of financial globalization.In the third chapter we investigate empirically the role of openness - real and financial - on the inflation dynamics of Brazil, Chile and Korea. The chapter uses monthly data from the inception of inflation targeting regime to the end month of 2009. In this chapter we employ the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique. We use imports to GDP ratio as an indicator for real openness whereas Chinn and Ito index (KAOPEN) and total assets plus total liabilities to GDP ratio form the data set of Lane and Milesi-Ferretti are two proxies for financial openness. The chapter concludes that there exists, generally, a positive relationship between real openness and inflation. However, in case of financial globalization the results are inconclusive as they are sensitive to measurement method of financial globalization.
There has been a growing trend to utilize nonlinear models to analyze key issues in monetary policy and international macroeconomics. Using traditional linear models to understand nonlinear relationships can often lead to inaccurate inference and erroneous policy recommendations. The three essays in this dissertation explore nonlinearity in the Federal Reserve’s policy response as well as between a country’s inflation dynamics and integration in the global economy. My aim in accounting for potential nonlinearity is to get a better understanding of the policy makers’ opportunistic approach to monetary policy and evaluate the inflation globalization hypothesis, which basically predicts that global factors will eventually replace the domestic determinants of inflation. In the first essay I develop abroad nonlinear Taylor rule framework, in conjunction with real time data, to examine the Fed’s policy response during the Great Moderation. My flexible framework is also able to convincingly show that the Fed departed from the Taylor rule during key periods in the Great Moderation as well as in the recent financial crisis. The second essay uses a threshold methodology to investigate the importance of nonlinear effects in the analysis of the inflation globalization hypothesis. Finally the third essay investigates the relationship between inflation and globalization, under an open-economy Phillips Curve framework, for a panel of OECD countries with a dynamic panel GMM methodology. Contrary to most of the previous literature, which ignores such nonlinearities, my new approach provides some interesting empirical evidence supportive of the effect globalization has on a country’s inflation dynamics.
Abstract: This dissertation is comprised of three essays in monetary and international macroeconomics. The first essay, titled "A Dynamic Model of Exogenous Exchange Rate Pass-Through", examines a two-country open economy model with sticky prices where exporters' choice of invoicing currency is endogenous. Besides generating incomplete pass-through, the model yields three main results. First, firms' invoicing strategy is generally time-varying. Second, average pass-through is asymmetric in times of persistent depreciation and appreciation. Finally, cross-country differences in money supply variability produce an origin-based asymmetry: different average pass-through rates into import and export prices. The second essay, titled "Limited Commitment, Inaction and Optimal Monetary Policy", examines the optimal frequency of monetary policy meetings when their schedule is pre-announced. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we show that in the standard New Keynesian framework infrequent but periodic revision of monetary policy may be desirable even when there are no explicit costs of policy adjustment. Second, we solve for the optimal frequency of policy adjustment and characterize its determinants. When applied to the U.S. economy, our analysis suggests that the Federal Open Market Committee should revise the federal funds target rate no more than twice a year. Finally, the third essay, titled "Does the Federal Reserve Do What It Says It Expects to Do?", studies the behavior of the Federal Open Market Committee in setting the federal funds target rate and making a bias announcement. The current bias concerning the next interest rate decision should be the optimal forecast based on the committee's interest rate policy rule. Therefore, the interest rate implied by the estimated policy should be consistent not only with the observed rate, but also with the observed bias announcement. We jointly estimate interest rate and bias announcement decision rules and find strong consistency between the two decisions in their response to inflation. However, the response to measures of economic activity is found inconsistent.
Max Fry was known internationally for his research on international and domestic financial issues. This book draws together contributions from a range of academic and policy-making friends and colleagues.
This thesis investigates monetary policy within the New Keynesian framework in dynamic macroeconomics. It includes three original research papers. The first paper examines the rules and transmission mechanisms of monetary policy in one of the fast growing economies in the 21st century, China, by extending a standard New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with financial frictions and investment-specific shocks in order to capture some of the Chinese characteristics and applying a Bayesian estimation strategy to real-time data. It offers a new way of empirically examining the rule of China's monetary policy and indicates a structural break of the neutral technology development that may have caused the slowing down of GDP growth since 2010. The second paper revisits optimal monetary policy in open economies, in particular, focusing on the noncooperative policy game under local currency pricing in a theoretical two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Quadratic loss functions of noncooperative policy makers and welfare gains from cooperation are obtained in the paper. The results show that noncooperative policy makers face extra trade-offs regarding stabilizing the real marginal costs induced by deviations from the law of one price under local currency pricing. As a result of the increased number of stabilizing objectives, welfare gains from cooperation emerge even when two countries face only technology shocks, which usually leads to equivalence between cooperation and noncooperation. Still, gains from cooperation are not large, implying that frictions other than nominal rigidities are necessary to strongly recommend cooperation as an important policy framework to increase global welfare. The third paper focuses on the noncooperative policy game specified by choice of policy instrument for implementing optimal monetary policy in a two-country open economy model similar to the one in the second paper. It examines four options of policy instruments including the producer price index inflation rate, the consumer price index inflation rate, the import price inflation rate and the nominal interest rate. It shows that choosing different policy instruments generally leads to different equilibria and, in particular, choosing the nominal interest rate results in equilibrium indeterminacy. In addition, the welfare ranking of these policy instruments depends on a country's degree of openness which is measured as the weight assigned to imported goods in the consumers' utility function. In less open countries, domestically produced goods carry a relatively higher weight in the consumers' utility function. For these less open countries, choosing the producer price index inflation rate induces a larger welfare cost from noncooperation than choosing the consumer price index inflation rate would. Choosing the consumer price index inflation rate in turn causes a larger welfare cost than choosing the import price inflation rate. Conversely, the reverse is true when countries are more open. This result sheds light on the important role that policy instrument choice plays in determining the equilibrium outcomes, to which policy makers should pay special attention when implementing optimal monetary policy under noncooperation.