IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jmacro/v58y2018icp39-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal monetary policy for a pessimistic central bank

Author

Listed:
  • Vitale, Paolo

Abstract

We consider the impact of pessimism on monetary policy within a model with backward-looking expectations and persistence in the dynamics of output and inflation. Pessimistic monetary authorities behave as if they believed that the worst economic conditions were very likely and move the policy instrument to hedge against their negative consequences. With respect to their risk-neutral counterparts, they apply a more aggressive Taylor rule, reducing the inflation rate volatility. The impact of pessimism on monetary policy is magnified by economic uncertainty. A calibration exercise for the U.S. economy confirms the relevance of pessimism as it shows that pessimistic monetary authorities react to a one-standard-deviation supply shock moving the policy instrument by about one percent more than their risk-neutral counterparts. Our conclusions also hold when the monetary authorities observe inflation and output with a time lag.

Suggested Citation

  • Vitale, Paolo, 2018. "Optimal monetary policy for a pessimistic central bank," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 39-59.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:58:y:2018:i:c:p:39-59
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2018.08.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164070417304731
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jmacro.2018.08.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Julio J. Rotemberg & Michael Woodford, 1999. "Interest Rate Rules in an Estimated Sticky Price Model," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 57-126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Dennis, Richard & Leitemo, Kai & Söderström, Ulf, 2009. "Methods for robust control," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1604-1616, August.
    3. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    4. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    5. Bekaert, Geert & Hoerova, Marie & Lo Duca, Marco, 2013. "Risk, uncertainty and monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 771-788.
    6. Marc P. Giannoni, 2007. "Robust optimal monetary policy in a forward-looking model with parameter and shock uncertainty," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 179-213.
    7. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Robust Permanent Income and Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 3, pages 33-81, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Laurence Ball, 1999. "Efficient Rules for Monetary Policy," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 63-83, April.
    9. Kimball, Miles S, 1990. "Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 53-73, January.
    10. TallariniJr., Thomas D., 2000. "Risk-sensitive real business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 507-532, June.
    11. Glenn Rudebusch & Lars E.O. Svensson, 1999. "Policy Rules for Inflation Targeting," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 203-262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Giordani, Paolo & Soderlind, Paul, 2004. "Solution of macromodels with Hansen-Sargent robust policies: some extensions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 2367-2397, December.
    13. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 263-286, April.
    14. Nestor Gandelman & Ruben Hernandez-Murillo, 2015. "Risk Aversion at the Country Level," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 97(1), pages 53-66.
    15. Onatski, Alexei & Stock, James H., 2002. "Robust Monetary Policy Under Model Uncertainty In A Small Model Of The U.S. Economy," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 85-110, February.
    16. Vitale, Paolo, 2012. "Risk-averse insider trading in multi-asset sequential auction markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 673-675.
    17. Laurence M. Ball, 1999. "Policy Rules for Open Economies," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 127-156, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Alexei Onatski & Noah Williams, 2003. "Modeling Model Uncertainty," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1087-1122, September.
    19. van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2009. "Prudent monetary policy and prediction of the output gap," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 217-230, June.
    20. Antoine Bommier & Stéphane Zuber, 2008. "Can preferences for catastrophe avoidance reconcile social discounting with intergenerational equity?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(3), pages 415-434, October.
    21. Woodford Michael, 2002. "Inflation Stabilization and Welfare," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-53, February.
    22. Paolo Vitale, 2017. "Pessimistic Optimal Choice for Risk-Averse Agents: The Continuous-Time Limit," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 49(1), pages 17-65, January.
    23. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1, March.
    24. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J. Sargent, 2013. "Recursive Models of Dynamic Linear Economies," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10141.
    25. Holden, Craig W. & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1994. "Risk aversion, imperfect competition, and long-lived information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 181-190.
    26. Kreps, David M & Porteus, Evan L, 1978. "Temporal Resolution of Uncertainty and Dynamic Choice Theory," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 185-200, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2009. "Prudent monetary policy and prediction of the output gap," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 217-230, June.
    2. van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2004. "Prudent Monetary Policy: Applications of Cautious LQG Control and Prediction," CEPR Discussion Papers 4222, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Frederick van der Ploeg, 2007. "Prudent Monetary Policy and Cautious Prediction of the Output Gap," Economics Working Papers ECO2007/40, European University Institute.
    4. Michael Paetz, 2007. "Robust Control and Persistence in the New Keynesian Economy," Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers 20711, Hamburg University, Department of Economics.
    5. Paolo Vitale, 2017. "Pessimistic Optimal Choice for Risk-Averse Agents: The Continuous-Time Limit," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 49(1), pages 17-65, January.
    6. Sack, Brian & Wieland, Volker, 2000. "Interest-rate smoothing and optimal monetary policy: a review of recent empirical evidence," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 205-228.
    7. Richard Dennis, 2007. "Model uncertainty and monetary policy," Working Paper Series 2007-09, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    8. Andrew T. Levin & Alexei Onatski & John Williams & Noah M. Williams, 2006. "Monetary Policy under Uncertainty in Micro-Founded Macroeconometric Models," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005, Volume 20, pages 229-312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Marc Giannoni, 2006. "Robust Optimal Policy in a Forward-Looking Model with Parameter and Shock Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 11942, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Mariusz Górajski & Zbigniew Kuchta, 2022. "Which hallmarks of optimal monetary policy rules matter in Poland? A stochastic dominance approach," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 53(2), pages 149-182.
    11. Dennis, Richard, 2010. "How robustness can lower the cost of discretion," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 653-667, September.
    12. Gnabo, Jean-Yves & Moccero, Diego Nicolas, 2015. "Risk management, nonlinearity and aggressiveness in monetary policy: The case of the US Fed," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 281-294.
    13. Taylor, John B, 2000. "Alternative Views of the Monetary Transmission Mechanism: What Difference Do They Make for Monetary Policy?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 16(4), pages 60-73, Winter.
    14. A. Hakan Kara, 2004. "Optimal Monetary Policy, Commitment, and Imperfect Credibility," Central Bank Review, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, vol. 4(1), pages 31-66.
    15. Edilio Valentini & Paolo Vitale, 2022. "A Dynamic Oligopoly with Price Stickiness and Risk-Averse Agents," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 8(3), pages 697-718, November.
    16. Bennett T. McCallum & Edward Nelson, 2004. "Timeless perspective vs. discretionary monetary policy in forward-looking models," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 86(Mar), pages 43-56.
    17. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2002. "Assessing Nominal Income Rules for Monetary Policy with Model and Data Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 402-432, April.
    18. Kurz, Mordecai & Jin, Hehui & Motolese, Maurizio, 2005. "The role of expectations in economic fluctuations and the efficacy of monetary policy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 2017-2065, November.
    19. Mash, Richard, 2002. "New Keynesian Microfoundations Revisited: A Generalised Calvo-Taylor Model and the Desirability of Inflation vs. Price Level Targeting," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2002 138, Royal Economic Society.
    20. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy; Pessimism; Discounted linear exponential quadratic Gaussian;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:58:y:2018:i:c:p:39-59. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622617 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.