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Monetary policy, output composition and the Great Moderation

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  • Benoit Mojon

Abstract

This paper shows how US monetary policy contributed to the drop in the volatility of US output fluctuations and to the decoupling of household investment from the business cycle. I estimate a model of household investment, an aggregate of non durable consumption and corporate sector investment, inflation and a short-term interest rate. Subsets of the models' parameters can vary along independent Markov Switching processes. ; A specific form of switches in the monetary policy regimes, i.e. changes in the size of monetary policy shocks, affect both the correlation between output components and their volatility. A regime of high volatility in monetary policy shocks, that spanned from 1970 to 1975 and from 1979 to 1984 is characterized by large monetary policy shocks contributions to GDP components and by a high correlation of household investment to the business cycle. This contrasts with the 1960's, the 1976 to 1979 period and the post 1984 era where monetary policy shocks have little impact on the fluctuations of real output.

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  • Benoit Mojon, 2007. "Monetary policy, output composition and the Great Moderation," Working Paper Series WP-07-07, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-07-07
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    1. Matteo Luciani, 2015. "Monetary Policy and the Housing Market: A Structural Factor Analysis," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 199-218, March.
    2. Luca Benati & Paolo Surico, 2009. "VAR Analysis and the Great Moderation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1636-1652, September.
    3. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2008. "Explaining The Great Moderation: It Is Not The Shocks," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 621-633, 04-05.
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    5. Castelnuovo, Efrem & Greco, Luciano & Raggi, Davide, 2008. "Estimating regime-switching Taylor rules with trend inflation," Research Discussion Papers 20/2008, Bank of Finland.
    6. Marek Jarocinski & Frank Smets, 2008. "House prices and the stance of monetary policy," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 90(Jul), pages 339-366.
    7. Ismail Genc & Abdullah Jubain & Abdullah Al-Mutairi, 2010. "Economic versus financial integration or decoupling between the US and the GCC," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(20), pages 1577-1583.
    8. Frank Smets, 2007. "Housing is the business cycle: commentary," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 235-243.
    9. Miles, William & Zhu, Xiaoyang, 2023. "Housing and the changing impact of monetary policy," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 587-603.
    10. Castelnuovo, Efrem & Greco, Luciano & Raggi, Davide, 2008. "Estimating regime-switching Taylor rules with trend inflation," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 20/2008, Bank of Finland.

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    Keywords

    Monetary policy; Gross domestic product; Business cycles;
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