IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ses/arsjes/1997-iii-9.html

What Monetary Authorities do - an Examination of Reaction Functions for Germany, Japan, the UK and the US

Author

Listed:
  • Jagjit S. Chadha
  • Norbert G. J. Janssen

Abstract

Following the end of the Bretton Woods system, national monetary authorities adopted various forms of feedback rule for monetary policy. This paper investigates the role of discretion in following stated rules. We motivate a simple reaction function for monetary authorities' official interest rates which may operate regardless of the stated policy. The reaction function is tested for Germany, Japan, the UK and the US with quarterly cyclical data since 1971. We find reasonable evidence to suggest that it is possible to characterise official rates as reacting to a similar set of cyclical variables, across countries and through time, irrespective of the declared policy rule. The differences in relative weights attached to feedback variables do not seem to be explained by stated policy rules.

Suggested Citation

  • Jagjit S. Chadha & Norbert G. J. Janssen, 1997. "What Monetary Authorities do - an Examination of Reaction Functions for Germany, Japan, the UK and the US," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 133(III), pages 455-476, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:ses:arsjes:1997-iii-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sjes.ch/papers/1997-III-9.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard H. Clarida & Mark Gertler, 1997. "How the Bundesbank Conducts Monetary Policy," NBER Chapters, in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 363-412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Bennett T. McCallum, 1989. "Targets, Indicators, and Instruments of Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 3047, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Eric M. Leeper & Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 1996. "What Does Monetary Policy Do?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 27(2), pages 1-78.
    4. King, Mervyn, 1995. "Credibility and Monetary Policy: Theory and Evidence," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 42(1), pages 1-19, February.
    5. Bennett T. McCallum, 2005. "Monetary policy and the term structure of interest rates," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 91(Fall), pages 1-21.
    6. Bernanke, Ben S. & Mihov, Ilian, 1997. "What does the Bundesbank target?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1025-1053, June.
    7. Fischer, Stanley, 1990. "Rules versus discretion in monetary policy," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 21, pages 1155-1184, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Cobham & Yue Kang, 2013. "Time Horizons and Smoothing in the Bank of England's Reaction Function: The Contrast Between the Standard GMM and Ex Ante Forecast Approaches," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(5), pages 662-679, October.

    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. Favero, Carlo A. & Giavazzi, Francesco & Iacone, Fabrizio & Guido Tabellini, 2000. "Extracting information from asset prices: The methodology of EMU calculators," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(9), pages 1607-1632, October.
    2. Etsuro Shioji, 1997. "Spanish monetary policy: A structural VAR analysis," Economics Working Papers 215, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Giuseppe De Arcangelis & Giorgio Di Giorgio, 1999. "Monetary policy shocks and transmission in Italy: A VAR analysis," Economics Working Papers 446, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    4. Jennes Barbara, 2001. "Ein alternativer Indikator der deutschen Geldpolitik. Untersuchung im Rahmen eines strukturellen VAR-Modells / An Improved Indicator of German Monetary Policy A Structural VAR Analysis," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 221(4), pages 371-393, August.
    5. Martin T. Bohl & Pierre L. Siklos, 2004. "The Bundesbank's Inflation Policy and Asymmetric Behavior of the German Term Structure," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(3), pages 495-508, August.
    6. Etsuro Shioji & José García-Montalvo, 1997. "Monetary policy transmission in the EMS: A VAR approach," Working Papers. Serie EC 1997-11, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    7. Shioji, Etsuro, 2000. "Identifying Monetary Policy Shocks in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 22-42, March.
    8. Emmanuel Carré, 2014. "The origins of inflation targeting regime: the science of central banking or the art of central bankers?," Cahiers d’économie politique / Papers in Political Economy, L'Harmattan, issue 66, pages 127-172.
    9. Álvaro Almeida, 2003. "40 Years of Monetary Targets and Financial Crises in 20 OECD Countries," FEP Working Papers 128, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    10. Anton Muscatelli & Carmine Trecroci, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules, Policy Preferences, and Uncertainty: Recent Empirical Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(5), pages 597-627, December.
    11. Eleftheriou, Maria, 2009. "Monetary policy in Germany: A cointegration analysis on the relevance of interest rate rules," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 946-960, September.
    12. Gottschalk, Jan, 2001. "An Introduction into the SVAR Methodology: Identification, Interpretation and Limitations of SVAR models," Kiel Working Papers 1072, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    13. Vitek, Francis, 2006. "Measuring the Stance of Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy: A Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Approach," MPRA Paper 802, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1999. "Monetary policy issues for the Eurosystem," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 79-136, December.
    15. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1999. "Inflation targeting as a monetary policy rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 607-654, June.
    16. Philip Lowe & Luci Ellis, 1997. "The Smoothing of Official Interest Rates," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Philip Lowe (ed.),Monetary Policy and Inflation Targeting, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    17. Meixing DAI, 2009. "On the role of money growth targeting under inflation targeting regime," Working Papers of BETA 2009-11, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    18. Nakashima, Kiyotaka, 2006. "The Bank of Japan's operating procedures and the identification of monetary policy shocks: A reexamination using the Bernanke-Mihov approach," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 406-433, September.
    19. Zenón Quispe, 2000. "Monetary Policy in a Dollarized Economy: the Case of Peru," Money Affairs, CEMLA, vol. 0(2), pages 167-206, July-Dece.
    20. Lars E. O. Svensson, 2000. "Does the P* Model Provide Any Rationale for Monetary Targeting?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(1), pages 69-81, February.

    More about this item

    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:ses:arsjes:1997-iii-9. 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: Kurt Schmidheiny (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sgvssea.html .

    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.