IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedfap/95-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring monetary policy

Author

Listed:
  • Ben S. Bernanke
  • Ilian Mihov

Abstract

Extending the approach of Bernanke and Blinder (1992), Strongin (1992), and Christano, Eichenbaum, and Evans (1994a, 1994b), we develop and apply a VAR-based methodology for measuring the stance of monetary policy. More specifically, we develop a \"demi-structural\" VAR approach, which extracts information about monetary policy from data on bank reserves and the federal funds rate but leaves the relationships among the macroeconomic variables in the system unrestricted. The methodology can be used to compare and evaluate existing indicators of monetary policy and also to develop an \"optimal\" measure (given our framework). Among existing approaches, we find that innovations to the federal funds rate (Bernanke-Blinder) are a good measure of policy innovations during the periods 1965-1979 and 1988-1994; for the period 1979-1994 as a whole, innovations to the orthogonalized component of nonborrowed reserve (Strongin) seems to be the best choice. The new measure of policy stance that we develop conforms well to qualitative indicators of policy such as the Boschen-Mills (1991) index; and innovations to our measure lead to reasonable and precisely estimated dynamic responses by variables such as real GDP and the GDP deflator.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben S. Bernanke & Ilian Mihov, 1995. "Measuring monetary policy," Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory 95-09, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfap:95-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin S. Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 1994. "Identification and the effects of monetary policy shocks," Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues 94-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    2. Christiano, Lawrence J & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles, 1996. "The Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks: Evidence from the Flow of Funds," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 16-34, February.
    3. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    4. Bernanke, Ben S., 1986. "Alternative explanations of the money-income correlation," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 49-99, January.
    5. Ben S. Bernanke, 1990. "On the predictive power of interest rates and interest rate spreads," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 51-68.
    6. Brunner, Karl & Meltzer, Allan H., 1986. "Real business cycles, real exchange rates, and actual policies," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 1-10, January.
    7. Chow, Gregory C & Lin, An-loh, 1971. "Best Linear Unbiased Interpolation, Distribution, and Extrapolation of Time Series by Related Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 53(4), pages 372-375, November.
    8. Allan D. Brunner, 1994. "The federal funds rate and the implementation of monetary policy: estimating the Federal Reserve's reaction function," International Finance Discussion Papers 466, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Olivier J. Blanchard & Mark W. Watson, 1986. "Are Business Cycles All Alike?," NBER Chapters, in: The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, pages 123-180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum, 1991. "Identification and the Liquidity Effect of a Monetary Policy Shock," NBER Working Papers 3920, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Andrews, Donald W K, 1993. "Tests for Parameter Instability and Structural Change with Unknown Change Point," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 821-856, July.
    12. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles Evans, 1994. "The Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks: Some Evidence from the Flow of Funds," NBER Working Papers 4699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Uhlig, Harald, 2005. "What are the effects of monetary policy on output? Results from an agnostic identification procedure," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 381-419, March.
    2. Bernanke, Ben S. & Mihov, Ilian, 1997. "What does the Bundesbank target?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1025-1053, June.
    3. Jean Boivin & Marc Giannoni, 2002. "Assessing changes in the monetary transmission mechanism: a VAR approach," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 8(May), pages 97-111.
    4. Tony Caporale & Barbara McKiernan, 1999. "Monetary policy shocks and interest rates: Further evidence on the liquidity effect," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 135(2), pages 306-316, June.
    5. Kumah, F.Y., 1996. "The Effect of Monetary Policy on Exchange Rates : How to Solve the Puzzles," Discussion Paper 1996-70, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    6. Uhlig, H.F.H.V.S., 1999. "What are the Effects of Monetary Policy on Output? Results from an Agnostic Identification Procedure," Other publications TiSEM 2e0fa8dd-ead5-4c6b-97cb-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. repec:rza:wpaper:704 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. McMillin, W. Douglas, 1996. "Monetary policy and bank portfolios," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 315-335, October.
    9. Allan D. Brunner, 1996. "Using measures of expectations to identify the effects of a monetary policy shock," International Finance Discussion Papers 537, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Monticello, Carlo & Tristani, Oreste, 1999. "What does the single monetary policy do? A SVAR benchmark for the European Central Bank," Working Paper Series 2, European Central Bank.
    11. Thanabalasingam Vinayagathasan, 2013. "Monetary Policy and the Real Economy: A Structural VAR Approach for Sri Lanka," GRIPS Discussion Papers 13-13, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
    12. Kim, Soyoung, 1999. "Do monetary policy shocks matter in the G-7 countries? Using common identifying assumptions about monetary policy across countries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 387-412, August.
    13. Catherine Bruneau & Olivier De Bandt, 1999. "La modélisation Var "structurel" : application à la politique monétaire en France," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 137(1), pages 67-94.
    14. Kim, Soyoung & Roubini, Nouriel, 2000. "Exchange rate anomalies in the industrial countries: A solution with a structural VAR approach," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 561-586, June.
    15. Thanabalasingam Vinayagathasan, 2014. "Monetary policy and the real economy: A structural VAR approach for Sri Lanka," Asian Journal of Empirical Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 4(1), pages 41-64, January.
    16. Croushore, Dean & Evans, Charles L., 2006. "Data revisions and the identification of monetary policy shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1135-1160, September.
    17. Bennett T. McCallum, 2001. "Analysis of the Monetary Transmission Mechanism: Methodological Issues," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Deutsche Bundesbank (ed.), The Monetary Transmission Process, chapter 1, pages 11-59, Palgrave Macmillan.
    18. Evans, Charles L. & Marshall, David A., 1998. "Monetary policy and the term structure of nominal interest rates: Evidence and theory," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 53-111, December.
    19. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2016. "Monetary policies and the macroeconomic performance of Vietnam," OSF Preprints akzy4, Center for Open Science.
    20. Thornton, Daniel L., 2001. "The Federal Reserve's operating procedure, nonborrowed reserves, borrowed reserves and the liquidity effect," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(9), pages 1717-1739, September.
    21. Normandin, Michel & Phaneuf, Louis, 2004. "Monetary policy shocks:: Testing identification conditions under time-varying conditional volatility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 1217-1243, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Vector autoregression; Monetary policy - United States; Interest rates;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    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:fip:fedfap:95-09. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.