IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gwi/wpaper/2015-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rounding the Corners of the Policy Trilemma: Sources of monetary policy autonomy

Author

Listed:
  • Jay C. Shambaugh
  • Michael W. Klein

Abstract

A central result in international macroeconomics is that a government cannot simultaneously opt for open financial markets, fixed exchange rates, and monetary autonomy; rather, it is constrained to choosing no more than two of these three. This paper considers whether partial capital controls and limited exchange rate flexibility allow for full monetary policy autonomy. We find partial capital controls do not generally allow for greater monetary control than with open capital accounts, unless they are quite extensive, but a moderate amount of exchange rate flexibility does allow for some degree of monetary autonomy, especially in emerging and developing economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Jay C. Shambaugh & Michael W. Klein, 2015. "Rounding the Corners of the Policy Trilemma: Sources of monetary policy autonomy," Working Papers 2015-4, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2015-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2015WP/ShambaughIIEPWP20154.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Javier Bianchi, 2011. "Overborrowing and Systemic Externalities in the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3400-3426, December.
    2. Aizenman, Joshua & Ito, Hiro, 2012. "Trilemma policy convergence patterns and output volatility," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 269-285.
    3. Chinn, Menzie D. & Ito, Hiro, 2006. "What matters for financial development? Capital controls, institutions, and interactions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 163-192, October.
    4. Maurice Obstfeld & Jay C. Shambaugh & Alan M. Taylor, 2010. "Financial Stability, the Trilemma, and International Reserves," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 57-94, April.
    5. Maurice Obstfeld & Jay C. Shambaugh & Alan M. Taylor, 2004. "Monetary Sovereignty, Exchange Rates, and Capital Controls: The Trilemma in the Interwar Period," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 51(s1), pages 75-108, June.
    6. Guillermo A. Calvo & Carmen M. Reinhart, 2002. "Fear of Floating," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(2), pages 379-408.
    7. Jacques Miniane & John H. Rogers, 2007. "Capital Controls and the International Transmission of U.S. Money Shocks," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(5), pages 1003-1035, August.
    8. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2004. "The Modern History of Exchange Rate Arrangements: A Reinterpretation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 1-48.
    9. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe & Martin Uribe, 2012. "Prudential Policy for Peggers," NBER Working Papers 18031, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Michael W. Klein, 2012. "Capital Controls: Gates versus Walls," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 43(2 (Fall)), pages 317-367.
    11. Jonathan D Ostry & Atish R Ghosh & Marcos Chamon & Mahvash S Qureshi, 2011. "Capital Controls: When and Why?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(3), pages 562-580, August.
    12. Eduardo Levy-Yeyati & Federico Sturzenegger, 2003. "To Float or to Fix: Evidence on the Impact of Exchange Rate Regimes on Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1173-1193, September.
    13. Clarida, Richard & Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1998. "Monetary policy rules in practice Some international evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1033-1067, June.
    14. Frankel, Jeffrey & Schmukler, Sergio L. & Serven, Luis, 2004. "Global transmission of interest rates: monetary independence and currency regime," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 701-733, September.
    15. Aizenman, Joshua & Chinn, Menzie D. & Ito, Hiro, 2010. "The emerging global financial architecture: Tracing and evaluating new patterns of the trilemma configuration," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 615-641, June.
    16. Richard H. Clarida & Jordi Gali & Mark Gertler, 1998. "Monetary policy rules in practice," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Mar.
    17. Stanley Fischer, 2001. "Exchange Rate Regimes: Is the Bipolar View Correct?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 3-24, Spring.
    18. Klein, Michael W. & Shambaugh, Jay C., 2006. "Fixed exchange rates and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 359-383, December.
    19. Paul R. Krugman, 1991. "Target Zones and Exchange Rate Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 669-682.
    20. Emmanuel Farhi & Ivan Werning, 2012. "Dealing with the Trilemma: Optimal Capital Controls with Fixed Exchange Rates," NBER Working Papers 18199, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Jay C. Shambaugh, 2004. "The Effect of Fixed Exchange Rates on Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 301-352.
    22. Martin Schindler, 2009. "Measuring Financial Integration: A New Data Set," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 56(1), pages 222-238, April.
    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. Ligonniere, Samuel, 2018. "Trilemma, dilemma and global players," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 20-39.
    2. Jeffrey Frankel, 2021. "Systematic Managed Floating," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Steven J Davis & Edward S Robinson & Bernard Yeung (ed.), THE ASIAN MONETARY POLICY FORUM Insights for Central Banking, chapter 5, pages 160-221, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Nadav Ben Zeev, 2017. "Exchange Rate Regimes And Sudden Stops," Working Papers 1712, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    4. Herwartz, Helmut & Roestel, Jan, 2017. "Mundell’s trilemma: Policy trade-offs within the middle ground," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 1-13.
    5. Aizenman, Joshua, 2019. "A modern reincarnation of Mundell-Fleming's trilemma," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 444-454.
    6. Georgios Georgiadis & Feng Zhu, 2019. "Monetary policy spillovers, capital controls and exchange rate flexibility, and the financial channel of exchange rates," BIS Working Papers 797, Bank for International Settlements.
    7. Aizenman, Joshua & Ito, Hiro, 2014. "Living with the trilemma constraint: Relative trilemma policy divergence, crises, and output losses for developing countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(PA), pages 28-51.
    8. Ahmed, Rashad, 2020. "Monetary Policy Spillovers under Intermediate Exchange Rate Regimes," MPRA Paper 98852, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Joshua Aizenman & Hiro Ito, 2014. "The More Divergent, the Better? Lessons on Trilemma Policies and Crises for Asia," Asian Development Review, MIT Press, vol. 31(2), pages 21-54, September.
    10. Taguchi, Hiroyuki, 2011. "Monetary autonomy in emerging market economies: The role of foreign reserves," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 371-388.
    11. John C. Bluedorn & Christopher Bowdler, 2010. "The Empirics of International Monetary Transmission: Identification and the Impossible Trinity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(4), pages 679-713, June.
    12. Piersanti, Giovanni, 2012. "The Macroeconomic Theory of Exchange Rate Crises," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653126, Decembrie.
    13. Ahmed, Rashad, 2021. "Monetary policy spillovers under intermediate exchange rate regimes," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    14. Frankel, Jeffrey, 2010. "Monetary Policy in Emerging Markets," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1439-1520, Elsevier.
    15. Norring, Anni, 2022. "Taming the tides of capital: Review of capital controls and macroprudential policy in emerging economies," BoF Economics Review 1/2022, Bank of Finland.
    16. Andrés Fernández & Michael W Klein & Alessandro Rebucci & Martin Schindler & Martín Uribe, 2016. "Capital Control Measures: A New Dataset," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 64(3), pages 548-574, August.
    17. Pasricha, Gurnain Kaur & Falagiarda, Matteo & Bijsterbosch, Martin & Aizenman, Joshua, 2018. "Domestic and multilateral effects of capital controls in emerging markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 48-58.
    18. Aizenman, Joshua & Ito, Hiro, 2012. "Trilemma policy convergence patterns and output volatility," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 269-285.
    19. Aizenman, Joshua & Chinn, Menzie D. & Ito, Hiro, 2011. "Surfing the waves of globalization: Asia and financial globalization in the context of the trilemma," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 290-320, September.
    20. Yu Hsing, 2012. "Impacts of the Trilemma Policies on Inflation, Growth and Volatility in Greece," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 2(3), pages 373-378.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    exchange rate regimes; trilemma; monetary policy; capital controls;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • 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:gwi:wpaper:2015-4. 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: Kyle Renner (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iigwuus.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.