IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hkm/wpaper/102013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Asset Price Bubbles and Monetary Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Abdullah Yavas

    (University of Wisconsin - Madison and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss if and how monetary policy should react to an asset price bubble. The challenge with targeting an asset price bubble is that such bubbles are very difficult to identify and measure. Furthermore, any attempt to burst an asset price bubble is likely to face a great deal of criticism and resistance from politicians and the public. The main argument of the paper is that it is practically very difficult to target an asset price level or react to changes in asset prices. Instead, the paper proposes an alternative instrument where the monetary policy and regulatory authorities target credit growth. Credit growth is easy to define, less likely to face resistance from the public and politicians, and is closely linked with (serves as a good proxy for) asset prices. More importantly, an asset price bubble will cause much more economic damage if the asset purchases involved leverage. Thus, targeting credit growth is a more realistic and more effective tool to contain asset price bubbles, to minimize the economic impact of such bubbles, and to maintain financial stability. The paper discusses how targeting credit growth can be incorporated into the Taylor rule, and adds that, in addition to the policy interest rate, central banks can use reserve requirement ratios to contain credit growth. It is noted the effectiveness of monetary policy can be strengthened significantly with the help of appropriate regulations and macro-prudential measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Abdullah Yavas, 2013. "Asset Price Bubbles and Monetary Policy," Working Papers 102013, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:hkm:wpaper:102013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hkimr.org/uploads/publication/355/wp-no-10_2013-final-.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 2001. "Should Central Banks Respond to Movements in Asset Prices?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 253-257, May.
    2. Refet S. Gürkaynak, 2008. "Econometric Tests Of Asset Price Bubbles: Taking Stock," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 166-186, February.
    3. Jones, Matthew T., 2011. "Bidding fever in eBay auctions of Amazon.com gift certificates," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 5-7, October.
    4. Lei, Vivian & Noussair, Charles N & Plott, Charles R, 2001. "Nonspeculative Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Lack of Common Knowledge of Rationality vs. Actual Irrationality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 831-859, July.
    5. Giovanni Dell'Ariccia & Luc Laeven & Gustavo A. Suarez, 2017. "Bank Leverage and Monetary Policy's Risk-Taking Channel: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(2), pages 613-654, April.
    6. Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2012. "Credit Booms Gone Bust: Monetary Policy, Leverage Cycles, and Financial Crises, 1870-2008," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 1029-1061, April.
    7. Jordi Galí, 2011. "Monetary policy and rational asset price bubbles," Economics Working Papers 1293, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Aug 2013.
    8. Bruno, Valentina & Shin, Hyun Song, 2015. "Capital flows and the risk-taking channel of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 119-132.
    9. Dong He, 2013. "Hong Kong’s Approach to Financial Stability," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 9(1), pages 299-313, March.
    10. Eric Wong & Tom Fong & Ka-fai Li & Henry Choi, 2011. "Loan-to-Value Ratio as a Macro-Prudential Tool - Hong Kong's Experience and Cross-Country Evidence," Working Papers 1101, Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
    11. Smith, Vernon L & Suchanek, Gerry L & Williams, Arlington W, 1988. "Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1119-1151, September.
    12. Matthew S. Yiu & Lu Jin, 2012. "Detecting Bubbles in the Hong Kong Residential Property Market: An Explosive-Pattern Approach," Working Papers 012012, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
    13. Wei Xiong, 2013. "Bubbles, Crises, and Heterogeneous Beliefs," NBER Working Papers 18905, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Stéphane Robin & Kateřina Strážnická & Marie Claire Villeval, 2021. "Bubbles and incentives: an experiment on asset markets," Economic and Political Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 68-89, January.
    15. Porter, David P & Smith, Vernon L, 1995. "Futures Contracting and Dividend Uncertainty in Experimental Asset Markets," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(4), pages 509-541, October.
    16. Frank Leung & Kevin Chow & Gaofeng Han, 2008. "Long-term and Short-term Determinants of Property Prices in Hong Kong," Working Papers 0815, Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
    17. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    18. Katerina Straznicka, 2012. "Bubbles and Incentives," Post-Print halshs-00697499, HAL.
    19. Philip Lowe & Claudio Borio, 2002. "Asset prices, financial and monetary stability: exploring the nexus," BIS Working Papers 114, Bank for International Settlements.
    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. Utz Weitzel & Christoph Huber & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler & Florian Lindner & Julia Rose & Lauren Cohen, 2020. "Bubbles and Financial Professionals," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(6), pages 2659-2696.
    2. Fischbacher, Urs & Hens, Thorsten & Zeisberger, Stefan, 2013. "The impact of monetary policy on stock market bubbles and trading behavior: Evidence from the lab," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 2104-2122.
    3. Filardo, Andrew & Hubert, Paul & Rungcharoenkitkul, Phurichai, 2022. "Monetary policy reaction function and the financial cycle," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    4. Debapriya Jojo Paul & Julia Henker & Sian Owen, 2019. "The aggregate impacts of tournament incentives in experimental asset markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(2), pages 441-476, June.
    5. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    6. Käfer Benjamin, 2014. "The Taylor Rule and Financial Stability – A Literature Review with Application for the Eurozone," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 65(2), pages 159-192, August.
    7. Halim, Edward & Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Roy, Nilanjan, 2022. "Sharing idiosyncratic risk even though prices are “wrong”," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    8. Akaki Tsomaia, 2021. "Asset bubbles, financial sector, and current challenges to regulatory framework," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 901-925, October.
    9. Bofinger, Peter & Schnabel, Isabel & Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Wieland, Volker, 2014. "Mehr Vertrauen in Marktprozesse. Jahresgutachten 2014/15 [More confidence in market processes. Annual Report 2014/15]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201415.
    10. Helmut Wagner, 2010. "The causes of the recent financial crisis and the role of central banks in avoiding the next one," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 63-82, May.
    11. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    12. Wang, Hao & Xu, Ning & Yin, Haiyan & Ji, Hao, 2022. "The dynamic impact of monetary policy on financial stability in China after crises," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    13. Kleinlercher, Daniel & Huber, Jürgen & Kirchler, Michael, 2014. "The impact of different incentive schemes on asset prices," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 137-150.
    14. da Gama Batista, João & Massaro, Domenico & Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe & Challet, Damien & Hommes, Cars, 2017. "Do investors trade too much? A laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 18-34.
    15. Q. Akram & Gunnar Bårdsen & Kjersti-Gro Lindquist, 2007. "Pursuing financial stability under an inflation-targeting regime," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 131-153, January.
    16. Tobias Adrian & Hyun Song Shin, 2008. "Financial intermediaries, financial stability and monetary policy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 287-334.
    17. Stijn Claessens & M. Ayhan Kose, 2013. "Financial Crises: Explanations, Types and Implications," CAMA Working Papers 2013-06, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    18. Halim, Edward & Riyanto, Yohanes Eko & Roy, Nilanjan, 2016. "Price Dynamics and Consumption Smoothing in Experimental Asset Markets," MPRA Paper 71631, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Corgnet, Brice & Hernán-González, Roberto & Kujal, Praveen, 2020. "On booms that never bust: Ambiguity in experimental asset markets with bubbles," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    20. Tobias Adrian & Nellie Liang, 2018. "Monetary Policy, Financial Conditions, and Financial Stability," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 14(1), pages 73-131, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hkm:wpaper:102013. 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: HKIMR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hkimrhk.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.