IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ime/imedps/23-e-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Forward Guidance Trap

Author

Listed:
  • Athanasios Orphanides

    (Professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management (E-mail: athanasios.orphanides@mit.edu))

Abstract

This paper examines the policy experience of the Fed, ECB and BOJ during and after the Covid-19 pandemic and draws lessons for monetary policy strategy and its communication. All three central banks provided appropriate accommodation during the pandemic but two failed to unwind this accommodation in a timely manner. The Fed and ECB guided real interest rates to inappropriately negative levels as the economy recovered from the pandemic, fueling high inflation. The policy error can be traced to decisions regarding forward guidance on policy rates that delayed lift-off while the two central banks continued to expand their balance sheets. The Fed and the ECB fell into the forward guidance trap. This could have been avoided if policy were guided by a forward-looking rule that properly adjusted the nominal interest rate with the evolution of the inflation outlook.

Suggested Citation

  • Athanasios Orphanides, 2023. "The Forward Guidance Trap," IMES Discussion Paper Series 23-E-06, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    • Handle: RePEc:ime:imedps:23-e-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.imes.boj.or.jp/research/papers/english/23-E-06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael D. Bordo & Andrew T. Levin & Mickey D. Levy, 2020. "Incorporating Scenario Analysis into the Federal Reserve’s Policy Strategy and Communications," NBER Working Papers 27369, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Richard H. Clarida, 2023. "US Monetary Policy and the Return to Price Stability," NBER Working Papers 31520, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. D’Amico, Stefania & King, Thomas B., 2023. "What does anticipated monetary policy do?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 123-139.
    4. Carl E. Walsh, 2022. "Inflation Surges and Monetary Policy," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 40, pages 39-66, November.
    5. Athanasios Orphanides, 2021. "The Power of Central Bank Balance Sheets," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 39, pages 35-54, November.
    6. Ben S. Bernanke, 2020. "The New Tools of Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 943-983, 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. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2023. "The forward guidance trap," IMFS Working Paper Series 190, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    2. Athanasios Orphanides, 2021. "The Power of Central Bank Balance Sheets," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 39, pages 35-54, November.
    3. Benchimol, Jonathan & Bounader, Lahcen, 2023. "Optimal monetary policy under bounded rationality," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    4. Gregor Boehl & Gavin Goy & Felix Strobel, 2020. "A Structural Investigation of Quantitative Easing," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_193, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    5. Pablo Guerrón-Quintana & Alexey Khazanov & Molin Zhong, 2023. "Financial and Macroeconomic Data Through the Lens of a Nonlinear Dynamic Factor Model," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-027, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Mansur Abdurakhmanov, 2023. "Modelling the Effect of Bank of Russia Key Rate Forecasts on Market Participants’ Expectations," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 82(2), pages 3-20, June.
    7. Julián Caballero & Blaise Gadanecz, 2023. "Did interest rate guidance in emerging markets work?," BIS Working Papers 1080, Bank for International Settlements.
    8. Bhar, Ramaprasad & Malliaris, A.G., 2021. "Modeling U.S. monetary policy during the global financial crisis and lessons for Covid-19," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 15-33.
    9. Brian Fabo & Martina Jancokova & Elisabeth Kempf & Lubos Pastor, 2020. "Fifty Shades of QE: Conflicts of Interest in Economic Research," Working and Discussion Papers WP 5/2020, Research Department, National Bank of Slovakia.
    10. James B. Bullard, 2022. "Reflections on the Disinflationary Methods of Poincaré and Thatcher," Speech 94556, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    11. Cantore, Cristiano & Meichtry, Pascal, 2023. "Unwinding quantitative easing: state dependency and household heterogeneity," Bank of England working papers 1030, Bank of England.
    12. Sascha Buetzer, 2022. "Advancing the Monetary Policy Toolkit through Outright Transfers," IMF Working Papers 2022/087, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Takuji Kawamoto & Jouchi Nakajima & Tomoaki Mikami, 2021. "Supplementary Paper Series for the "Assessment" (3): Inflation-Overshooting Commitment:An Analysis Using a Macroeconomic Model," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 21-E-9, Bank of Japan.
    14. Takuji Fueki & Yutaka Soejima & Shunichi Yoneyama, 2022. "New Dimensions and Frontiers in Central Banking Summary of the 2022 BOJ-IMES Conference," IMES Discussion Paper Series 22-E-13, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    15. Breach, Tomas & D’Amico, Stefania & Orphanides, Athanasios, 2020. "The term structure and inflation uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 388-414.
    16. Takuji Fueki & Yutaka Soejima & Shunichi Yoneyama, 2022. "New Dimensions and Frontiers in Central Banking Summary of the 2022 BOJ-IMES Conference," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 40, pages 1-20, November.
    17. Latfe Alhusseinawi, 2020. "The Impact Of Financial Policy Tools In Reducing The Deficit Of The General Budget," European Journal of Accounting, Finance & Business, "Stefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Romania - Faculty of Economics and Public Administration, West University of Timisoara, Romania - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 13(23), pages 1-9, June.
    18. Daisuke Ikeda & Shangshang Li & Sophocles Mavroeidis & Francesco Zanetti, 2024. "Testing the Effectiveness of Unconventional Monetary Policy in Japan and the United States," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 250-286, April.
    19. Serdar Kabaca & Kerem Tuzcuoglu, 2022. "International Transmission of Quantitative Easing Policies: Evidence from Canada," Staff Working Papers 22-30, Bank of Canada.
    20. Oliver de Groot & Falk Mazelis & Roberto Motto & Annukka Ristiniemi, "undated". "A Toolkit for Computing Constrained Optimal Policy Projections (COPPs)," Working Papers 202112, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy strategy; Forward guidance; Policy rules;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination

    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:ime:imedps:23-e-06. 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: Kinken (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imegvjp.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.