IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15662.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Interpreting the Unconventional U.S. Monetary Policy of 2007-09

Author

Listed:
  • Ricardo Reis

Abstract

This paper reviews the unconventional U.S. monetary policy responses to the financial and real crises of 2007-09, divided into three groups: interest rate policy, quantitative policy, and credit policy. To interpret interest rate policy, it compares the Federal Reserve's actions with the literature on optimal policy in a liquidity trap. The theory suggests that, to minimize the length and severity of the recession, would require a stronger commitment to low interest rates for an extended period of time. To interpret quantitative policy, the paper reviews the determination of inflation under different policy regimes. The main danger for inflation from current actions is that the Federal Reserve may lose its policy independence; a beneficial side effect of the crisis is that the Friedman rule can be implemented by paying interest on reserves. To interpret credit policy, the paper presents a new model of capital market imperfections with different financial institutions and a role for securitization, leveraging, and mark-to-market accounting. The model suggests that providing credit to traders in securities markets can restore liquidity with fewer government funds than extending credit to the originators of loans.

Suggested Citation

  • Ricardo Reis, 2010. "Interpreting the Unconventional U.S. Monetary Policy of 2007-09," NBER Working Papers 15662, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15662
    Note: AP CF EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15662.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cukierman, Alex, 2008. "Central bank independence and monetary policymaking institutions -- Past, present and future," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 722-736, December.
    2. Willem H. Buiter & Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, 2003. "Overcoming the zero bound on nominal interest rates with negative interest on currency: gesell's solution," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(490), pages 723-746, October.
    3. Alan J. Auerbach & Maurice Obstfeld, 2005. "The Case for Open-Market Purchases in a Liquidity Trap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 110-137, March.
    4. Marvin Goodfriend, 2000. "Overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, pages 1007-1057.
    5. Sims, Christopher A, 1994. "A Simple Model for Study of the Determination of the Price Level and the Interaction of Monetary and Fiscal Policy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 4(3), pages 381-399.
    6. Gary Gorton, 2009. "Information, Liquidity, and the (Ongoing) Panic of 2007," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 567-572, May.
    7. Markus K. Brunnermeier, 2009. "Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007-2008," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 77-100, Winter.
    8. Olivier Blanchard, 2009. "The Crisis: Basic Mechanisms and Appropriate Policies," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 10(01), pages 3-14, April.
    9. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    10. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2009. "Monetary Policy Strategy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262513374, December.
    11. Matthew B. Canzoneri & Robert E. Cumby & Behzad T. Diba, 2001. "Is the Price Level Determined by the Needs of Fiscal Solvency?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1221-1238, December.
    12. Romer, Christina D., 1992. "What Ended the Great Depression?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 757-784, December.
    13. Mr. Peter Stella, 2009. "The Federal Reserve System Balance Sheet: What Happened and Why it Matters," IMF Working Papers 2009/120, International Monetary Fund.
    14. Reis, Ricardo, 2007. "The analytics of monetary non-neutrality in the Sidrauski model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 129-135, January.
    15. Stephen G. Cecchetti, 2009. "Crisis and Responses: The Federal Reserve in the Early Stages of the Financial Crisis," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 51-75, Winter.
    16. Woodford, Michael, 1995. "Price-level determinacy without control of a monetary aggregate," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 1-46, December.
    17. Kiminori Matsuyama, 2008. "Aggregate Implications of Credit Market Imperfections," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2007, Volume 22, pages 1-60, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Lars E.O. Svensson, 2003. "Escaping from a Liquidity Trap and Deflation: The Foolproof Way and Others," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 145-166, Fall.
    19. Franklin Allen & Ana Babus & Elena Carletti, 2009. "Financial Crises: Theory and Evidence," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 97-116, November.
    20. Berriel Tiago C & Bhattarai Saroj, 2009. "Monetary Policy and Central Bank Balance Sheet Concerns," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-33, January.
    21. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    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. Lars E. O. Svensson, 2011. "Practical Monetary Policy: Examples from Sweden and the United States," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 289-352.
    2. Duca, John V., 2013. "Did the commercial paper funding facility prevent a Great Depression style money market meltdown?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 747-758.
    3. Ricardo Reis, 2018. "Is something really wrong with macroeconomics?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 34(1-2), pages 132-155.
    4. Ricardo Reis, 2017. "QE in the Future: The Central Bank’s Balance Sheet in a Fiscal Crisis," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(1), pages 71-112, April.
    5. Takáts, Előd & Temesvary, Judit, 2021. "How does the interaction of macroprudential and monetary policies affect cross-border bank lending?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    6. Baek, Seungjun, 2022. "Optimal policy in lemon markets with flexible information acquisition," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    7. McMahon, Michael & Peiris, M. Udara & Polemarchakis, Herakles, 2018. "Perils of unconventional monetary policy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 92-114.
    8. Zhixiong Zeng, 2013. "A theory of the non-neutrality of money with banking frictions and bank recapitalization," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(2), pages 729-754, March.
    9. Adam Ashcraft & Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2011. "Two Monetary Tools: Interest Rates and Haircuts," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2010, volume 25, pages 143-180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Alexander Berglund & Massimo Guidolin & Manuela Pedio, 2018. "Monetary Policy after the Crisis: Threat or Opportunity to Hedge Funds' Alphas?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1884, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    11. Nuno Cassola & Claudio Morana, 2010. "The 2007-? financial crisis: a euro area money market perspective," ICER Working Papers - Applied Mathematics Series 35-2010, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    12. Jaromír Baxa & Roman Horváth & Bořek Vašíček, 2011. "Time Varying Monetary Policy Rules and Financial Stress," Chapters, in: Sylvester Eijffinger & Donato Masciandaro (ed.), Handbook of Central Banking, Financial Regulation and Supervision, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Huang, MeiChi & Wu, Chu-Hua & Cheng, I-Shan, 2021. "A truly global crisis? Evidence from contagion dependence across international REIT markets," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    14. Bagliano, Fabio C. & Morana, Claudio, 2012. "The Great Recession: US dynamics and spillovers to the world economy," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-13.
    15. Economides, George & Papageorgiou, Dmitris & Philippopoulos, Apostolis, 2020. "Macroeconomic policy lessons from Greece," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 107155, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. George Economides & Dimitris Papageorgiou & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2020. "Macroeconomic Policy Lessons for Greece from the Debt Crisis," CESifo Working Paper Series 8188, CESifo.
    17. Bleck, Alexander & Liu, Xuewen, 2018. "Credit expansion and credit misallocation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 27-40.
    18. Gonzalez-Astudillo, Manuel, 2011. "Policy Rule Coefficients Driven by Latent Factors: Monetary and Fiscal Policy Interactions in an Endowment Economy," MPRA Paper 29976, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Chao Gu & Joseph Haslag, 2014. "Unconventional Optimal Open Market Purchases," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(3), pages 543-558, July.
    20. Duca, John V. & Murphy, Anthony, 2013. "Would a Bagehot style corporate bond backstop have helped counter the Great Recession?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 351-353.
    21. Claudio Morana, 2013. "Factor Vector Autoregressive Estimation of Heteroskedastic Persistent and Non Persistent Processes Subject to Structural Breaks: New Insights on the US OIS SPreads Term Structure," Working Papers 233, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2013.

    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. Ricardo Reis, 2009. "Interpreting the Unconventional U.S. Monetary Policy of 2007-09," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(2 (Fall)), pages 119-182.
    2. Roberto M. Billi, 2011. "Optimal Inflation for the US Economy," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 29-52, July.
    3. Willem Buiter, 2004. "A Small Corner of Intertemporal Public Finance - New Developments in Monetary Economics: 2 Ghosts, 2 Eccentricities, A Fallacy, A Mirage and A Mythos," NBER Working Papers 10524, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Adam, Klaus & Billi, Roberto M., 2006. "Optimal Monetary Policy under Commitment with a Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(7), pages 1877-1905, October.
    5. Junning Cai, 2004. "Liquidity Trap Prevention and Escape: A Simple Proposition," Macroeconomics 0402033, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "Optimal Monetary Policy in a Liquidity Trap," NBER Working Papers 9968, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ben S. Bernanke & Vincent R. Reinhart & Brian P. Sack, 2004. "Monetary Policy Alternatives at the Zero Bound: An Empirical Assessment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(2), pages 1-100.
    8. Yasushi Iwamoto, 2005. "Interaction between Monetary and Fiscal Policy and the Policy Mix, Theoretical Consideration and Japanese Experience," CARF F-Series CARF-F-043, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    9. Alan J. Auerbach & Maurice Obstfeld, 2005. "The Case for Open-Market Purchases in a Liquidity Trap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 110-137, March.
    10. Billi, Roberto M., 2018. "Price level targeting and risk management," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 163-173.
    11. Adam, Klaus & Billi, Roberto M., 2007. "Discretionary monetary policy and the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 728-752, April.
    12. Pierpaolo Benigno & Salvatore Nisticò, 2020. "Non-neutrality of Open-Market Operations," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 175-226, July.
    13. Gomes, S. & Jacquinot, P. & Mestre, R. & Sousa, J., 2015. "Global policy at the zero lower bound in a large-scale DSGE model," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 134-153.
    14. Lars E.O. Svensson, 2004. "The Magic of the Exchange Rate: Optimal Escape from a Liquidity Trap in Small and Large OPen Economies," Working Papers 072004, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
    15. Jakob Korbinian Eberl, 2016. "The Collateral Framework of the Eurosystem and Its Fiscal Implications," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 69.
    16. Dai, Meixing, 2011. "Quantitative and credit easing policies at the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate," MPRA Paper 28129, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Gauti B. Eggertsson, 2008. "Great Expectations and the End of the Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1476-1516, September.
    18. St-Amant, Pierre & Tessier, David, 2008. "Déflation et politique monétaire," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 84(3), pages 307-323, septembre.
    19. Lamia Bazzaoui & Jun Nagayasu, 2021. "Is Inflation Fiscally Determined?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-26, October.
    20. Mehrotra, Aaron N., 2007. "Exchange and interest rate channels during a deflationary era--Evidence from Japan, Hong Kong and China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 188-210, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination

    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:nbr:nberwo:15662. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.