Optimal Monetary Policy under Sudden Stops

Emerging market economies often face sudden stops in capital inflows or reduced access to the international capital market. This paper analyzes what should monetary policy do in such an event. Optimal monetary policy induces a hike in interest rate and exchange rate depreciation. The latter mitigates the impact of the sudden stop in the domestic economy by boosting export revenues. In spite of that, a recession is not avoided. It is shown in the paper that the arrival of the sudden stop further increases the problem of time inconsistency of policy. Optimal policy is fairly well approximated by a flexible targeting rule, in which a combination of domestic prices, exchange rate and output is stabilized. We show that whether a fixed exchange rate regime is a good policy strategy, from a welfare perspective, depends on the economic environment. For the benchmark parameterization, the peg is the worst of simple rules considered. For alternative parameterizations, featuring low nominal rigidities or high elasticity of foreign demand, the fixed exchange rate regime performs relatively better.