IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed014/763.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When does a central bank's balance sheet require fiscal support?

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Sims

    (Princeton University)

  • Marco Del Negro

    (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Abstract

A central bank whose assets and liabilities are both nominal cannot produce a uniquely determined price level, no matter what policies it adopts, unless it is backed by a treasury with the power to tax. If it is so backed, the backing need not be visible in equilibrium; it can be a commitment by the treasury to act in circumstances that do not occur in equilibrium, and the action required in those circumstances need not be large. A central bank, though, can require fiscal transfers on the equilibrium path even when fiscal backing makes the price level unique. The likelihood of its needing such transfers increases when its balance sheet expands and when the duration of its assets diverges from that of its interest-bearing liabilities. The need for such transfers also depends on the strictness of its control of inflation and on the nature of demand for its non-interest bearing liabilities. A model calibrated to the current situation of the US Federal Reserve System suggests that the need for transfers is unlikely to arise, even if the Fed’s net worth at market value temporarily becomes negative.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Sims & Marco Del Negro, 2014. "When does a central bank's balance sheet require fiscal support?," 2014 Meeting Papers 763, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed014:763
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2014/paper_763.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benhabib, Jess & Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2001. "The Perils of Taylor Rules," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 96(1-2), pages 40-69, January.
    2. Marvin Goodfriend, 2014. "Monetary Policy as a Carry Trade," IMES Discussion Paper Series 14-E-08, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    3. John H. Cochrane, 2011. "Determinacy and Identification with Taylor Rules," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(3), pages 565-615.
    4. Marvin Goodfriend, 1993. "Interest rate policy and the inflation scare problem: 1979-1992," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Ricardo Reis, 2013. "The Mystique Surrounding the Central Bank's Balance Sheet, Applied to the European Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 135-140, May.
    6. Christensen, Jens H.E. & Lopez, Jose A. & Rudebusch, Glenn D., 2015. "A probability-based stress test of Federal Reserve assets and income," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 26-43.
    7. Stephen Quinn & William Roberds, 2016. "Death of a Reserve Currency," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 63-103, December.
    8. Ben R. Craig & William E. Jackson & James B. Thomson, 2004. "On SBA-guaranteed lending and economic growth," Working Papers (Old Series) 0403, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    9. Calvo, Guillermo A, 1988. "Servicing the Public Debt: The Role of Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 647-661, September.
    10. Buiter, Willem & Rahbari, Ebrahim, 2012. "The ECB as Lender of Last Resort for Sovereigns in the Euro Area," CEPR Discussion Papers 8974, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2009. "Financial Innovation and the Transactions Demand for Cash," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 363-402, March.
    12. McLaren, Nick & Smith, Tom, 2013. "The profile of cash transfers between the Asset Purchase Facility and Her Majesty’s Treasury," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 53(1), pages 29-37.
    13. Del Negro, Marco & Schorfheide, Frank & Smets, Frank & Wouters, Rafael, 2007. "On the Fit of New Keynesian Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 123-143, April.
    14. Seth Carpenter & Jane Ihrig & Elizabeth Klee & Daniel Quinn & Alexander Boote, 2015. "The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet and Earnings: A Primer and Projections," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 11(2), pages 237-283, March.
    15. Marco Bassetto & Todd Messer, 2013. "Fiscal Consequences of Paying Interest on Reserves," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 34, pages 413-436, December.
    16. Miguel-Angel Martín & Agustín Herranz, 2004. "Human capital and economic growth in Spanish regions," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 10(4), pages 257-264, November.
    17. 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.
    18. Woodford, Michael, 2001. "Fiscal Requirements for Price Stability," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(3), pages 669-728, August.
    19. 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.
    20. Peter Stella, 2005. "Central Bank Financial Strength, Transparency, and Policy Credibility," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(2), pages 335-365, September.
    21. Burnside, Craig & Eichenbaum, Martin & Rebelo, Sergio, 2004. "Government guarantees and self-fulfilling speculative attacks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 31-63, November.
    22. Athanasios Orphanides, 2002. "Monetary-Policy Rules and the Great Inflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 115-120, May.
    23. Ricardo Reis, 2013. "The Mystique Surrounding the Central Bank's Balance Sheet, Applied to the European Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 135-140, May.
    24. Marvin Goodfriend, 2014. "Keynote Speech: Monetary Policy as a Carry Trade," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 32, pages 29-44, November.
    25. Mr. Peter Stella, 2009. "The Federal Reserve System Balance Sheet: What Happened and Why it Matters," IMF Working Papers 2009/120, International Monetary Fund.
    26. Casey B. Mulligan & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2000. "Extensive Margins and the Demand for Money at Low Interest Rates," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(5), pages 961-991, October.
    27. David Greenlaw & James D. Hamilton & Peter Hooper & Frederic S. Mishkin, 2013. "Crunch Time: Fiscal Crises and the Role of Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 19297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. 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.
    2. Atsushi Tanaka, 2020. "Central Bank Capital and Credibility: A Literature Survey," Discussion Paper Series 208, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised May 2020.
    3. Michele Cavallo & Marco Del Negro & W. Scott Frame & Jamie Grasing & Benjamin A. Malin & Carlo Rosa, 2019. "Fiscal Implications of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Normalization," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 15(5), pages 255-306, December.
    4. Caballero, Diego & Lucas, André & Schwaab, Bernd & Zhang, Xin, 2020. "Risk endogeneity at the lender/investor-of-last-resort," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 283-297.
    5. Atsushi Tanaka, 2021. "Central Bank Capital and Credibility: A Literature Survey," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 63(2), pages 249-262, June.
    6. Stephen Quinn & William Roberds, 2016. "Death of a Reserve Currency," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 63-103, December.
    7. Bassetto, Marco & Phelan, Christopher, 2015. "Speculative runs on interest rate pegs," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 99-114.
    8. Leeper, E.M. & Leith, C., 2016. "Understanding Inflation as a Joint Monetary–Fiscal Phenomenon," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2305-2415, Elsevier.
    9. Christensen, Jens H.E. & Lopez, Jose A. & Rudebusch, Glenn D., 2015. "A probability-based stress test of Federal Reserve assets and income," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 26-43.
    10. Ricardo Reis, 2015. "Different Types of Central Bank Insolvency and the Central Role of Seignorage," NBER Working Papers 21226, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Debrun, Xavier & Masuch, Klaus & Ferrero, Guiseppe & Vansteenkiste, Isabel & Ferdinandusse, Marien & von Thadden, Leopold & Hauptmeier, Sebastian & Alloza, Mario & Derouen, Chloé & Bańkowski, Krzyszto, 2021. "Monetary-fiscal policy interactions in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 273, European Central Bank.
    12. Gianluca Benigno & Luca Fornaro, 2018. "Stagnation Traps," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(3), pages 1425-1470.
    13. Fernando M. Duarte & Anna Zabai, 2015. "An interest rate rule to uniquely implement the optimal equilibrium in a liquidity trap," Staff Reports 745, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    14. Igor Goncharov & Vasso Ioannidou & Martin C. Schmalz, 2020. "(Why) do central banks care about their profits?," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 018, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    15. Fernando M. Duarte, 2016. "How to escape a liquidity trap with interest rate rules," Staff Reports 776, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    16. Tischbirek, Andreas, 2018. "Large-scale bond purchases in a currency union with segmentation in the market for government debt," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 37-69.
    17. Manuel Amador & Javier Bianchi, 2023. "Helicopter Drops and Liquidity Traps," Working Papers 797, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    18. van Holle, Frederiek, 2017. "Essays in empirical finance and monetary policy," Other publications TiSEM 30d11a4b-7bc9-4c81-ad24-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Pinter, Julien & Pourroy, Marc, 2023. "How can financial constraints force a central bank to exit a currency peg? An application to the Swiss franc peg," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    20. Fujiki, Hiroshi & Tomura, Hajime, 2017. "Fiscal cost to exit quantitative easing: the case of Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1-11.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E59 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Other

    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:red:sed014:763. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.