Public investment efficiency and monetary policy consequences: The case of investment ratio enhancing policy in Russia

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
S. A. Vlasov ◽  
A. A. Sinyakov

The article analyzes the effects of measures to raise the investment rate from 21% to 25% of GDP up to 2024 on GDP growth and monetary policy. We conduct the analysis using an econometric general equilibrium model that reflects key features of the Russian economy. Achieving the target sequentially implies adding about 14 p. p. of GDP of public and/or private investment over 2019—2024 compared to the unchanged investment rate scenario. We find raising private investment to be the most efficient for stimulating GDP growth up to 2024. Among sources of public investment funding, using the sovereign wealth fund gives the highest GDP growth up to 2024. Nevertheless, given low public investment efficiency, a significant fraction of GDP growth becomes inflationary in this case. If the central bank minimizes the risk of inflation, inefficient public investment can lead the economy to equilibrium with higher private interest rates.

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-129
Author(s):  
Mikhail V. Ershov ◽  
Anna S. Tanasova ◽  
Elena Yu. Sokolova

World economy shows a high level of uncertainty. There are considerable risks of economic slowdown and stock market collapse. For many years, the Russian economy has been dependent on external factors. Recently, when anti-Russian sanctions are imposed, it is particularly important to find internal sources of growth, including domestic demand as the most significant factor. However, environment for the development of the Russian economy remains unfavourable due to high interest rates, volatile exchange rate, increasing tax rates, and ambiguous economic policy. Based on the analysis of regional statistics (including some regions of the Central Federal District), we confirmed the weak relationship between investments and gross regional product (GRP) revealed by other scientists. This may be the result of poor investment efficiency and its low multiplier effect. In this situation, the right choice of sectors with high multipliers and investment efficiency creates the potential for increasing domestic demand. Simultaneously, mechanisms for the expansion of resources ensuring regional economic growth play an important role. In this regard, we developed approaches aimed at the creation of conditions for the expansion of regional financial resources to support economic activity, domestic demand and economy in general, considering a social aspect of these processes. Some of the proposed mechanisms stimulate the participation of banks in financing economic processes, federal or regional bond issuance (the Bank of Russia would be the main buyer), etc. These proposals consider the experience of other countries in stimulating economic growth, including at the regional level. Financial regulators and relevant regional agencies can use the research results for developing economic policies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 239 ◽  
pp. R53-R62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan in't Veld

The Euro Area recommendations endorsed by the European Council in 2016 called for a differentiation of the fiscal effort by individual Member States, taking into account spillovers across Euro Area countries. This article shows model-based simulations of an increase in public investment in Germany and the Netherlands and their spillovers to the rest of the Euro Area. While spillovers in a monetary union may be small when monetary policy reacts by raising interest rates, when rates are kept constant and the stimulus is accommodated, spillovers can be sizeable. An increase in (productive) spending in Germany and the Netherlands can boost GDP in these countries and also have significant positive spillovers on the rest of EA GDP, while the effects on current accounts are likely to be small. Effects can be even larger when investment is directed to the most productive projects. With low borrowing costs at present, the increase in government debt for surplus countries will be modest, while there could be an improvement in debt ratios in the rest of the Euro Area.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Homburg

Abstract Japan has been in a benign liquidity trap since the 1990s. In a benign liquidity trap, interest rates approach zero and monetary policy is ineffective but output and employment perform decently. Such a pattern contradicts traditional macro theories. This paper introduces a monetary general equilibrium model that is compatible with Japan’s performance and resolves puzzles associated with liquidity traps. Possible conclusions for Anglo-Saxon countries and eurozone members are also discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 145-148
Author(s):  
Michael J. Boskin

The traditional view of large deficits and debt is that they are harmful, save in recession/early recovery, for tax smoothing or to fund productive public investment, as they crowd out private investment and lower future income, and taken to extremes, can cause inflation, even a financial crisis. Blanchard (2019) concludes they may have no fiscal cost and increase welfare. I present evidence of a debt problem, policies necessary to contain it, effects on recovery, interest rates, and long-run growth. There are several serious issues with Blanchard's reading of key data and modeling assumptions, the changing of which would reverse his conclusions.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Aspromourgos

John Maynard Keynes consistently offered qualified endorsement of Abba Lerner’s “functional finance” doctrine – the qualifications particularly turning on Keynes’s attentiveness to policy management of the psychology of the debt market. This article examines Keynes’s understanding of the possible influence of public debt on interest rates, from 1930 forward. With the multiplier a mechanism whereby debt-financed public investment generates matching private saving (net of private investment) plus public saving, it becomes possible for Keynes to conclude that increasing public debt need not place upward pressure on the level of interest rates, so long as policy can successfully manage the psychology of the debt market. This particularly concerns long interest rates and hence, the term structure of rates. His theory of the term structure enables Keynes’s conviction that policy can manage and shape long rates. The conclusion considers also whether Keynes’s caution concerning public debt and interest rates retains relevance today.


Significance China’s GDP growth slowed to 6.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2018, with full-year growth at 6.6%. The PBoC is loosening monetary policy to support growth by lowering banks’ RRR alongside policies to incentivise banks to lend more to the private sector. Impacts If the policy fails and leverage increases relative to GDP, then risk in the financial system will rise. If RRR cuts cause consumption to increase, China’s trade surpluses are likely to decrease, helping ease trade tensions with Washington. Liberalising interest rates will, when it eventually happens, allow banks to price loans to private firms more accurately.


Subject Economic outlook for Switzerland. Significance Switzerland’s GDP growth disappointed in the first quarter of 2017: it increased by 0.3% on a quarterly and 1.1% on a yearly basis, held back by weak private consumption growth. However, exports rebounded after the long blight of the 2015 franc appreciation shock. Impacts Private consumption should improve after stagnating in 2015-16, benefiting from the labour market recovery. Low interest rates are likely to boost private investment. Chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering, electrics and the watch-making industry are likely to benefit from the expected revival in exports. Inflation is likely to average around 0.4% in 2017 and 2018.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Aspromourgos

John Maynard Keynes consistently offered qualified endorsement of Abba Lerner’s “functional finance” doctrine—the qualifications particularly turning on Keynes’s attentiveness to policy management of the psychology of the debt market. This article examines Keynes’s understanding of the possible influence of public debt on interest rates, from 1930 forward. With the multiplier a mechanism whereby debt-financed public investment generates matching private saving (net of private investment) plus public saving, it becomes possible for Keynes to conclude that increasing public debt need not place upward pressure on the level of interest rates, so long as policy can successfully manage the psychology of the debt market. This particularly concerns long interest rates and hence the term structure of rates. His theory of the term structure enables Keynes’s conviction that policy can manage and shape long rates. The conclusion considers also whether Keynes’s caution concerning public debt and interest rates retains relevance today.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 48-75

This section conducts an estimate of the impulse response function of key macroeconomic variables to monetary policy shocks in Russia. The estimates are carried out through a dynamic factor model (DFM) of the Russian economy with structural identification of shocks by imposing various sets of sign restrictions on the behavior of endogenous variables. We restricted first the monetary aggregate M2 only (a decrease in response to an increase of the Key rate), and then—simultaneously—M2, real effective exchange rate (an increase), and GDP (a decrease). We estimated the DFM using a large dataset of 58 macroeconomic and financial variables. The estimation results suggest that there is no decreasing response of consumer prices to an exogenous tightening of the interest rate policy of the Central Bank of Russia. This empirical evidence is supported implicitly by DFM-based predictions that under the imposition of such a decreasing response as an identifying restriction to the model, a positive interest rate shock is not transmitted through the interest rate channel of monetary policy to expected increases of the interest rates on commercial loans and private deposits. However, existing empirical evidence refutes this model-based result. Therefore, this study supports the view according to which a tightening of monetary policy in Russia is inefficient in terms of restraining inflation. In addition, monetary policy shocks negatively affect investments, retail sales, export and import, real wages, and employment. Different economic activities react differently to monetary policy shocks: export-oriented activities are not sensitive to these shocks, whereas domestic pro-cyclical activities (e.g. construction) can be substantially depressed in response to unexpected increases of interest rates. Finally, the expectations of economic agents are also significantly affected by shocks in the interest rate policy of the Bank of Russia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Żukowska

The economic sanctions imposed on Russia have adversely affected the development of the Russian economy. Russia’s GDP has decreased, GDP growth rate has slowed down, global demand has declined, prices and interest rates have risen. Inflation has increased, the rouble has become devalued, the amount of foreign exchange reserves has gone down, and life quality of Russian citizens has deteriorated. The sanctions of the Western states against Russia as well as the sanctions reciprocally applied by Russia against the broadly understood foreign countries have negatively influenced the economies of many Western states which have also been affected by worse conditions of economic growth after 2014.


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