The effects of monetary shocks on inflation: High-frequency approach

Commonly used in monetary VARs identification schemes yield to a highfrequency approach as they tend to raise different empirical puzzles reported in the literature. However, financial markets in some open economies are not sufficiently liquid to provide minute bars data on interest rate financial instruments. This paper fills this gap employing a new series of high-frequency monetary policy surprises with USD/RUB currency futures and spot instruments. We find that a monetary tightening is contractionary without price puzzle and other paradoxes about financial variables. This result is robust for the period 2010—2019 apart from the crisis of 2014—2015 when the free floated ruble was devalued due to the sharp decline in oil prices. We also decompose surprises on monetary policy shocks — changes in the expected interest rate, and an information component — the information simultaneously conveyed by the central bank like an assessment of the economic outlook. We find that the former one significantly affects monetary policy surprises that does not confirm a hypothesis about substantial impact of non-monetary news on the external instrument.

Assessing the Role of Money versus Interest Rate in Pakistan

We have empirically examined the role of monetary aggregate(s) vis-à-vis short-term interest rate as monetary policy instruments, and the impact of State Bank of Pakistan’s transformation into the latter on their relative effectiveness in terms of inflation in Pakistan. Using indicators of ‘persistent changes’ in the underlying behaviours of variables of interest, we found that broad money consistently explains inflation in (i) monetary (ii) transitory and (iii) interest rate regimes. Though its role has receded while moving from the transition to the interest rate regime, the interest rate instrument seems to be positively related to inflation, a phenomenon commonly known as price puzzle. In light of these findings, we recommend that the role of money should not be completely de-emphasised. JEL Classification: E31, E52. Keywords: Monetary Policy Instruments, Price Puzzle, ARDL, Pakistan

Evidências de Pass-Through Incompleto da Taxa de Juros, Crédito Direcionado e Canal de Custo da Política Monetária no Brasil

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a relevância do canal de custo da política monetária no Brasil, a possibilidade de pass-through incompleto da taxa de juros, e a relação entre o crédito direcionado e a política monetária. Para tanto, elaborou-se um modelo DSGE Novo-Keynesiano, no qual: o custo das firmas é diretamente influenciado pelo nível da taxa de juros cobrada pelos bancos; uma parcela dos bancos não é capaz de modificar as taxas de juros que cobram pelos empréstimos a cada período; e, uma parcela dos bancos opera linhas de crédito direcionado. O modelo foi estimado por meio do método da distância mínima (Matching). Os resultados indicam que (i) o canal de custo desempenha papel relevante na transmissão da política monetária (explicando o price-puzzle da política monetária); (ii) não há evidência de pass-through incompleto; e (iii) o crédito direcionado reduz a capacidade de a política monetária modificar as condições de crédito.