The Inflation Bias Hypothesis and Monetary Policy in the Open Economy

开放经济中的通货膨胀偏差假说与货币政策

• 批准号: 9986707
• 负责人: Lawrence Christiano
• 金额: $ 18.57万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-06-15 至 2004-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9986707&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Inflation; Bias; Hypothesis; Monetary; Policy

The author proposes research to help identify ways of improving monetary policy in both closed and open economy settings. The first project would explore one hypothesis about the reasons market economies undergo prolonged periods of low and high inflation. The inflation bias hypoth-esis suggests that the periodic episodes of costly high inflation reflect a weakness in the design of monetary institutions in that they do not confer monetary policy makers with the ability to cred-ibly commit to consistently low inflation policies. To test the inflation bias hypothesis, the author proposes to incorporate the various costs and benefits of inflation into general equilibrium models with an optimizing monetary authority which lacks a commitment technology. The advantage of using general equilibrium models is that they have implications for a wide array of data. In this way a large amount of information, not just data on inflation and output, can be brought to bear in the models' design and construction. The author argues that if the resulting model can account for the observed level and volatility of inflation, then we should have greater confidence in the inflation bias hypothesis and in its implication that improvements in monetary policy require redesigning monetary institutions to incorporate greater commitment.The author reports some initial results based on analyzing two conventional general equi-librium models. He finds that these models do not support the inflation bias hypothesis, and that they imply there is little to be gained in the redesign of monetary institutions. However he also reports that the models' implications for money demand are poor. Moreover, he shows that when changes in the models' intermediation technologies are introduced to improve their money demand implications, then the inflation bias hypothesis is resuscitated. On this basis, the author proposes to undertake additional work on the modeling of intermediation technologies in order to develop a credible evaluation of the inflation bias hypothesis. A convincing test also requires that the model do well in accounting for a broader set of variables. Accordingly, the author plans to extend existing models so that they incorporate capital accumulation and government fiscal variables such as debt and taxes. The author expects that the research will help shed light on other issues including various puzzles in the empirical money demand literature and puzzling features of hyperinflation episodes.The second project would help shed light on the causes and remedies for financial crises experienced by a number of emerging market economies. The author seeks to gain new insights into these experiences by analyzing models which emphasize the foreign and domestic working capital requirements of firms. He proposes research designed to help shed light on the ap-propriate monetary policy to follow in the immediate aftermath of a crisis. He presents preliminary results which suggest that the nature of the monetary transmission mechanism in 'crisis' times may be very different than what it is in 'normal' times. The author also proposes to study alterna-tive monetary regimes, including dollarization, to see which is most likely to produce good results. In this work, he plans to take into account the various shocks affecting particular emerging market economies, including shocks to expectations. The proposed research would involve constructing quantitative general equilibrium models of small open economies. The construction and parameter-ization of these models would be guided by empirical analysis of individual countries. The research also entails an empirical investigation of what happens in the aftermath of a crisis, including the analysis of the type of collateral constraints that may be imposed at that time.There are two additional projects. One would explore, with the use of quantitative general equilibrium models, recent concerns that have been raised about the supposed dangers of low nominal rates of interest. Another would investigate the monetary transmission in an economy with a large number of firms of different ages and productivity.

作者建议进行研究，以帮助确定在封闭和开放经济环境下改善货币政策的方法。第一个项目将探讨市场经济经历长期低通胀和高通胀的原因的一个假设。通胀偏差假说认为，代价高昂的高通胀周期性发作反映了货币制度设计上的弱点，因为它们没有赋予货币政策制定者可信地承诺持续奉行低通胀政策的能力。为了检验通货膨胀偏差假设，作者提出将通货膨胀的各种成本和收益纳入缺乏承诺技术的最优货币权威的一般均衡模型中。使用一般均衡模型的优点是，它们对广泛的数据有影响。通过这种方式，可以在模型的设计和构建中引入大量的信息，而不仅仅是关于通货膨胀和产出的数据。作者认为，如果最终模型能够解释观察到的通胀水平和波动性，那么我们就应该对通胀偏差假设及其含义更有信心，即货币政策的改善需要重新设计货币制度，以纳入更大的承诺。作者在分析两种传统的一般均衡模型的基础上，报告了一些初步结果。他发现，这些模型不支持通胀偏差假说，它们意味着重新设计货币制度收效甚微。然而，他也报告说，这些模型对货币需求的影响很差。此外，他表明，当引入模型中介技术的变化以改善其货币需求含义时，通胀偏差假设就会复活。在此基础上，作者建议对中介技术的建模进行额外的工作，以便对通货膨胀偏差假设进行可信的评估。一个令人信服的测试还要求模型在考虑更广泛的变量集方面做得很好。因此，作者计划扩大现有模型，将资本积累和债务、税收等政府财政变量纳入其中。笔者希望通过本文的研究，能够对实证货币需求文献中存在的各种困惑以及恶性通货膨胀时期令人困惑的特征等问题有所帮助。第二个项目将有助于阐明许多新兴市场经济体经历的金融危机的原因和补救措施。作者试图通过分析强调公司的国外和国内营运资金要求的模型来获得对这些经验的新见解。他建议进行研究，以帮助阐明在危机过后立即应采取的适当货币政策。他提出的初步结果表明，“危机”时期货币传导机制的性质可能与“正常”时期大不相同。作者还建议研究包括美元化在内的其他货币制度，看看哪一种最有可能产生良好的结果。在这项工作中，他计划考虑影响特定新兴市场经济体的各种冲击，包括对预期的冲击。拟议的研究将涉及构建小型开放经济体的定量一般均衡模型。这些模型的构建和参数化将以个别国家的经验分析为指导。该研究还需要对危机后发生的情况进行实证调查，包括分析当时可能施加的抵押品约束类型。还有两个额外的项目。我们可以利用定量一般均衡模型，探讨最近人们对低名义利率的所谓危险的担忧。另一项研究将研究一个拥有大量不同年龄和生产率的企业的经济体中的货币传导。