Collaborative Research: Experimental Evidence on Monetary Policies

合作研究：货币政策的实验证据

• 批准号: 1529272
• 负责人: Daniela Puzzello
• 金额: $ 2.09万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1529272&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Experimental; Evidence; Monetary

The Great Recession of 2008-09 led central banks to experiment with non-traditional monetary policies, for example, quantitative easing in Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. and negative interest rates on excess reserves in Denmark, Sweden and the Eurozone. Nevertheless, the extent of policy experimentation was greatly tempered by the need to avoid, to the extent foreseeable, harmful macroeconomic impacts from these non-traditional policies. In this project we set out an agenda for conducting monetary policy experiments more broadly in the controlled conditions of the experimental laboratory with the aim of understanding the welfare consequences of various monetary policies prior to their possible implementation in the field. Our approach is analogous to wind-tunnel testing of aircraft before the aircraft is allowed to fly. The study of monetary policies in the necessarily small-scale, low-stakes laboratory environment with paid human subjects is much less restrictive or expensive than experimentation in the field, thereby allowing for evaluation of a much richer and even radical set of monetary policies. Indeed, our aim is to provide new evidence on the welfare impacts of various monetary policies that would be difficult, if not impossible to implement in the field at least without some prior evidence on their effectiveness. We seek to begin the process of gathering such evidence. Our larger goal is to demonstrate that laboratory tests of monetary policies can be a complementary tool to theory and empirical analysis of field data in the evaluation of the efficacy of different monetary policies.Our framework for monetary policy analysis is Lagos and Wright's search-theoretic model of money, a work-horse model in monetary economics that we have previously implemented in the laboratory. In this project we propose to use the Lagos-Wright model to explore the celebrated Friedman rule (Friedman 1969) for monetary policy. The Friedman rule is known to be optimal in a very wide variety of different monetary models, including the Lagos-Wright model. In essence, Friedman showed that the welfare-maximizing monetary policy is to set inflation so as to make the nominal interest rate - the private marginal cost of holding money -- equal to zero. Since the social marginal cost of producing more money is essentially zero, if the private marginal cost were positive, there would be an inefficient gap that could be closed by making the nominal interest rate equal to zero. It follows that, if the real rate of return on safe government bonds is ñ0, and the nominal interest rate, i, as given by the Fisher equation, is i= EI + ñ, where EI denotes the expected inflation rate, then, in order for i=0 the central bank should work to set EI = -ñ 0. While central bankers are undoubtedly aware of the Friedman rule and often express a genuine desire for low inflation, it would be very much against conventional wisdom for central bankers to argue for, let alone attempt to implement, a negative inflation rate (deflation) as the Friedman rule would typically require. In the laboratory we are not bound by such considerations and thus we propose to implement the Friedman rule in two different ways and assess the welfare implications. The first approach is a deflationary monetary policy of the type outlined above. The second approach is to pay a competitive market interest rate on money holdings removing altogether the private marginal cost from holding money. As with the first approach, the practicalities of providing interest on hand-to-hand cash holdings has likely rendered this possibility unworkable. In this project we explore, for the first time both implementations of the Friedman rule in our experimental Lagos-Wright economy. In addition to exploring the welfare consequences of the two different implementations of the Friedman rule, we are also interested in using our framework to study the welfare consequences of inflationary policies. Specifically, we are interested in the welfare costs of low versus high inflation rates, and we propose to address this question by varying the money growth rate. Finally, following up on one of our previous studies, we wish to study whether legal restrictions on the use of fiat money (e.g. to pay taxes) matter for the adoption of fiat money and for welfare.

2008 - 09年的巨大衰退导致中央银行试验非传统的货币政策，例如，日本，英国和美国的定量易于轻松，以及丹麦，瑞典和欧元区超额储量的负利率。然而，在这些非传统政策的可预见的，有害的宏观经济影响的范围内，政策实验的程度极大地避免了。在这个项目中，我们制定了一个在实验实验室的受控条件下更广泛地进行货币政策实验的议程，目的是了解各种货币政策在现场实施之前的福利后果。我们的方法类似于在允许飞机飞行之前的飞机风能测试。在必要的小规模，低赌注实验室环境中，对具有薪水的受试者的货币政策的研究要比该领域的实验少得多或昂贵，从而可以评估一组更丰富甚至激进的货币政策。的确，我们的目的是提供有关各种货币政策的福利影响的新证据，这些货币政策的影响很难，即使不是不可能在现场实施，至少没有先前证据就其有效性。我们试图开始收集此类证据的过程。我们的更大目标是证明货币政策的实验室测试可以成为评估不同货币政策效率的现场数据理论和经验分析的完整工具。我们的货币政策分析框架是拉各斯和赖特的搜索理论货币模型，这是我们以前在实验室中实施的货币经济学的工作马模型。在这个项目中，我们建议使用拉各斯 - 赖特模式来探索著名的弗里德曼统治（Friedman 1969），以获取货币政策。弗里德曼（Friedman）规则在包括拉各斯 - 赖特（Lagos-Wright）模型在内的各种不同的货币模型中是最佳的。从本质上讲，弗里德曼（Friedman）表明，福利最大化的货币政策是设定通货膨胀，以使名义利率 - 持有货币的私人边际成本 - 等于零。由于产生更多资金的社会边际成本本质上是零，如果私人边际成本为正，则可能会通过使名义利率等于零来缩小效率低下的差距。因此，如果真正的安全政府债券的实际回报率为ñ0，而菲什尔方程式所给出的名义利率是i = ei +ñ，那么ei表示预期的通货膨胀率，那么，为了i = 0，中央银行应努力努力，而在中央银行的往来则是无疑的频率，而毫无疑问的是，一定会遇到一定的态度，而无疑是一个频繁的态度。智慧让中央银行人争辩，更不用说试图实施的，正如弗里德曼规则通常需要的那样。在实验室中，我们不受此类考虑的约束，因此我们建议以两种不同的方式实施弗里德曼统治并评估福利的影响。第一种方法是上述类型的通缩货币政策。第二种方法是支付竞争性的市场利率，以完全消除持有货币的私人边际成本。与第一种方法一样，提供利息的实践可能使这种可能性无法正常工作。在这个项目中，我们在我们的实验性拉各斯 - 赖克经济中首次探讨了弗里德曼规则的两种实施。除了探索弗里德曼规则的两个不同实施的福利后果外，我们还有兴趣使用我们的框架来研究通货膨胀政策的福利后果。具体来说，我们对低通货膨胀率与高通货膨胀率的福利成本感兴趣，我们建议通过改变货币增长率来解决这个问题。最后，跟进我们先前的一项研究，我们希望研究法律限制是否使用法定货币使用（例如，缴税）对采用法定货币和福利的使用。