Liquidity and the making of unconventional monetary policy

本研究项目探讨了流动性在美国和英国非常规货币政策制定中的作用。尽管流动性问题在危机之后被频繁提及，但对于流动性这个概念的实际含义，人们仍鲜有共识。相反，我们经常只把流动性当作一个比喻：例如，我们被告知，在危机期间，以前“流动性充足”的市场突然“枯竭”了。但是，如果流动性这个概念本身仍然如此难以捉摸，政策制定者究竟如何理解与流动性相关的政策挑战呢？流动性通常是指一种资产可兑换成一种货币的能力。然而，这个术语在概念上仍然模棱两可，因为它既包括个人资产的“货币性”，也包括更普遍的金融市场状态，在这种状态下，这些资产可以进行交换。流动性从来都不是任何资产所固有的，而是始终依赖于金融界作为一个整体在金融资产的持续“货币性”方面的投机信心（orlsaman 2014）。相反，当经济参与者对经济模型准确预测未来风险和价值变动的能力失去信心时，流动性就会蒸发（Colander等人，2009；Bryan和Rafferty, 2013; Davidson, 2010）。因此，每一次金融危机也是一场估值危机。2008年的金融危机有力地提醒了我们这一点。为了避免全面的金融崩溃，国家有责任承担迄今为止非常规的权力，试图恢复对市场估值机制内部凝聚力的信心（Mehrling 2011）。我认为，理解流动性是一个高度政治化的过程：它总是以牺牲他人的利益为代价，使特定的行动和经济话语合法化（参见Admati和Hellwig 2013； Langley 2014）。到目前为止，关于政策制定者如何利用不同的流动性概念来试图理解手头的政策挑战的研究很少。基于最近对影响中央银行沟通策略的语义和叙事的微观动力学研究（例如Abolafia 2010； Abolafia和Hatmaker 2013； Braun 2015； Fligstein等人2014；Holmes 2016），我试图批判性地分析自金融危机以来，流动性和货币政策之间的关系如何在中央银行研究人员和政策制定者的想象中被重塑，并使一组特定的政治反应合法化。因此，这个项目的目的是提供流动性的谱系。借鉴实用主义社会学的方法论框架，我强调，从历史上看，流动性概念具有多重和碎片化的含义。一个谱系提供了一种可能性，让我们更好地理解不同的流动性方法是如何一直共存的，并支撑着关于国家与市场关系的截然不同的观点。基于这种方法，我特别询问了美联储的研究人员和政策制定者在2008年金融危机期间和之后如何（重新）解释他们与流动性的关系。通过关注危机的想象维度——例如，不同的解释实践如何为危机和危机后事件的诊断和谈判提供依据——我想知道，对流动性的不同历史判断和批评是如何纠结在一起的，并被纳入（非常规）货币政策制定的连贯叙述中。为了实现这些研究目标，我将需要对伦敦和纽约的相关政策制定者进行访谈。在纽约的联邦储备委员会和巴塞尔的国际清算银行进行档案工作形式的海外实地工作也是必要的。

This research project addresses the role of liquidity in the making of this unconventional monetary policy in the United States and the United Kingdom. While liquidity problems were mentioned frequently following the crisis, there remains very little agreement about what the concept actually means. Instead, we often encounter liquidity only as a metaphor: for example, we are told that during the crisis, markets that were previously 'awash with liquidity' suddenly 'dried up'. But how exactly do policymakers make sense of the policy challenges associated with liquidity if the concept itself remains so elusive? Liquidity typically describes the convertibility of an asset into a form of money. Yet the term remains conceptually ambiguous because it encompasses both the 'money-ness' of individual assets, and a state of financial markets more generally in which such assets can be exchanged. Liquidity is never inherent in any asset but always rests on the speculative confidence that the financial community as a whole places in the continued 'money-ness' of financial assets (Orléan 2014). Conversely, liquidity evaporates when economic actors lose confidence in the ability of economic models to accurately forecast future movements in risk and value (Colander et al. 2009; Bryan and Rafferty 2013; Davidson 2010). Every financial crisis is therefore also a crisis of valuation. The financial crisis of 2008 has been a powerful reminder of this. To avoid a total financial meltdown, it then becomes the responsibility of the state to assume hitherto unconventional powers in the attempt to restore confidence in the internal cohesion of the market's valuation regime (Mehrling 2011). I suggest that making sense of liquidity is a highly political process: it always legitimates specific courses of actions and economic discourses at the expense of others (cf. Admati and Hellwig 2013; Langley 2014). Until now, there has been very little research on how policymakers draw on different ideas of liquidity in their attempt to make sense of the policy challenges at hand. Building on recent studies of the micro-dynamics of sensemaking and narration that shape the communicative strategies of central banks (e.g. Abolafia 2010; Abolafia and Hatmaker 2013; Braun 2015; Fligstein et al. 2014; Holmes 2016), I seek to critically analyse how the relationship between liquidity and monetary policy has been recast in the imagination of central bank researchers and policymakers since the financial crisis, and has legitimated a specific set of political responses. The aim of this project is therefore to provide a genealogy of liquidity. Drawing on the methodological framework of pragmatist sociology, I emphasise that, historically, multiple and fragmented meanings have been attached to the concept of liquidity. A genealogy offers the possibility to create a better understanding of how different approaches to liquidity have always co-existed and underpinned very different ideas about the relationship between the state and the market. Based on this approach, I ask specifically how researchers and policymakers at the Federal Reserve have (re)interpreted their relationship to liquidity during and after the financial crisis of 2008. By focusing on the imaginary dimension of crisis - i.e. how different interpretative practices feed the diagnosis and negotiation of crisis and post-crisis episodes - I ask how different historical judgements and critiques of liquidity are struggled over and incorporated into a coherent narrative of (unconventional) monetary policymaking. In order to achieve these research goals, I will need to conduct interviews with relevant policymakers in London and New York. Overseas fieldwork in the form of archival work at the Federal Reserve in New York and at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel will also be necessary.