The purpose of this paper has been to investigate the monetary policy in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), in terms of a Taylor rule based approach to their use of their interest rate. The evaluation of the different rules was based on both in-sample and out-of-sample forecast errors. Few significant or consistent influences from the variables proposed by the rules can be established, which might suggest that the bank operates primarily under a discretionary framework rather than a rule. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the European Central Bank interest rate (ECB-rate) does not exclusively drive the Central Bank of West African States interest rate (BCEAO-rate), which suggests that they indeed do retain some independence of monetary policy to respond to domestic variables as proposed by earlier research, despite having a fixed exchange rate. These results put into question the credibility of the BCEAO in attaining their stated primary goal of price stability, as there seems to be no significant or consistent response to it in the setting of their interest rate, despite a suggested ability to react to it. This can be the cause of the current high volatility of inflation in the area and give rise to future volatility and instability as well.

Nos últimos tempos a literatura empírica tem reportado inúmeras evidências relativas à alterações dos coeficientes da curva de Phillips Novo Keynesiana em diversas economias, dentre as quais reduções dos impactos da inércia inflacionária, do hiato do produto, da inflação importada e elevação do coeficiente das expectativas de inflação. Neste contexto, uma parte da literatura tem atribuído à maior globalização comercial entre as economias uma das principais causas para algumas dessas evidências. O presente trabalho teve como objetivo investigar uma parte deste extenso debate aplicando-o aos dados da economia brasileira. Especificamente, os dois principais objetivos deste trabalho foram: i) investigar se a dinâmica inflacionária da economia brasileira sofreu alguma alteração nos últimos anos em termos de mudanças das magnitudes dos coeficientes da Curva de Phillips Novo Keynesiana; ii) avaliar se a maior globalização comercial da economia brasileira ocorrida ao longo das duas últimas décadas exerceu alguma influência sobre os coeficientes da Curva de Phillips Novo Keynesiana. Ressalta-se que os resultados apresentados para esse segundo objetivo sempre levaram em consideração o significativo aperfeiçoamento da condução da política monetária na economia brasileira desde a implantação do regime de metas de inflação. Com relação ao primeiro objetivo as evidências deste trabalho apontaram que há indicações de redução dos coeficientes da inércia inflacionária e da inflação importada concomitante à elevação do coeficiente das expectativas de inflação. Neste sentido, não se evidenciou alterações significativas no coeficiente do hiato do produto. No tocante ao segundo objetivo, os resultados sugeriram que o aumento da credibilidade tende a reduzir os coeficientes da inércia inflacionária, do hiato do produto e da inflação importada ao mesmo tempo em que eleva o coeficiente das expectativas de inflação. Finalmente, a importância da maior globalização comercial mostrou-se restrita ao coeficiente da inflação importada na direção de ampliá-lo. / Over the latest years, the empirical literature has been reporting several evidences across economies regarding changes in coefficients of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve such as reductions on impacts of inflationary inertia, output gap, imported inflation, as well as an increase in the inflation expectation coefficient. In this context, the trade globalization has been pointed as one of the main causes behind some of those changes. The present paper aims to address part of this broad debate, applying it to the Brazilian economy data. In particular, the two most important objectives were: i) to investigate whether the inflation dynamic in Brazil suffered any significant change over the last years, focusing on the coefficients estimates of the Brazilian New Keynesian Phillips Curve; ii) to evaluate whether the recent greater trade globalization of the Brazilian economy led to any effect on its New Keynesian Phillips Curve coefficients. One should note that the results of this second objective will always be evaluated taking into account the significant improvement in the monetary policy management in Brazil since the implementation of the inflation targeting regime. In relation to the first objective the results found in this paper suggested reductions on inflationary inertia and imported inflation coefficients and increase in the inflation expectation coefficient. Therefore, it was not found any significant change in the output gap coefficient. Regarding the second objective, the evidences pointed the greater credibility tends to decrease the coefficients of inflationary inertia, output gap, and imported inflation amid an increase in inflation expectation impact. Finally, the potential impacts of greater trade globalization showed restricted to higher imported inflation coefficient.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a relevância do chamado canal de crédito na transmissão da política monetária para a economia brasileira a partir da adoção do regime de metas de inflação. Para tanto se estende o modelo semi-estrutural de tamanho médio estimado por Minella e Souza-Sobrinho (2009), a fim de introduzir o canal de crédito como mecanismo adicional de transmissão de política monetária, o que é feito através da escolha do spread bancário como variável chave para capturar o efeito do canal de crédito para firmas e consumidores. E em seguida aplica-se a metodologia de Altissimo et al. (2002) ao modelo estendido. As evidências encontradas mostram a importância do canal de crédito na economia brasileira. Este canal é responsável (combinando o efeito sobre firmas e consumidores) por 19,9% da queda acumulada do produto e por 22,9% da queda acumulada da inflação no horizonte de dois anos após um choque de 100 pontos-base na taxa básica de juros. / This dissertation aims to assess the importance of the credit channel in the transmission mechanism of the monetary policy for the Brazilian economy since the adoption of inflation targeting regime. To achieve this goal, an extension of the medium-size, semi-structural model for the Brazilian economy by Minella and Souza-Sobrinho (2009) was estimated after the introduction of the credit channel, which is assumed to operate through bank spreads to consumers and firms. The methodology of Altissimo, Locarno and Siviero (2002) for decomposing the transmission of the monetary policy in its different channels was then applied to the extended model. The evidence points to an important role for the credit channel in the Brazilian economy. This channel is responsible (through the combination of the effect on firms and consumers) for 19.9% of the cumulative decline in GDP and for 22.9% of the cumulative decline in inflation on a two-year horizon after a 100 basis-point shock in the policy rate.

O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a influência do calendário eleitoral sobre a condução da política monetária no Brasil. Através de uma regra de Taylor expandida com variáveis eleitorais, investigamos se o Banco Central atuou com objetivos políticos nas eleições do período pós-flutuação cambial. Os resultados obtidos mostram não haver evidências de que a taxa Selic tenha sido manipulada com fins eleitoreiros, o que está em linha com a evidência internacional atestando ausência de ciclos políticos na política monetária. Este achado acaba reforçando também a percepção de que o Banco Central do Brasil tem desfrutado de verdadeira independência de instrumentos nos últimos anos. / This paper investigates whether the management of monetary policy in Brazil has been affected by the electoral cycle. Based on the estimation of a Taylor Rule expanded with political variables, it is possible to check if the Central Bank\'s decisions were at least partially guided by electoral considerations in the period following the abandonment of the pegged regime. The results suggest that the Selic rate was not influenced by elections, which is in line with international evidence showing the absence of monetary policy political cycles in a cross section of countries. Further, this finding reinforces the perception that the Brazilian Central Bank has enjoyed a true instrument-independent status in the recent period.

Este estudo investiga as possíveis relações entre a política monetária brasileira e variáveis macroeconômicas que abrangem apenas a Região Metropolitana de São Paulo (RMSP) durante o período de janeiro de 2000 a agosto de 2005, período esse caracterizado pelo regime de metas inflacionárias. O objetivo dessa investigação é tentar compreender se, dadas as diferenças entre a economia brasileira e a economia da RMSP, a dinâmica dos indicadores dessa região segue a trajetória esperada pela autoridade monetária ao formular a política monetária. Com base em modelos de vetores auto-regressivos (VAR), são encontrados indícios de que a atividade econômica da RMSP é sensível a choques na política monetária. Ao longo do regime de metas inflacionárias, a dinâmica das taxas de inflação corrente para os índices de preços dessa região, o IPC-FIPE e o IPCA-RMSP, não dá evidências claras de que são afetadas pela política monetária, mas as encontradas para a trajetória das expectativas de inflação de 12 meses indicam que as expectativas respondem a choques na política monetária. Por outro lado, a política monetária nacional não se mostrou sensível a choques na atividade econômica da RMSP, mas se mostrou sensível a choques inflacionários nos preços da região. Em relação ao pass-trough do câmbio sobre os preços da RMSP, os índices de preços cheios absorvem o impacto mais rapidamente do que os preços livres. No entanto, os últimos respondem a choques na taxa de câmbio de forma mais distribuída ao longo do tempo do que os primeiros. / This work investigates the relationships between Brazilian monetary policy and macroeconomic variables covering only the São Paulo Metropolitan Area (SPMA) during the inflation targeting regime (2000:01 to 2005:08). This investigation seeks to comprehend if, given the differences between the Brazilian and SPMA economy, the dynamic of macroeconomic indicators of this region complies with the trajectory expected by the monetary authority when it formulates its policy. Based on vector autoregressive (VAR) estimations, it was found pieces of evidence that economic activity in SPMA is sensitive to shocks to monetary policy. During the inflation targeting regime, current inflation-rates dynamic, namely IPC-FIPE and IPCA-RMSP, does not seem to be affected by monetary policy, but 12-month expected inflation-rates seem to be responsive to shocks to monetary policy. On the other hand, national monetary policy does not seem responsive to shocks to economic activity of SPMA, but it is sensitive to inflationary shocks to price indexes of SPMA. Regarding the exchange-rate pass-through, it was found that headline price indexes absorb exchange-rates shocks more rapidly than market price indexes. However, the latter respond to exchange-rates shocks more smoothly than the former.

Thesis advisor: Robert Murphey / This paper demonstrates that a linear Phillips Curve has neither theoretical nor empirical justification. I first alter the traditional linear model specification to allow for non-linearity between inflation and unemployment. I show that these non-linear models produce greater R2’s than similar linear versions. I provide theoretical justification for the non-linear models and demonstrate why the theoretical reasoning for linear models is flawed. Finally, by introducing the natural rate of unemployment as a separate independent variable, I increase the explanatory power of the model. I allow the natural rate’s marginal effect on inflation to vary with time and suggest a theoretical framework that supports this final model. I conclude that non-linearity and therefore convexity between inflation and unemployment is the correct framework under any time period for Phillips Curve analysis and application. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis advisor: Ryan Chahrour / Expectations formation is central to macroeconomics. Households, firms, and policymakers must form expectations not only about fundamentals, but about what other agents’ beliefs are, because others’ beliefs will determine their actions. The three essays in this dissertation examine empirically and theoretically how agents use both public and private information to form expectations. The first two essays combine a models of optimizing behavior and forecasting with data on the macroeconomy, financial prices, and macroeconomic forecasts to examine the extent to which economic agents learn about the macroeconomy from financial prices and monetary policy actions. The third essay examines theoretically how members of a committee use public and private information to form beliefs when they care both about having accurate forecasts and coordinating actions with others. All three essays emphasize that frictions in expectations formation are a salient feature of the world, and understanding the extent and importance of those frictions is important for both positive and normative questions in macroeconomics and finance. Beliefs about the future determine the willingness of financial market participants to save and invest, and theory suggests they should value more highly assets which are expected to pay higher returns during recessionary periods when consumption is otherwise low. Hence, financial prices reflect macroeconomic expectations. In the first essay, titled "Macroeconomic Disagreement in Treasury Yields," I explore how agents with idiosyncratic, private information form beliefs about both the macroeconomy and the beliefs of other agents. Using data on United States Treasury debt, the macroeconomy, and individual inflation forecasts, I estimate the precision of bond traders’ information about the macroeconomy and how much they disagree with each other. I allow for traders to learn both from private signals and from asset prices, which aggregate the beliefs of all the traders in the market. I find that bond prices are moderately informative about macroeconomic variables, but are the source of most of the information traders have about monetary policy and the beliefs of others. In contrast to studies which assume full information, risk premia are much less important than slow-adjusting interest rate expectations for explaining the behavior of long-run yields. The most important signal for bond traders appears to be the Federal Reserve’s short-run rate, which encodes information about the macroeconomy and the central bank’s intended future policy. Nevertheless, the fact that traders held disparate beliefs about the macroeconomy, and especially about the long-run inflation target of the Federal Reserve, elevated long-term yields on average. The first essay demonstrates empirically that financial market participants learn about the macroeconomy from monetary policy actions. However, it is silent on how monetary policymakers form beliefs about the macroeconomy, or how the information in monetary policy rates endogenously affects macroeconomic outcomes. In the second essay "Your Guess is as Good as Mine: Central Bank Information and Monetary Policy," I use data on private sector forecasts and forecasts from the Federal Reserve Board staff to examine the typical assumption of common information between firms and monetary policymakers. Using forecasts from a survey of professional forecasters and from the Federal Reserve Board staff, I show evidence against the typical assumption of common information between monetary policymakers and the private sector, and also that policymakers are, at best, only weakly better at forecasting than private forecasters. Based on this evidence, I augment an otherwise standard monetary policy model by relaxing the common information assumption. Instead, I assume there is idiosyncratic, private information among price-setting firms, and between firms and the central banker. Firms combine private information about aggregate conditions with the observed monetary policy rate to form expectations about fundamentals and the beliefs of rival firms. The central banker must form expectations about firms’ beliefs because those beliefs will determine inflation and overall economic activity. But as a result of their differences in information sets, firms must form expectations about other firms’ expectations, and what the central banks’ expectations of their expectations are. I examine the ability of this model to fit the data and find that the model can capture features of both firm and central bank inflation expectations, but in the absence of imperfect information among households, it is difficult to simultaneously match the forecast data and data on real activity. This result points to the sensitivity of models with dispersed information to the underlying assumptions about how central bankers will respond to exogenous shocks. The second chapter emphasized how the assumptions economists make regarding monetary policymakers’ information is critical for understanding their actions. Motivated by this example, my third chapter "Information Investment in a Coordination Game" explores theoretically how members of a committee who are uncertain about others’ beliefs decide on a binary action, and how their decision to pay close attention to public or private signals is related to their desire to accurately forecast versus coordinating their behavior with others. I show that when it is assumed that information decisions among committee members are symmetric - everyone pays the same amount of attention to the same things - there is a unique outcome of the coordination game. However, I further show that it is difficult to guarantee that committee members will all choose a symmetric allocation of information. Aside from the direct cost of acquiring better information, allocating attention to more accurate signals can harm welfare when coordination motives are dominant. In a set of numerical exercises, however, I show that it is possible for a unique equilibrium to exist, and that actions that do not have a large impact on the payoffs of committee members (such as changing the size of the committee) may nevertheless have large impacts on the accuracy of the committee’s forecasts. This suggests a possible tension between the welfare of the committee, which benefits from consensus, and the welfare of those affected by the committee’s actions, which likely depends on whether the committee takes the objectively correct action. My dissertation has important implications for both academic economists and policymakers. Understanding the sources of business cycle fluctuations and the determinants of asset prices requires grappling with the fact that people have differences in beliefs. Empirical evidence suggests that agents’ beliefs are shaped by both idiosyncratic forces and by public announcements and policy decisions, and economists’ models need to reflect these features of the world. Policy, too, is affected by the information available to policymakers, and to understand how policymakers have acted in the past and should act in the future, it is necessary to take seriously the ways their belief formation deviates from the full information rational expectations benchmark.

Thesis advisor: Zhijie Xiao / In recent years, quantile regression has achieved increasing prominence as a quantitative method of choice in applied econometric research. The methodology focuses on how the quantile of the dependent variable is influenced by the regressors, thus providing the researcher with much information about variations in the relationship between the covariates. In this dissertation, I consider two quantile regression models where the information set may contain quantiles of the regressors. Such frameworks thus capture the dependence between quantiles - the quantile of the dependent variable and the quantile of the regressors - which I call models of quantile dependence. These models are very useful from the applied researcher's perspective as they are able to further uncover complex dependence behavior and can be easily implemented using statistical packages meant for standard quantile regressions. The first chapter considers an application of the quantile dependence model in empirical finance. One of the most important parameter of interest in risk management is the correlation coefficient between stock returns. Knowing how correlation behaves is especially important in bear markets as correlations become unstable and increase quickly so that the benefits of diversification are diminished especially when they are needed most. In this chapter, I argue that it remains a challenge to estimate variations in correlations. In the literature, either a regime-switching model is used, which can only estimate correlation in a finite number of states, or a model based on extreme-value theory is used, which can only estimate correlation between the tails of the returns series. Interpreting the quantile of the stock return as having information about the state of the financial market, this chapter proposes to model the correlation between quantiles of stock returns. For instance, the correlation between the 10th percentiles of stock returns, say the U.S. and the U.K. returns, reflects correlation when the U.S. and U.K. are in the bearish state. One can also model the correlation between the 60th percentile of one series and the 40th percentile of another, which is not possible using existing tools in the literature. For this purpose, I propose a nonlinear quantile regression where the regressor is a conditional quantile itself, so that the left-hand-side variable is a quantile of one stock return and the regressor is a quantile of the other return. The conditional quantile regressor is an unknown object, hence feasible estimation entails replacing it with the fitted counterpart, which then gives rise to problems in inference. In particular, inference in the presence of generated quantile regressors will be invalid when conventional standard errors are used. However, validity is restored when a correction term is introduced into the regression model. In the empirical section, I investigate the dependence between the quantile of U.S. MSCI returns and the quantile of MSCI returns to eight other countries including Canada and major equity markets in Europe and Asia. Using regression models based on the Gaussian and Student-t copula, I construct correlation surfaces that reflect how the correlations between quantiles of these market returns behave. Generally, the correlations tend to rise gradually when the markets are increasingly bearish, as reflected by the fact that the returns are jointly declining. In addition, correlations tend to rise when markets are increasingly bullish, although the magnitude is smaller than the increase associated with bear markets. The second chapter considers an application of the quantile dependence model in empirical macroeconomics examining the money-output relationship. One area in this line of research focuses on the asymmetric effects of monetary policy on output growth. In particular, letting the negative residuals estimated from a money equation represent contractionary monetary policy shocks and the positive residuals represent expansionary shocks, it has been widely established that output growth declines more following a contractionary shock than it increases following an expansionary shock of the same magnitude. However, correctly identifying episodes of contraction and expansion in this manner presupposes that the true monetary innovation has a zero population mean, which is not verifiable. Therefore, I propose interpreting the quantiles of the monetary shocks as having information about the monetary policy stance. For instance, the 10th percentile shock reflects a restrictive stance relative to the 90th percentile shock, and the ranking of shocks is preserved regardless of shifts in the shock's distribution. This idea motivates modeling output growth as a function of the quantiles of monetary shocks. In addition, I consider modeling the quantile of output growth, which will enable policymakers to ascertain whether certain monetary policy objectives, as indexed by quantiles of monetary shocks, will be more effective in particular economic states, as indexed by quantiles of output growth. Therefore, this calls for a unified framework that models the relationship between the quantile of output growth and the quantile of monetary shocks. This framework employs a power series method to estimate quantile dependence. Monte Carlo experiments demonstrate that regressions based on cubic or quartic expansions are able to estimate the quantile dependence relationships well with reasonable bias properties and root-mean-squared errors. Hence, using the cubic and quartic regression models with M1 or M2 money supply growth as monetary instruments, I show that the right tail of the output growth distribution is generally more sensitive to M1 money supply shocks, while both tails of output growth distribution are more sensitive than the center is to M2 money supply shocks, implying that monetary policy is more effective in periods of very low and very high growth rates. In addition, when non-neutral, the influence of monetary policy on output growth is stronger when it is restrictive than expansive, which is consistent with previous findings on the asymmetric effects of monetary policy on output. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

As taxas reais de juro básicas que têm sido praticadas no Brasil ao longo de um período de já quase quinze anos têm se mantido de forma permanente em níveis extremamente elevados quando comparadas com as taxas historicamente praticadas no país, ou quanto colocadas em uma perspectiva internacional. Neste trabalho, procurou-se proceder a uma análise crítica sistemática das principais teorias sugeridas pelo campo ortodoxo da teoria econômica com o objetivo de explicar a situação excepcional do Brasil, examinando os resultados empíricos por elas obtidos. De um modo geral, a análise conduzida não encontrou evidências satisfatórias capazes de sustentar a relevância ou por vezes a própria validade das teorias examinadas, as quais demonstraram claramente ser tanto teórica quanto empiricamente insuficientes para justificar a manutenção dos níveis das taxas reais de juro praticados no país. Assim, as conclusões e recomendações de política construídas a partir do conjunto de teorias aqui analisado cuja adequação para o caso brasileiro é posta em dúvida neste trabalho devem ser normalmente vistas com reserva. Por outro lado, procedeu-se a uma análise crítica dos fundamentos teóricos e empíricos sobre os quais se apóia a maneira em que a política monetária tem sido conduzida no país, de forma a verificar se as excepcionais taxas reais de juro brasileiras não decorreriam das necessidades impostas por uma política cujo principal objetivo declarado é manter o controle da inflação. Após proceder ao exame desses fundamentos, não se encontraram na condução da política monetária os elementos que pudessem justificar a particularidade daquelas taxas. Tendo a abordagem ortodoxa se mostrado globalmente insatisfatória como forma de explicar as taxas reais de juro brasileiras, é introduzida uma abordagem alternativa baseada na economia das convenções, a qual se mostrou a princípio capaz de fornecer bons indicativos para resolver a questão. / The basic real interest rates which have been in place in Brazil throughout a period of almost fifteen years remained at extremely high levels when compared against those rates historically valid in the country or when placed into an international perspective. This work has tried to proceed to a systematic analysis of the main theories suggested by the economic orthodoxy, which aim to explain the exceptional situation of Brazil, examining the empirical results such theories have obtained. In a general manner, the analysis has not found satisfactory evidences able to support the relevance or even in some cases the validity for the examined theories, which have clearly demonstrated being both theoretically and empirically insufficient to explain the maintenance of the levels of real interest rates in Brazil. Thus, the conclusions and policy recommendations built from such theories whose capacity of fitting to the Brazilian case was challenged in this work must be taken with particular care. By the other hand, it was performed an analysis on the theoretical and empirical grounds of the manner in which monetary policy was conducted in the country, in order to verify whether the exceptional Brazilian real interest rates could not be originated from the requirements imposed by a policy whose main declared target consists in maintaining the control of the inflation level. After examining those fundamentals, no elements on the monetary policy conduction were found which could justify the peculiarity of those rates. As the orthodox approach turned to be globally unsatisfactory as a way of explaining the Brazilian real interest rates, it was introduced an alternative approach, based on the economics of conventions, which showed itself as being able at first to provide useful insights to help to solve the question.

Este trabalho estuda os impactos da política monetária nas variáveis reais da economia brasileira. Será testado o efeito de movimentos não esperados da política monetária sobre a atividade econômica e o desemprego com base nos modelos Neoclássicos e Novo-Keynesianos, de que o que importa para o comportamento das variáveis reais é a parte não-esperada da política monetária. Como medida de surpresa da política monetária será utiliza o erro de previsão do mercado para a taxa de juros estabelecida pela autoridade monetária / This work studies the impacts of the monetary policy in the real variables of the Brazilian economy. It will be tested the unanticipated movements of the monetary policy in the economic activity and unemployment according whit the Neoclassical and new Keynesians models, which the importance the real variables is the unanticipated component of the monetary policy. As measure of surprise it will be used the error forecast for the interest rate established by the monetary authority.