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Carney Guides The Bank of England Forward: Economic Research
Carney Guides The Bank of England Forward: Economic Research
Table Of Contents
Following The Fed But Different Carney Is Not King Forward Guidance As A Natural Innovation Within Inflation-Targeting The Limits Of Forward Guidance Forward Guidance And The Reaction Function Monetary Policy Evolution: Replication Of Another Mutation Endnotes Related Research
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Economic Research:
In response to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's request to the MPC to consider the issue in a letter accompanying its 2013 annual "remit" (2), the MPC on Aug. 1 provided "some explicit guidance regarding the future conduct of monetary policy." Specifically, it said: "The MPC intends at a minimum to maintain the present highly stimulative stance of monetary policy until economic slack has been substantially reduced, provided this does not entail material risks to price stability or financial stability." In particular, the MPC stated that it "intends not to raise Bank Rate from its current level of 0.5% at least until the Labour Force Survey headline measure of the unemployment rate has fallen to a threshold of 7%" (versus the current 7.8%), subject to any of three so-called "knockout" conditions. The forward guidance would cease to hold if any of these three conditions were breached: "in the MPC's view, it is more likely than not that CPI inflation 18 to 24 months ahead will be 0.5 percentage points or more above the 2% target; medium-term inflation expectations no longer remain sufficiently well anchored; the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) judges that the stance of monetary policy poses a significant threat to
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financial stability that cannot be contained by the substantial range of mitigating policy actions available to the FPC, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Prudential Regulation Authority in a way consistent with their objectives." The MPC also issued forward guidance regarding its quantitative easing (QE), stating that it "stands ready to undertake further asset purchases while the unemployment rate remains above 7% if it judges that additional monetary stimulus is warranted. But until the unemployment threshold is reached, and subject to the conditions [above], the MPC intends not to reduce the stock of asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves and, consistent with that, intends to reinvest the cash flows associated with all maturing gilts held in the Asset Purchase Facility."
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A second difference is that the BoE has a single forward guidance aligned to both its QE and policy-rate decisions. By contrast, the Fed has two strands of forward guidance pertaining to these, respectively, which differ also in their degree of specificity. The BoE says it will not hike its policy rate or reduce its stock of QE assets until the unemployment rate falls to at least 7%. The Fed says it will keep expanding its balance sheet "until the outlook for the labor market has improved substantially in a context of price stability" and will not hike the federal funds rate until the unemployment rate falls to at least 6.5%. In June, reflecting Federal Open Market Committee discussions, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated that "in the vicinity of 7%" is the "magic number" (my words) corresponding to a "substantial improvement in the labor market outlook." The BoE trumps the Fed on the simplicity of its forward guidance. The BoE's forward guidance differs from the Fed's also in making a specific allowance for financial stability considerations. On paper, the way this is done is innovative and reflects the BoE's evolved institutional structure. As a result of learning from the financial crisis, the BoE now has a Financial Policy Committee (FPC) that operates parallel to the Monetary Policy Committee, with overlapping membership (but not completely so) (3). The FPC, one arm of the BoE, can in effect veto an aspect of the monetary policy decisions of another arm, the MPC, "knocking out" its forward guidance. This may be a first in central banking history. One should not, however, mistake a tendency toward over-engineering for substance. For one thing, given the core overlapping membership, the relationship between the two committees is hardly arms-length. Also, before the FPC
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exercises this partial "veto power," it and the Prudential Regulation Authority (another new arm of the BoE) and the Financial Conduct Authority (whose chief executive sits on the FPC) must have exhausted their own efforts to mitigate the threat to financial stability using the panoply of their tools. Moreover, this and the other two knockouts do not trigger any changes in actual monetary policy settings; they just remove the guidance about possible future actions. The actions--for instance, a hike in the policy rate to X% or the beginning of a reduction in the stock of asset purchases at future date Y--are still possible, although the subjective probability assigned to them by the market will likely have changed. Eyes starting to glaze over?
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Suppose a central bank wants to achieve a challenging policy objective--for example, to quash a deflation risk or bring about a big fall in unemployment. Precommitment involves the central bank announcing that it will maintain certain policy settings until specific publicly observable and therefore verifiable conditions are met. Appropriately designed precommitment can be potent because it can allow the central bank to tie its hands and commit to "time inconsistent" behavior. That is, the central bank may be able to commit "today" to take an action "tomorrow" that will not be the optimal thing for it to do when tomorrow arrives (5). Economists usually impose "time consistency" on their models and market participants, and the public, regardless of whether they understand the theory and jargon or not, assume that policymakers behave in a "time consistent" way. Because for central bankers precommitting not to do so goes against the grain so much, they are very reluctant to do it, which would only increase its potential potency if they did (6). Conditionality, by respecting time consistency, paradoxically weakens the potency of forward guidance. In fact, to an extent, conditionality may merely shift the location of uncertainty regarding the central bank's future actions within the monetary-policy framework, as opposed to reducing it. For instance, tying monetary policy settings to an intermediate target of a 7% unemployment rate seems to reduce uncertainty about the future path of interest rates because the public should not expect higher policy rates until unemployment falls to at least 7%. But if the net effect of the forward guidance is stimulatory, can the public be confident that the inflation knockouts will not kick in ahead of that? An apparent reduction in uncertainty because of the transparency surrounding the intermediate target may lead to increased uncertainty surrounding the knockout conditions. After all, the one time that the Bank of Canada used conditional forward guidance under its then-Governor Carney, the forward guidance was overtaken by the conditionality kicking in (7). This experience may engender confidence that Carney-style forward guidance will work. But lurking somewhere in the argument seems to be a violation of the canonical assumption that the public has rational expectations. Another limitation of forward guidance, applicable to QE as well (and arguably endemic to monetary policymaking more generally), is that longer-term rates and the yield curve have to serve double duty. They must transmit the effects of monetary easing (via lower rates) and reflect its success (which must lead to higher rates). It is hard for the yield curve to do a good job at both at the same time.
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complementary. This may well account for another difference between the BoE and the Fed: the Fed's more aggressive monetary-policy stance. The Fed is continuing to expand its balance sheet, adding $85 billion of assets a month, whereas the BoE is holding its stock of assets purchased constant. A second is that, whereas the Fed has long had a "dual mandate" to maximize employment and pursue price stability (9), the BoE, since gaining operational independence in 1997, has been seen much more as a "pure" inflation targeter. That has been more a perception than a reality, or at least what should have been the reality. The Bank of England Act of 1998 stipulates: "In relation to monetary policy, the objectives of the Bank of England shall be (a) to maintain price stability, and (b) subject to that, to support the economic policy of Her Majesty's Government, including its objectives for growth and employment." The BoE has always had a kind of dual mandate; perhaps it is now just coming more to the fore.
Endnotes
(1) For full details and background analysis, see the 44 page report issued by the Bank: "Monetary policy trade-offs and forward guidance." (2) In March, the Chancellor wrote: "Transparency plays an important role in communicating the tradeoffs inherent in setting monetary policy. I welcome the Bank of England's response to the independent Stockton Review into the Monetary Policy Committee's forecasting capability, which was published this month. Over the past year, reflecting the exceptional challenge facing monetary policy makers, there has been ongoing innovation by central banks around the world. The Bank of England, with the Treasury, has launched the Funding for Lending Scheme; the European Central Bank has introduced Outright Monetary Transactions; the US Federal Reserve has developed its forward guidance such that it is currently using state-contingent intermediate thresholds to influence expectations. The Committee has discussed a range of instruments, communicating that discussion through its minutes and the speeches of Committee members. Monetary activism has a vital role to play in the Government's economic strategy as the Government delivers on its
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commitment to fiscal consolidation. Given the ongoing exceptional challenges facing the UK economy, it is possible the Committee may judge it necessary to deploy new unconventional policy instruments or approaches in future, including some of those deployed by other central banks in recent years. The remit clarifies that the development of new unconventional instruments should include consideration with Government of appropriate governance and accountability arrangements. It also requests that the Committee provide in its August 2013 Inflation Report an assessment of the merits of intermediate thresholds." And in the remit itself: "The Committee may also judge it to be appropriate to deploy explicit forward guidance including intermediate thresholds in order to influence expectations and thereby meet its objectives more effectively." (3) The governor, the deputy governor (monetary policy) and deputy governor (financial stability) are members of both the MPC and the FPC, but the remaining members differ. The BoE's chief economist and the executive director for markets and four external members sit on the MPC, while the BoE's executive director for financial stability, the chief executive of the Prudential Regulatory Authority, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, and four external members sit on the FPC. (4) See Mark Carney, "Guidance," Remarks to the CFA Society Toronto, Dec. 11, 2012. (5) For a classic paper making this point, see Paul Krugman, 1998: "It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2. (6) The ECB is fond of saying that it "never pre-commits." But it recently introduced a very weak form of forward guidance; the introductory statement to the press conference after the July 4, 2013, Governing Council Meeting stated: "Looking ahead, our monetary policy stance will remain accommodative for as long as necessary. The Governing Council expects the key ECB interest rates to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time." Previously, the ECB had just said that "our monetary policy stance will remain accommodative for as long as necessary," something that barely rose above stating the obvious. (7) In April 2009, the Bank of Canada lowered its policy (overnight) rate target by 0.25% to 0.25% and stated: "With monetary policy now operating at the effective lower bound for the overnight policy rate, it is appropriate to provide more explicit guidance than is usual regarding its future path so as to influence rates at longer maturities. Conditional on the outlook for inflation, the target overnight rate can be expected to remain at its current level until the end of the second quarter of 2010 in order to achieve the inflation target. The Bank will continue to provide such guidance in its scheduled interest rate announcements as long as the overnight rate is at the effective lower bound." In April 2010, the Bank kept the policy rate unchanged but removed the conditional commitment, and on June 1 it raised the policy rate by 0.25% to 0.5%. (8) In this regard, and at the risk of splitting linguistic hairs, it is worth noting a subtle difference between the Fed's and the BoE's respective conditions relating to inflation expectations. The Fed stipulates that "longer-term inflation expectations [must] continue to be well anchored," whereas the BoE requires that "medium-term inflation expectations [remain] sufficiently well anchored." With that one innocuous-looking word "sufficiently," is the BoE hinting at a slightly higher tolerance than the Fed for inflation?
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(9) Actually the Fed has a "triple mandate," promoting moderate long-term interest rates being the third. That is hardly an issue now, but conceivably it might become one day. (10) As one element, the BOJ announced a "CPI guideline for the duration of the new procedures," stating that "the new procedures for money market operations [will] continue to be in place until the consumer price index registers stably a zero percent [sic] or an increase year on year." CPI inflation at the time was negative and had been for some time.
Related Research
Repeat After Me: Banks Cannot And Do Not "Lend Out" Reserves, Aug. 13, 2013 "Hawk" And "Dove" Labels Are For The Birds, July 29, 2013 All You Need To Know About "Abenomics", June 12, 2013 Rethinking Monetary Policy: Lessons And Reminders From The Great Financial Crisis, April 3, 2013 Behind The Platinum Coin Ploy: The Monetary Mechanics, Jan. 15, 2013 The Fed: Parsing Its Communications, Jan. 7, 2013 The Fed: Full Steam Ahead, Dec. 13, 2012
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