Household Indebtedness, Financial Frictions and the Transmission of Monetary Policy to Consumption: Evidence from China
Michael Funke, Xiang Li, Doudou Zhong
Emerging Markets Review,
forthcoming
Abstract
This paper studies the impact of household indebtedness on the transmission of monetary policy to consumption using the Chinese household-level survey data. We employ a panel smooth transition regression model to investigate the non-linear role of indebtedness. We find that housing-related indebtedness weakens the monetary policy transmission, and this effect is non-linear as there is a much larger counteraction of consumption in response to monetary policy shocks when household indebtedness increases from a low level rather than from a high level. Moreover, the weakened monetary policy transmission from indebtedness is stronger in urban households than in rural households. This can be explained by the investment good characteristic of real estate in China.
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Active Driver or Passive Victim - On the Role of International Monetary Policy Transmission
Annika Camehl, Gregor von Schweinitz
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 3,
2023
Abstract
We provide new insights into determinants of international interest rates spillovers across seven advanced economies. To disentangle and quantify their respective importance, we identify country-specific structural monetary policy, demand, and supply equations in a Bayesian structural panel vector autoregressive model. We formulate prior beliefs on magnitudes and signs of contemporaneous structural coefficients (i.e., (semi-)elasticities), based on a standard theoretical multi-country open economy model from the literature. Our findings show that interest rate spillovers occur via an aggregated demand channel. Unexpected monetary tightening causes modest declines in most foreign interest rates, while demand and supply shocks result in increased foreign interest rates. Our results support that central banks respond to changes in the domestic macroeconomic environment induced by domestic or foreign shocks rather than directly reacting to foreign shocks. Spillovers are quantitatively stronger for shocks originating in economically large areas with strong trade linkages.
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Real Estate Transaction Taxes and Credit Supply
Michael Koetter, Philipp Marek, Antonios Mavropoulos
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 26,
2022
Abstract
We exploit staggered real estate transaction tax (RETT) hikes across German states to identify the effect of house price changes on mortgage credit supply. Based on approximately 33 million real estate online listings, we construct a quarterly hedonic house price index (HPI) between 2008:q1 and 2017:q4, which we instrument with state-specific RETT changes to isolate the effect on mortgage credit supply by all local German banks. First, a RETT hike by one percentage point reduces HPI by 1.2%. This effect is driven by listings in rural regions. Second, a 1% contraction of HPI induced by an increase in the RETT leads to a 1.4% decline in mortgage lending. This transmission of fiscal policy to mortgage credit supply is effective across almost the entire bank capitalization distribution.
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Understanding Post-Covid Inflation Dynamics
Martín Harding, Jesper Lindé, Mathias Trabandt
Working Paper,
2022
Abstract
We propose a macroeconomic model with a nonlinear Phillips curve that has a flat slope when inflationary pressures are subdued and steepens when inflationary pressures are elevated. The nonlinear Phillips curve in our model arises due to a quasi-kinked demand schedule for goods produced by firms. Our model can jointly account for the modest decline in inflation during the Great Recession and the surge in inflation during the Post-Covid period. Because our model implies a stronger transmission of shocks when inflation is high, it generates conditional heteroscedasticity in inflation and inflation risk. Hence, our model can generate more sizeable inflation surges due to cost-push and demand shocks than a standard linearized model. Finally, our model implies that the central bank faces a more severe trade-off between inflation and output stabilization when inflation is high.
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