Archivos: Repositorios

After discussion of the lender of last resort before Bagehot, we turn to what Bagehot actually said about the concept, the institutions involved, and appropriate lending terms for the Bank of England in a crisis. We examine the application of “Bagehot principles” in several nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century episodes. By operating through the discount houses in the nineteenth century, the Bank of England was able to focus on the quality of the paper presented for discounting, rather than on the solvency of each individual bank. Emphasis was thus on the stability of the system, not of individual banks.

Leading central banks did not anticipate the surge in inflation in 2021 and 2022. In our paper we assess whether changes in the velocity of money and monetary growth (broadly defined) explain long term inflation patterns in the US. We use a hundred-year sample to study the long term and the cyclical behaviour of money velocity. We find that changes in the velocity of money are short lived and revert to its mean. We also characterise the periods where changes in money velocity have kept closer to its mean as those of monetary equilibrium. We use a regime switching model to test for the impact of changes in the amount of money (broadly defined) and in money velocity in inflation over the medium and long term. Our model explains both the non-inflationary outcome of the Global Financial Crisis and the surge in inflation in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The launch of the euro in 1999 was assumed to enhance macroeconomic convergence among EMU economies. We test this hypothesis from a comparative perspective, by calculating different indices to measure the degree of macroeconomic dispersion within the Eurozone, the UK and the USA (1999–2019). We use common factor models to produce a single index for each monetary area out of different measures of dispersion. These indices can be used to inform on the degree of optimality of a monetary area. Our results show that macroeconomic dispersion in the Eurozone increased notably even before 2007 and it took significantly longer to return to pre-crisis levels, as compared to the UK and the USA. The paper shows the critical role played by the ECB’s asset purchases programmes in reducing macroeconomic divergences among EMU member states since 2015.

Recent failures and rescues of large banks have resulted in colossal costs to society. In wake of such turmoil a new banking union must enable better supervision, pre-emptive coordinated action and taxpayer protection. While these aims are meritorious they will be difficult to achieve. This book explores the potential of a new banking union in Europe. This book brings together leading experts to analyse the challenges of banking in the European Union. While not all contributors agree, the constructive criticism provided in this book will help ensure that a new banking union will mature into a stable yet vibrant financial system that encourages the growth of economic activity and the efficient allocation of resources. This book will be of use to researchers interested in Banking, Monetary Economics and the European Union.

Decentralization processes have taken place all over the world in the last few decades. This has led to an increasing macroeconomic impact of sub-central government budgets. Normative literature on the role of sub-central governments on the implementation of stabilization policies is abundant. However, there is still little empirical evidence addressing the bias of sub-central budgets regarding the macroeconomic performance in their territories. Using a fiscal reaction function, a pool of data covering all the regional governments in Spain, and after adjusting the regional budget balance for inertia and the business cycle, we find empirical evidence of the countercyclical bias of Spanish regional governments fiscal policies during the period 1984-2014. This is in sharp contrast with the scarce previous literature on this filed.

This article is a step towards empirically assessing how close the Eurozone is to becoming an ‘optimal currency area’, as originally defined by Mundell (1961). For this purpose we have compiled ten indicators, organised them in four partial indices, and summarised them in an overall indicator of ‘optimality’. The resulting picture is mixed, with zone optimality not increasing when circumstances were favourable but the trend towards integration returning after the 2008–14 crisis. The suggestion is that disintegration during the crisis, rather than being evidence of failure of the Eurozone when the going was tough, showed a self-healing mechanism at work. However, our measurements and indices show that optimality is much further away than it was in 1999, when the euro was launched.

At the start of the European single currency in 1999, the ECB’s intellectual framework owed much to the Bundesbank, with heavy emphasis on the role of money in the determination of macro outcomes. From 2003 this emphasis was diluted, and for a few years high money growth was associated with asset price buoyancy and incipient inflationary pressure. But from 2008 the key authorities – including the ECB – focused on ‘tidying-up the banks’, almost regardless of the consequences for the quantity of money. Extreme monetary instability in the Eurozone ‘periphery’ was one consequence.

Responses to the financial crisis are undermining the Chinese walls painfully built between monetary and fiscal authorities. Central banks and state treasuries are working side by side as lenders of last resort. Central banks are helping economic ministers with purchases of public debt and discounting of private paper. Regulation and control of financial institutions is now a political football. Central banks must be seen again as market-dependent institutions in a world of currency competition. Privatisation in law or in fact is back on the table.

A new type of monetary policy rule designed to achieve both price and output stability has increasingly been recommended during the last business cycle expansion, prior to the 2007 crisis. This type of rule implies “active” reaction functions. Based on the new Keynesian approach to monetary economics, these rules prescribe an active response by the central bank in the face of any shock that shifts prices or output from target, which leads to excessive money creation. Here, a less active type of reaction function is proposed; one in which price stability is the long run target, but permitting prices to respond to changes originating in real disturbances. It is argued that the resulting policy delivers outcomes preferable to currently popular rules.

In this paper we model and analyze the contemporaneous correlation between interest rate, monetary aggregates, production and prices (of consumer goods, financial assets and real estate) of the euro area. To do this, firstly we estimate a common cyclical factor by means of an unobserved component model with the common factor located in variations in the underlying growth rates, that is, accelerations and decelerations of the variables. The variables mentioned share a significant cyclical factor being all procyclical except for narrow money. Finally we offer an explanation of this empirical finding based on the monetary policy strategy of interest rate pegging followed by the European Central Bank. In this regard, the shared cyclical information suggests (a) that inflation should be considered as a phenomenon that affects the whole economy, and therefore all prices, and (b) that monetary indicators such as monetary aggregates may contribute to the assessment of inflationary risks throughout the cycle.