Do shocks to government spending raise or lower consumption and real wages? Standard VAR identification approaches show a rise in these variables, whereas the Ramey-Shapiro narrative identification approach finds a fall. I show that a key difference in the approaches is the timing. Both professional forecasts and the narrative approach shocks Granger-cause the VAR shocks, implying that the VAR shocks are missing the timing of the news. Simulations from a standard neoclassical model in which government spending is anticipated by several quarters demonstrate that VARs estimated with faulty timing can produce a rise in consumption even when it decreases in the model. Motivated by the importance of measuring anticipations, I construct two new variables that measure anticipations. The first is based on narrative evidence that is much richer than the Ramey-Shapiro military dates and covers 1939 to 2008. The second is from the Survey of Professional Forecasters, and covers the period 1969 to 2008. All news measures suggest that most components of consumption fall after a positive shock to government spending. The implied government spending multipliers range from 0.6 to 1.1.

Identifying Government Spending Shocks: It's All in the Timing

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication-mostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this ever-growing literature. The evidence suggests that communication, can be an important and powerful part of the central bank's toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets, to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions, and potentially to help achieve central banks' macroeconomic objectives. However, the large variation in communication, strategies across central banks suggests that a. consensus has yet to emerge, on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy.

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Central bank communication and monetary policy: A survey of theory and evidence

We provide evidence on the transmission of monetary policy shocks in a setting with both economic and financial variables. We first show that shocks identified using high frequency surprises around policy announcements as external instruments produce responses in output and inflation that are typical in monetary VAR analysis. We also find, however, that the resulting "modest" movements in short rates lead to "large" movements in credit costs, which are due mainly to the reaction of both term premia and credit spreads. Finally, we show that forward guidance is important to the overall strength of policy transmission. (JEL E31, E32, E43, E44, E52, G01)

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Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity †

Standard vector autoregression (VAR) identification methods find that government spending raises consumption and real wages; the Ramey–Shapiro narrative approach finds the opposite. I show that a key difference in the approaches is the timing. Both professional forecasts and the narrative approach shocks Granger-cause the VAR shocks, implying that these shocks are missing the timing of the news. Motivated by the importance of measuring anticipations, I use a narrative method to construct richer government spending news variables from 1939 to 2008. The implied government spending multipliers range from 0.6 to 1.2.

/pdf/identifying-government-spending-shocks-it-s-all-in-the-yavymo8vxb.pdf

Identifying Government Spending Shocks: It's all in the Timing*

COVID-19 pandemic, oil prices, stock market, geopolitical risk and policy uncertainty nexus in the US economy: Fresh evidence from the wavelet-based approach

The analysis in this paper was presented to the Federal Open Market Committee as background for its discussion of the Federal Reserve’s review of monetary policy strategy, tools, and communication practices. The Committee discussed issues related to the review at five consecutive meetings from July 2019 to January 2020. References to the FOMC’s current framework for monetary policy refer to the framework articulated in the Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy first issued in January 2012 and reaffirmed each January, most recently in January 2019.

Monetary Policy and Economic Performance since the Financial Crisis

In this note, we first document the recent rise in trade policy uncertainty, henceforth TPU, by using two complementary measures based on text-search analysis: one focusing on newspapers articles, and another constructed from transcripts of firms' earning calls. We then use econometric evidence on the joint movements in aggregate TPU, industrial production, and other macroeconomic variables in order to provide an estimate of the effects of the recent spikes in TPU on U.S. GDP, as well as GDP in advanced foreign economies (AFEs) and emerging market economies (EMEs).

Does Trade Policy Uncertainty Affect Global Economic Activity

In this paper we analyze the propagation of shocks originating in sectors that are not present in a baseline dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. Specifically, we proxy the missing sector through a small set of factors, that feed into the structural shocks of the DSGE model to create correlated disturbances. We estimate the factor structure by matching impulse responses of the augmented DSGE model to those generated by an auxiliary model. We apply this methodology to track the effects of oil shocks and housing demand shocks in models without energy and housing sectors.

Practical tools for policy analysis in DSGE models with missing channels

There is a consensus about the increasing exposure to disruptions in the financial system and economic uncertainty over the recent years. Despite their different implications for policy, discriminating empirically between these two sources of economic fluctuations is not an easy task because their available empirical proxies are strongly correlated. We aim at making progress in discriminating financial and uncertainty shocks by means of an atheoretical approach to identification following the penalty function proposed by Uhlig (2003). We conclude that while the uncertainty channel plays a negligible role in the transmission of financial shocks; the financial channel is key in the transmission of uncertainty shocks. Financial shocks generate slowly-building and economically significant recessions followed by slow recoveries. Uncertainty shocks generate similar adverse effects if transmitted through the financial channel; otherwise, they have significantly smaller effects in economic activity.

On the Identification of Financial and Uncertainty Shocks

This paper provides new evidence on the transmission of monetary policy shocks to the real economy and to credit markets. The identification of monetary policy shock is based on a high-frequency event study analysis. Two key results emerge from the analysis for the Great Moderation period. First, monetary policy shocks were a key driver of business and credit market conditions, explaining 35% of the forecast error of industrial production and 50% of the excess bond premium. Second, monetary policy shocks explain all movement in the excess bond premium correlated with real activity leaving no role for exogenous disruptions in credit intermediation. Finally, we extend our analysis to include the Great Recession and to examine the role of unconventional monetary policy.

Dario Caldara

Papers

Monetary Policy and Economic Performance since the Financial Crisis

Does Trade Policy Uncertainty Affect Global Economic Activity

Practical tools for policy analysis in DSGE models with missing channels

On the Identification of Financial and Uncertainty Shocks

Monetary Policy, Credit Spreads, and Business Cycle Fluctuations