Federal Reserve System

About: Federal Reserve System is a other organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 2373 authors who have published 10301 publications receiving 511979 citations.

Armed Conflict, Household Victimization, and Child Health in Cote d'Ivoire

Abstract: We examine the causal impact of the 2002-2007 civil conflict in Cote d'Ivoire on children's health using household surveys collected before, during, and after the conflict, and information on the exact location and date of conflict events. Our identification strategy relies on exploiting both temporal and spatial variation across birth cohorts to measure children's exposure to the conflict. We find that children from regions more affected by the conflict suffered significant health setbacks compared with children from less affected regions. We further examine possible war impact mechanisms using rich survey data on households' experience of war. Our results suggest that conflict-related household victimization, and in particular economic losses, is an important channel through which armed conflict negatively impacts child health.

Pricing, Production, and Persistence

Abstract: Though built with increasingly precise microfoundations, modern optimizing sticky price models have displayed a chronic inability to generate large and persistent real responses to monetary shocks, as recently stressed by Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan [2000]. This is an ironic finding, since Taylor [1980] and other researchers were motivated to study sticky price models in part by the objective of generating large and persistent business fluctuations. The authors trace this lack of persistence to a standard view of the cyclical behavior of real marginal cost built into current sticky price macro models. Using a fully-articulated general equilibrium model, they show how an alternative view of real marginal cost can lead to substantial persistence. This alternative view is based on three features of the supply side of the economy that we believe are realistic: an important role for produced inputs, variable capacity utilization, and labor supply variability through changes in employment. Importantly, these real flexibilities work together to dramatically reduce the elasticity of marginal cost with respect to output, from levels much larger than unity in CKM to values much smaller than unity in this analysis. These real flexibilities consequently reduce the extent of price adjustments by firms in time-dependent pricing economies and the incentives for paying fixed costs of adjustment in state-dependent pricing economies. The structural features also lead the sticky price model to display volatility and comovement of factor inputs and factor prices that are more closely in line with conventional wisdom about business cycles and various empirical studies of the dynamic effects of monetary shocks.

How have central banks implemented negative policy rates

Abstract: Since mid-2014, four central banks in Europe have moved their policy rates into negative territory. These unconventional moves were by and large implemented within existing operational frameworks. Yet the modalities of implementation have important implications for the costs of holding central bank reserves. The experience so far suggests that modestly negative policy rates transmit through to money markets and other interest rates for the most part in the same way that positive rates do. A key exception is retail deposit rates, which have remained insulated so far, and some mortgage rates, which have perversely increased. Looking ahead, there is great uncertainty about the behaviour of individuals and institutions if rates were to decline further into negative territory or remain negative for a prolonged period.

Inflation persistence and optimal monetary policy in the Euro area

Abstract: In this paper we first present supporting evidence of the existence of heterogeneity in inflation dynamics across euro area countries. Based on the estimation of New Phillips Curves for five major countries of the euro area, we find that there is significant inertial (backward looking) behavior in inflation in four of them, while inflation in Germany has a dominant forward looking component. In the second part of the paper we present an optimizing agent model for the euro area emphasizing the heterogeneity in inflation persistence across regions. Allowing for such a backward looking component will affect the evaluation of the degree of nominal rigidities relevant for the monetary policy design. We explore the welfare implications of this circumstance by comparing the adjustment of the economies and the area as a whole in response to terms-of-trade shocks under four monetary policy rules: fully optimal, optimal inflation targeting, HICP targeting and output gap stabilization.