NEWS SHOCKS AND THE EFFECTS OF MONETARY POLICY

Traditionally identified monetary shocks in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model typically result in long-lasting effects on output and total factor productivity (TFP). In this paper, I argue that the typical monetary shock has been confounded with the news shock about future technology. I propose and implement a novel SVAR approach that effectively “cleans” the technology component from the traditional Cholesky monetary shock. With the new identification, I find that a monetary shock exerts smaller and less persistent effects on output and the level of measured TFP than a traditionally identified monetary shock. Finally, I show that the SVAR impulse responses can be replicated by augmenting the standard New Keynesian model with a time-varying inflation target and a non-Ricardian fiscal policy regime.

Financial crisis and economic recession

The severe financial crisis and resulting worldwide economic recession we have been forecasting for years are finally unleashing their fury. In fact, the reckless policy of artificial credit expansion that central banks (led by the American Federal Reserve) have permitted and orchestrated over the last fifteen years could not have ended in any other way. The expansionary cycle that has now come to a close was set in motion when the American economy emerged from its last recession in 2001 and the Federal Reserve reembarked on the major artificial expansion of credit and investment initiated in 1992, an expansion unbacked by a parallel increase in voluntary household saving. For many years, the money supply in the form of banknotes and deposits has grown at an average rate of over ten percent per year (which means that every seven years the total volume of money circulating in the world has doubled). The media of exchange originating from this severe fiduciary inflation have been placed on the market by the banking system as newly created loans granted at extremely low (and even negative in real terms) interest rates. The above fueled a speculative bubble in the shape of a substantial rise in the prices of capital goods, real estate assets, and the securities that represent them and are exchanged on the stock market, where indexes soared. Curiously, as in the «roaring» years prior to the Great Depression of 1929, the shock of monetary growth has not significantly influenced the prices of the subset of goods and services at the final-consumer level of the production structure (approximately only one third of all goods). The decade just past, like the 1920s, has seen a remarkable increase in productivity as a result of the introduction on a massive scale of new technologies and significant entrepreneurial innovations which, were it not for the «money and credit binge,» would have given rise to a healthy and sustained reduction in the unit price of the goods and services all citizens consume. Moreover, the full incorporation of the economies of China and India into the globalized market has gradually raised the real productivity of consumer goods and services even further. The absence of a healthy «deflation» in the prices of consumer goods in a period of such considerable growth in productivity as that of recent years provides the main evidence that the monetary shock has seriously disturbed the economic process. Economic theory teaches us that, unfortunately, artificial credit expansion and the (fiduciary) inflation of media of exchange offer no shortcut to stable and sustained economic development, no way of avoiding the necessary sacrifice and discipline behind all voluntary saving. (In fact, particularly in the United States, voluntary saving has not only failed to increase, but in some years has even fallen to a negative rate.) Indeed, the artificial expansion of credit and money is never more than a short-term solution, and often not even that. In fact, today there is no doubt about the recessionary consequence that the monetary shock always has in the long run: newly created loans (of money citizens have not first saved) immediately provide entrepreneurs with purchasing power they use in overly ambitious investment projects (in recent years, especially in the building sector and real-estate development). In other words, entrepreneurs act as if citizens had increased their saving, when they have not actually done so.

Identification of monetary shocks through the yield curve: Evidence for Brazil

This paper derives a new measure of monetary shock for Brazil based on the yield curve. First, the Diebold and Li (2006) model is estimated with nominal yields. The changes of the latent variables of this model surrounding monetary policy meetings are used to analyze the effects on the Brazilian economy. Monetary policy decisions associated with steeper yield curves lead to higher future economic activity.

Shocks vs Menu Costs: Patterns of Price Rigidity in an Estimated Multi-Sector Menu-Cost Model

Sectoral heterogeneity matters for monetary policy. Using CPI microdata, we estimate for 227 products a time–varying menu-cost model to investigate the quantitative relevance of this heterogeneity. We find a substantial degree of cross-sectoral heterogeneity in all structural parameters. Heterogeneity in the Calvo component of the pricing friction is however the main source of heterogeneity in price rigidity. Cross-sectoral heterogeneity amplifies the output effect of a monetary shock by a factor of about 2.5, compared to a single-sector model estimated with mean moments. Heterogeneity in the Calvo parameter plays a key role in this amplification.

Impact of demonetization 2016 on Venezuelan economy

This article aims to analyze the impact of demonetization 2016 on the Venezuelan economy. The Government of Venezuela demonetized the 100 bolívares notes on December 11, 2016, for achieving economic, monetary and price stability, eliminating the smuggling of banknotes, achieving a higher level of efficiency and quality in government management, and eliminating the laundering of bolívares. In this sense, the origin of the measure is presented and the proposed objectives set are explored. It results that the measure generated shortages of cash, changes in production decisions and commercialization of goods, increase in deposits in the Venezuelan banking system, change in the evolution of monetary aggregates, protests in the offices of banking, and a new distribution of the monetary cone. The originality of this work lies in it being a pioneer in analyzing the impact of demonetizations implemented in Venezuela and Latin America. It is concluded that the demonetization represented a monetary shock that altered the evolution of the economy and required complementary measures to mitigate its effects on the welfare of the population.

DAMPAK KAPITULASI TERHADAP PERADILAN TURKI UTSMANI

The Ottoman Empire stood above Sharia’s Islam, which at first was only a sultanate and then its power expanded to the gates of Vienna (Austria), the North African region, Arabia and its territory to Aceh Darussalam. The Legal Capitulation Treaty was favorable in the heyday, because traders were stimulated to carry out activities in the Ottoman ports, especially in Istanbul. Significant increase in the country's foreign exchange, so that large activities are carried out without any monetary shock. After a leadership crisis, this legal capitulation agreement has been fruitful. More and more foreign consuls, expanded treaties and sharia judgments began to lose function because many Christian citizens and Jews who had never known the French, British and other European countries had taken refuge behind the Capitulation agreement which had privileges in tax relief, immune from civil or criminal law. This led to the secularism of Ottoman law which contained European law material. There is an uncontrolled Tanzimat, it should only be in the field of military and economic technology and strategy but has penetrated the judicial system and legal material. Which ends with the loss of Ottoman sovereignty.