The informational content of unconventional monetary policy on precious metal markets

This paper investigates the informational content of unconventional monetary policies and its effect on commodity markets, adopting a nonlinear approach for modeling volatility. The main question addressed is how the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and European Central Bank's (ECB's) announcements concerning monetary easing affect two major commodities: gold and silver. Our empirical evidence based on daily and high‐frequency data suggests that relevant information causes ambiguous valuation adjustments as well as stabilization or destabilization effects. Specifically, there is strong evidence that the Japanese Central Bank strengthens the precious metal markets by increasing their returns and by causing stabilization effects, in contrast to the ECB, which has opposite results, mainly due to the heterogeneous expectations of investors within these markets. These asymmetries across central banks' effects on gold and silver risk–return profile imply that the ECB unconventional monetary easing informational content opposes its stated mission, adding uncertainty in precious metals markets.     

Estimating trend growth rates of the U.K. monetary aggregates

This paper constructs current trend growth rates for a variety of U.K. monetary aggregates. These rates are computed from decompositions of intervention-augmented ARIMA models, the interventions being identified and their magnitude estimated by an iterative detection procedure.     

The real exchange rate,fiscal policy and the role of wealth an analysis of equilibrium in a monetary union

This paper is concerned with the adjustment processes within a potential European monetary union and looks in particular at permanent asymmetric shocks that require an adjustment in a country's (or region's) real exchange rate. We first consider some of the implications of EMU and the question of asymmetries within the European economy. The presence of asymmetries and, in particular, different institutional structures in labour markets is a potential source of tension within a union and it could make a union difficult to sustain. However, automatic adjustment processes will be at work within a monetary union as a result of changes in relative price levels, which change real exchange rates, and also as a result of changes in wealth stocks. We use our econometric world model, NIGEM, to investigate the effects of asymmetric fiscal expansions and real exchange rate misalignments within a monetary union. In order to quantify the effects of such permanent asymmetric shocks we have introduced wealth into our model. Our simulations suggest that the principal impact of the fiscal expansion on both output and the price level will occur within the country in which the expansion occurs. Short-term gains are crowded out in the medium term, and while monetary union reduces crowding out in the short term, it increases the rate at which crowding out occurs thereafter. We also analyse the effects of real exchange rate misalignments and find that the processes of adjustment may be very protracted. This could cause strain on the union as adjustment costs are shared unequally.     

The role of macroeconometric models in forecasting and policy analysis in the united states

This article stresses how little is known about the quality, particularly the relative quality, of macroeconometric models. Most economists make a strict distinction between the quality of a model per se and the accuracy of solutions based on that model. While this distinction is valid, it leaves unanswered how to compare the‘validity’of conditional models. The standard test, the accuracy of ex post simulations, is not definitive when models with differing degrees of exogeneity are compared. In addition, it is extremely difficult to estimate the relative quantitative importance of conceptual problems of models, such as parameter instability across‘policy regimes’ In light of the difficulty in comparisons of conditional macroeconometric models, many model-builders and users assume that the best models are those that have been used to make the most accurate forecasts are those made with the best models. Forecasting experience indicates that forecasters using macroeconometric models have produced more accurate macroeconomic forecasts than either naive or sophisticated unconditional statistical models. It also suggests that judgementally adjusted forecasts have been more accurate than model-based forecasts generated mechanically. The influence of econometrically-based forecasts is now so pervasive that it is difficult to find examples of‘purely judgemental’forecasts.