Are Member States in the Eurozone converging since 1999? And how different the trend is as compared to that in the UK and the USA?

These are some of the main questions addressed in a paper just published in the Journal of Policy Modeling, written with my colleague Jose Luis Cendejas (Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Spain).

Title of the paper: ‘Macroeconomic asymmetry in the Eurozone before and after the Global Financial Crisis: An appraisal of the role of the ECB’.

Abstract:

‘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.’

Fig. 1. Overall indices of dispersion for the Eurozone, the UK, and the US. 1999 = 100. The higher the figure the higher dispersion is. You will find individual dispersion indices for 12 macroeconomic and monetary indicators for each economic area in the paper.

The paper can be accessed freely on the following link for the next 50 days: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161893821001009?dgcid=author

Comments and feedback most welcome.

Juan Castañeda

PS. Special mention to Professor Pedro Schwartz, with whom I started to work in this area years ago and have published on the topic before (see here and here).

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Money and inflation. The inflationary effects of Covid-19 crisis

Video of the presentation to the Centre for Global Finance (SOAS, University of London) on 12/5/2021, via webinar.

Summary points:

• The monetisation of enlarged budget deficits, combined with official support for emergency bank lending to cash-strained corporates, has led to extremely high growth- rates of the quantity of money (broadly defined) in leading economies, which are incompatible with price stability over the medium term. The excess in money balances by financial companies in 2020 has already led to a big bounce-back in financial markets and asset price inflation. In addition, once lockdowns are over and the pandemic is under control, the excess in money holdings by households and non-financial companies will result in higher nominal spending and output, and eventually CPI inflation.
• In sharp contrast with the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, the central banks’ response to Covid-19 crisis has resulted in an expansion of their balance sheets but also critically of bank deposits, and thus of the amount of money in the economy broadly defined (M3 in the USA). It is changes in the latter what explains changes in inflation over the medium term, and central banks should pay more attention in monitoring changes in broad money as effective leading indicators of inflation in 1-2 years.
• We are already seeing a significant increase in commodity prices, industrial prices and also in CPI prices in the USA. The extremely high growth rates of money seen in the USA since March 2021 (the highest rate in modern peacetime, over 25% year on year in 2020) will end up in an inflationary boom over the next few years. The duration and scale of the boom will be conditioned by the speed of broad money growth in the rest of 2021 and in early 2022; thus, on the reaction of the US Fed to rising CPI inflation in the rest of 2021 and 2022.
• The quantity theory of money provides a valid theoretical framework which relates trends in money growth to changes in inflation and nominal GDP over the medium and long term. More details on this analysis on the report by myself in collaboration with my colleague T. Congdon (IIMR) (https://iea.org.uk/publications/33536/), published in the spring 2020 by the IEA. More up to date data can be accessed at the IIMR website.

Video available below (on CFG’s YouTube channel) :

With thanks to the CGF for hosting the webinar.

Comments welcome.

Juan Castañeda

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Central banks are not just interest rate setters

Central banks are not just interest rate setters: an introduction to modern central bank roles

This is the online presentation I made at the 2020 Freedom Week (by the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs) on August 21st. It is an overview of the major roles undertaken by modern central banks in our economies, which involves much more than setting the policy rate. Actually, since the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis what leading central banks have been doing is to act as ‘bank of banks’, ‘bank of the government’ and, as regards monetary policy, to engage in asset purchase operations (i.e. Quantitative Easing). Once policy rates were brought down to the effective lower (nominal) bound, central banks have used outright asset purchases to be able to affect macroeconomic outcomes. Contrary to a very popular misperception, in purely fiat monetary systems, central banks cannot run out of ammunition, even when nominal policy rates are zero or close to zero. In this presentation, I briefly discuss (1) what central banks do as providers of services to the banking sector and to the government, as well as (2) the importance of monetary analysis to understand the effects of changes in the amount of money on inflation and output over the medium to the long term. This is at the core of what we do at the Institute of International Monetary Research.

I hope you find it a good introduction to central bank roles in modern economies. As ever, comments welcome.

Juan Castaneda

PS. If only for enjoying James Gillray‘s caricatures as a means to explain money and central banking, it may well be worth watching.

 

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Moneda, precios y el monetarismo en Europa (video)

Moneda, precios y el monetarismo en Europa

Aquí podéis encontrar la charla que tuve el placer de dar a mis amigos y colegas del Centro Hazlitt de la Universidad Francisco Marroquín (UFM), en Guatemala (Marzo 2020). El tema era la vigencia (o su no vigencia) del monetarismo como perspectiva y escuela de análisis económico en Europa. Como comprobaréis, soy muy pesimista en mi presentación; sobre todo en lo que se refiere a la explicación de la inflación en los modelos económicos predominantes en las ultimas tres/cuatro décadas. A pesar de ello, reivindico el uso de un análisis monetario riguroso (de la oferta y de la demand da dinero) si queremos explicar tendencias en los precios en el medio y largo plazo; una afirmación que me parece obvia, pero que en el entorno académico actual resulta tristemente revolucionaria … . Además, si bien soy muy crítico con el estado de los modelos macroeconómicos en lo que respecta a la explicación de la inflación, soy más optimista por lo que en la práctica los bancos centrales hacen cuando se enfrentan a una crisis financiera. Hemos visto cómo a partir de 2009/10 (o más tarde en la Eurozona), los bancos centrales recurrieron a operaciones de compra de activos (‘expansión cuantitativa’ o QE en sus siglas en inglés) para evitar la caída de la cantidad de dinero. Querían evitar con ello caer en el mismo error en el que cayó la Reserva Federal de los EEUU en los años 30 del siglo XX. Pareciera como si, por la vía de los hechos, los bancos centrales estuvieran persiguiendo una política monetaria encaminada a lograr la estabilidad del crecimiento del dinero (‘a la Friedman’).

Asimismo, también comento en algún detalle en la presentación algunas de las críticas más habituales que se hacen al monetarismo desde distintas perspectivas teóricas: como (1) la (supuesta) necesidad de imponer la estabilidad en la demanda de dinero (o de su inversa, la velocidad de circulación) para su validez en la práctica; o (2) el no tratamiento de los efectos reales que las variaciones en la cantidad de dinero traen consigo a medio y largo plazo. Como veréis en este video, intento demostrar que ambas críticas no son ciertas o están basadas en supuestos erróneos, y que la ecuación cuantitativa del dinero sigue siendo un esquema teórico válido para explicar variaciones de los precios y de la actividad nominal a lo largo del tiempo. Eso sí, no debería utilizarse esta ecuación y los supuestos en los que se basa, de una manera miope y mecanicista; eso sería un error grave. Hay muchas variables que afectan a la inflación en el corto plazo que están fuera del alcance de esta ecuación y de lo que los banqueros centrales pueden aspirar a controlar. Además, hay un grado indudable de incertidumbre y de retardos en la transmisión de las variaciones de la cantidad de dinero en los precios y la actividad económica; de ahí que sea mejor hacer análisis en el medio y largo plazo o en tendencia.

Aquí tenéis la grabación de la charla, que fue seguida de un coloquio con los miembros del Centro Hazlitt de la UFM que resultó muy provechoso e interesante. Muchas gracias a los asistentes y especialmente a Daniel Fernandez y a Clynton López, por su amable invitación a participar en estos seminarios. A ver cuándo podemos repetirlo!

Juan Castañeda

 

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Inflation; the next threat?

On the economic effects of the policy responses to Covid-19

Today the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA, London) has just published a report by my colleague Tim Congdon and myself (Institute of International Monetary Research and University of Buckingham) on the debate on the expected inflationary vs. deflationary consequences of the current crisis. Of course there are many unknowns yet and we should not claim or have the illusion that we can forecast exactly inflation rates in the next 2-3 years. But what we can attempt is to do ‘pattern predictions’ (see Hayek’s 1974 Nobel lecture speech). Based on the monetary data available and the theoretical body linking changes in the amount of money to price changes over the medium/long term, we have observed in the last two months an extraordinary increase in the amount of money in most leading economies (certainly in the USA, with a rate of growth of money, M3, of 25% in April 2020). This comes from the implementation of quite significant asset purchases programmes (i.e. Quantitative Easing) and the (partial) monetisation of very much enlarged government deficits; a trend that will most likely continue for the rest of the year. It is both the extraordinary money growth rates seen recently, along with the expected persistence in monetary growth in 2020 what support our forecast of an inflationary cycle in the US (and in other leading economies, though to a lesser extent) in the next 2-3 years. The diagram below from the report says it all (see page 8).

More details in the report (IEA Covid-19 Briefing 7, June 2020) at:

https://iea.org.uk/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Inflation_the-new-threat25787FINAL.pdf. Also, the webinar presentation of the report with my colleagues Geoffrey Wood and Tim Congdon will be available soon at the IEA’s website/YouTube channel.

Juan Castañeda

Summary of the report (in pages 4-5):

• The policy reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic will increase budget deficits massively in all the world’s leading countries. The deficits will to a significant extent be monetised, with heavy state borrowing from both national central banks and commercial banks.

• The monetisation of budget deficits, combined with official support for emergency bank lending to cash-strained corporates, is leading – and will continue to lead for several months – to extremely high growth rates of the quantity of money.

• The crisis has shown again that, under fiat monetary systems, the state can create as much as money as it wants. There is virtually no limit to money creation. The frequently alleged claim that ‘monetary policy is exhausted at low (if not zero) interest rates’ has no theoretical or empirical basis.

• By mid- or late 2021 the pandemic should be under control, and a big bounce-back in financial markets, and in aggregate demand and output, is to be envisaged. The extremely high growth rates of money now being seen – often into the double digits at an annual percentage rate – will instigate an inflationary boom. The scale of the boom will be conditioned by the speed of money growth in the rest of 2020 and in early 2021. Money growth in the USA has reached the highest-ever levels in peacetime, suggesting that consumer inflation may move into double digits at some point in the next two or three years.

• Central banks seem heedless of the inflation risks inherent in monetary financing of the much-enlarged government deficits. Following the so-called ‘New Keynesian Model’ consensus, their economists ignore changes in the quantity of money. Too many of these economists believe that monetary policy is defined exclusively by interest rates, with a narrow focus on the central bank policy rate, long-term interest rates and the yield curve. The quantity theory of money today provides – as it always has done – a theoretical framework which relates trends in money growth to changes in inflation and nominal GDP over the medium and long term. A condition for the return of inflation to current target levels is that the rate of money growth is reduced back towards annual rates of increase of about 6 per cent or less.

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It’s not all about interest rates!

In a piece published by CityAM on 12/11/2019 (‘Interest rates aren’t central banks’ only ammunition to defend against recession‘), I criticised the view apparently shared by most policy commentators about the alleged lack of ammunition of central banks to tackle the next crisis; they claim that this is because policy rates have reached either zero or close to zero levels and therefore there is no more room for monetary expansion. As I put in the article, this is wrong:

“But interest rate change is not the only policy tool available to create money. Indeed, nor is it the most effective in times of crisis. In modern economies, where monetary systems are purely based on fiat currencies, money can be created “out of thin air”. As shocking as it may sound, this means that central banks can always increase the amount of money in the economy.”

Since 2008 central bank (main policy) rates had been cut down to zero or near zero territory, and for many years it was mainly by changes in the amount of money how central banks managed to stabilise spending (through unconventional policy measures or QE). The outcome in the US, the UK but also in the Eurozone (though achieved much later), has been the stabilisation of the rate of growth of broad money in these economies followed by a period of a relatively stable overall macroeconomic picture (i.e. broad money growth in the US around 4% – 5% for a long period of time).

 

 

The fundamentals to understand how monetary policy decisions are made in modern monetary systems, particularly in times of a financial crisis, where commercial banks struggle to expand deposits, can be summarised as follows:

• In the absence of a truly binding anchor (such a metallic standard under the gold or silver standards) central banks can always create money ‘out of thin air’, with no limit.
• In modern monetary systems both commercial banks and central banks create money; actually the bulk of the means of payments used are created by commercial banks in the form of deposits and the extension of overdrafts (see the seminal paper on this, Money creation in the modern economy , by McLead, Radia and Thomas, 2014).
• The announcement and later application of tighter bank regulation in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis (2009 – 2010) increased bank capital requirements by approx. 60%, thus limiting the ability of banks to give loans and create deposits (i.e. money) in an already recessive economy. In the absence of the creation of money by markets (i.e. banks), central banks had no choice but to step in and buy assets from the market (from non-financial institutions), the so-called QE operations. Otherwise, money supply would have contracted very severely, with the harm it would have inflicted on the economy (this time, central bankers were determined to avoid the mistakes they made in the Great Depression years as Ben Bernanke had famously put it back in 2002, when deposits contracted by more than 30% in four years in the USA, therefore aggravating and prolonging the recession).

I argue in the article that, for better or worse, the ‘monetary weaponry’ in modern monetary systems can never be exhausted (Venezuela today is a dramatic example of it, when the printing press is heavily exploited by the government). Under purely fiat monetary systems, we need to tie the hands of the central banks so they abide by a rule in order to maintain a moderate and stable rate of growth of money; a rule that does not result in excessive money growth during the expansion of the economy, nor in a strong decline or even a fall in money growth during recessions. My colleague from the University of Buckingham and the Institute of International Monetary Research, Professor Geoffrey Wood, explains masterly and in few minutes how to define and adopt such a monetary rule in the Eurozone in this video.

 

Juan Castañeda

PS. You can have access to the CityAM article in full at https://www.cityam.com/interest-rates-arent-central-banks-only-ammunition-to-defend-against-recession/

 

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Have Central Banks forgotten about money?

This is the title of a research paper I have written with my colleague and leading monetarist, Professor Tim Congdon, and published by the Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR). This is a brief summary extracted from the paper, which is fully available at http://www.mv-pt.org/research-papers:

The quantity of money matters in the design of a monetary policy regime, if that regime is to be stable or even viable on a long-term basis. The passage of events in the Eurozone since 1999 has shown, yet again, that excessive money growth leads to both immoderate asset price booms and unsustainably above-trend growth in demand and output, and that big falls in the rate of change in the quantity of money damage asset markets, undermine demand and output, and cause job losses and heavy unemployment. This is nothing new. The ECB did not sustain a consistent strategy towards money growth and banking regulation over its first decade and a half. The abandonment of the broad money reference value in 2003 was followed in short order by three years of unduly high monetary expansion and then, from late 2008, by a plunge in money growth to the lowest rates seen in European countries since the 1930s. The resulting macroeconomic turmoil was of the sort that would be expected by quantity theory- of-money analyses, including such analyses of the USA’s Great Depression as in Friedman and Schwartz’s Monetary History of the United States.

This paper argues, from the experience of the Eurozone after the introduction of the single currency in 1999, that maintaining steady growth of a broadly-defined measure of money is crucial to the achievement of stability in demand and output. The ECB did not sustain a consistent strategy towards money growth and banking regulation over its first decade and a half.

The chart below illustrates our point very well:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As ever, comments very welcome.

Juan Castañeda

 

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A discussion on money and central banking with Tim Congdon and Geoffrey Wood

On the 13th of March (IEA, London) I had the pleasure to participate in the launch of the new MSc in Money, Banking and Central Banking (University of Buckingham, with the collaboration of the Institute of International Monetary Research), starting in September 2017; and I did it with two of the professors who will be teaching in the MSc, indeed two excellent and very well-known experts in the field: Professors Geoffrey Wood and Tim Congdon. I have known them both for long and shared research projects and co-authored works in money and central banking; and it was a privilege for me to have the chance to  introduce the new MSc, as well as to engage in a fascinating dialogue with them on very topical and key questions in monetary economics in our days: amongst others, ‘How is money determined? And how does this affect the economy?’; ‘Is a fractional reserve banking system inherently fragile?’; ‘Does the size of central banks’ balance sheet matter?’; ‘If we opt for inflation targeting as a policy strategy, which should be the variable to measure and target inflation?’; ‘Why the obsession amongst economists and academics with interest rates, and the disregard of money?”; ‘Who is to blame for the Global Financial Crisis, banks or regulators?’; ‘Does tougher bank regulation result in saver banks?’; ‘Is the US Fed conducting Quantitative Tightening in the last few months?’.

You can find the video with the full event here; with the presentation of the MSc in Money, Banking and Central Banking up to minute 9:20 and the discussion on the topics mentioned above onwards.  Several lessons can be learned from our discussion, and however evident they may sound, academics and policy-makers should be reminded of them again and again:

• Inflation and deflation are monetary phenomena over the medium and long term.
• Central banks‘ main missions are to preserve the purchasing power of the currency and maintain financial stability; and thus they should have never disregarded the analysis of money growth and its impact on prices and nominal income in the years running up to the Global Financial Crisis.
• A central bank acting as the lender of last resort of the banking sector does not mean rescuing every bank in trouble. Broke banks need to fail to preserve the stability of the banking system over the long term.
• The analysis of both the composition and the changes in central banks’ balance sheets is key to assess monetary conditions in the economy and ultimately make policy prescriptions.
• The analysis of the central banks’ decisions and operations cannot be done properly without the study of the relevant historical precedents: to learn monetary and central banking history is vital to understand current policies monetary questions.
• Tighter bank regulation, such as Basel III new liquidity ratios and the much higher capital ratios announced in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis, resulted in a greater contraction in the amount of money, and so it had even greater deflationary effects and worsened the crisis.

These are indeed key lessons and principles to apply should we want to achieve both monetary and financial stability over the medium and long term.

I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did. As ever, comments and feedback will be most welcome.

Apply for the MSc here!

Juan Castaneda

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Intended ‘Quantitative Tightening’ by the Fed?

Broad money growth (M3, Shadow Government Statistics) in the US keeps on decelerating since the end of 2015. As reported in the latest Monthly Monetary Update (Institute of International Monetary Research, IIMR), ‘In the final quarter of 2016 US M3 grew at an annualised rate of 2.2%. This follows on from a mere 0.9% in the three months to November, the slowest annualised quarterly growth rate in over five years. 2016 ends with US broad money growing at an annual rate of 4.0%, which is respectable, but down on 2015’s figure of 4.3%. In mid- 2016, the figure was 4.5%. The subsequent slowdown in broad money growth has been primarily caused by “quantitative tightening” ‘.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: January Money Update, IIMR

 

What is ‘Quantitative Tightening’? As stated in the IIMR’s January money update cited above ‘ (…) “quantitative tightening” (i.e., the reversal of quantitative easing) when it allows its stock of asset-backed securities to run off at maturity. The Fed can use proceeds from the maturing ABSs to reduce its cash reserve liabilities to the banks rather than to finance new, offsetting purchases of securities.’ (See the January Monetary Update, IIMR). What we do not know yet is whether the Fed has intentionally pursued such a monetary contractive policy, or rather it is just the (indeed surprisingly unnoticed) consequence of the fall securities in its balance sheet when they reach maturity. As far as I know the Fed has not made a public policy announcement in this regard nor committed to such policy.

Why does this matter? Well it does matter when the medium to the long term correlation between money growth and nominal income is acknowledged. Of course it is not a mechanical or a one-to-one correlation,  and indeed time lags should be taken into account; anyhow in an environment where the demand of money is fairly stable, changes in the rate of growth of money do translate into changes in nominal income. Table below shows such empirical relation in the US in the last five decades:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: January Money Update, IIMR

 

Thus should this weakening in money growth in the US continue in the next quarters it will most likely have an impact on economic growth forecasts. This is subject to several caveats though; the new US administration has already announced a profound change in bank regulation which may well ease the pressure put in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis on small and medium size banks particularly to expand their balance sheets. If this materialises in the near future, the creation of more bank deposits in the economy could offset the monetary contractive policy followed by the Fed in the last few months, intentionally or not.

 

Juan Castañeda

 

 

 

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‘QE, triumph or folly?’

The Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR, affiliated with the University of Buckingham) is holding an international conference on the assessment of Quantitative Easing (QE) in the US, UK, Eurozone and Japan on the 3rd of November (London). In the last few years a return to a more conventional set of monetary policies has been widely heralded, and in particular the return to a monetary policy rule focused on monetary stability and the stability of the overall economy over the long term (see the excellent conference organised by CATO and the Mercatus Centre  (George Mason University, US) on this very question just few weeks ago); but we believe the first priority at the moment is to analyse and clarify the impact of QE on financial markets and the broader economy. Amongst others, the following questions will be discussed: Has QE been instrumental in preventing another Great Depression? If QE is meant to boost asset prices, why has inflation generally been so low in recent years? Has QE increased inequality? Has QE been able to expand effectively broad money growth? Should QE programmes be extended at all? These are all vital questions we will address at the conference.

The conference is by invitation only and there are still (very few) places available, so please send an email to Gail Grimston at gail.grimston@buckingham.ac.uk should you wish to attend. It will be held on Thursday 3rd November 2016, in collaboration with Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), at the IEA headquarters in London. You will be able to find a programme with all the topics and the speakers here  As you will see we are delighted to have an excellent panel of experts on this field from the US, continental Europe and the UK. There will be of course very well-known academics but also practitioners as well as central bank economists. In particular economists such as George Selgin (CATO), Kevin Dowd (Durham University), Christopher Neely (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), Ryland Thomas (Bank of England) or Tim Congdon (IIMR, University of Buckingham) amongst many other very distinguished  economists will be giving a talk at the conference, which provides a unique opportunity to analyse in detail the effects and the effectiveness of QE in the most developed economies.

For your information you can also follow the conference live/streaming; please visit the IIMR website this week for further details on how to follow it remotely on the day. In addition the presentations (but not the discussion) will be filmed and published on our website later on. Drop us an email (enquiries@mv-pt.org) should you want to be updated on the Institute’s agenda and latest news.

Thank you,

Juan Castaneda

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