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Comments on Francisco J. Ruge-Murcia’s “The Zero Lower Bound on Interest Rates and Monetary Policy in Canada”

Comments on Francisco J. Ruge-Murcia’s “The Zero Lower Bound on Interest Rates and Monetary Policy in Canada” Bank of Canada Economic Conference “Issues in Inflation Targeting” April 28-29, 2005 Peter N. Ireland Boston College and NBER

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Comments on Francisco J. Ruge-Murcia’s “The Zero Lower Bound on Interest Rates and Monetary Policy in Canada”

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  1. Comments on Francisco J. Ruge-Murcia’s“The Zero Lower Bound on Interest Rates and Monetary Policy in Canada” Bank of Canada Economic Conference “Issues in Inflation Targeting” April 28-29, 2005 Peter N. Ireland Boston College and NBER

  2. This paper skillfully constructs, estimates, and analyzes a model of the term structure of interest rates that explicitly accounts for the zero lower bound (ZLB) on the short-term rate. • The intuition: Use longer-term rates to draw inferences about the likelihood that the short-term interest rate will bump up against the ZLB at some point in the future.

  3. The result: The ZLB has not played a big role in shaping term structure dynamics in Canada. • Implication for term-structure modelers: Linear models that abstract from the ZLB suffice for describing the Canadian data. • Implication for monetary policymakers: Good news for the Bank of Canada … • … and possibly for other inflation-targeting central banks as well.

  4. Canada and Japan • A companion paper, Ruge-Murcia (2002), finds that the ZLB has mattered for the term structure in Japan. • The comparison between Canada and Japan highlights a number of more general issues.

  5. Consider a Taylor rule: R = R* + a(Y−Y*) + b(Π−Π*) • There is a trade-off in setting the inflation target Π*: • Setting Π* too high imposes welfare costs of inflation … • … but setting Π* too low risks bumping up against the ZLB.

  6. Source: http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/IETsupplement/iet2inf.pdf

  7. The Bank of Japan’s choice of Π* = 0 is probably too low … • … but the Bank of Canada’s choice of Π* = 2 seems about right. • Hence, it appears that the trade-off involved in choosing Π* can be managed satisfactorily.

  8. Also, Japan has not adopted an official inflation targeting strategy. • Does inflation targeting reduce the problems associated with the ZLB? • It would be useful to extend the analysis to a larger sample of countries to find out.

  9. Persistence in the Short-Term Rate • For Canada: rstart = 0.977rt-1− 0.053rt-2 + 0.074rt-3 • For Japan: rstart = 0.598rt-1+ 0.127rt-2 + 0.214rt-3 • Largest root: 0.9982 for Canada and 0.9615 for Japan.

  10. What role does persistence in the short-term rate play in avoiding the ZLB? • Adding persistence seems to have been the preferred solution in the US.

  11. Adding More Structure to the Model • An important intermediate result: the volatility, as well as the level, of the short-term interest rate matters. • But, from a central banker’s perspective, the level and volatility of the short-term rate can both be influenced by policy.

  12. Elaborating on the model by describing the dynamics of short-term rates using a Taylor rule instead of a pure time series model … • … and by thinking hard about the fundamental sources of volatility in short-term rates … • … would be quite useful in teasing out additional policy implications.

  13. The Benefits of Inflation Targeting • When adopting the Taylor rule R = R* + a(Y−Y*) + b(Π−Π*) the central bank chooses Π* as well as a and b. • Every central bank has an inflation target! • The only question is whether and how to communicate information about Π* to the public.

  14. Providing more explicit information about Π* can potentially help … • ... partly by minimizing the problem of inflation scares (keeping interest rates low) … • … but perhaps also by minimizing the problems associated with the ZLB (but not too low). • Francisco’s paper contributes importantly to the debate by highlighting the second set of issues.

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