Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T00:12:43.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Show me the money : retained earnings and the real effects of monetary shocks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

Matthias Doepke*
Affiliation:
UCLA and CEPR
Get access

Summary

The empirical literature on monetary policy shocks documents that contractionary shocks are followed by a persistent rise in interest rates and a persistent fall in output. Standard monetary business cycle models can account for the initial effects of monetary shocks, but have difficulty generating persistence. In this paper, I examine whether frictions that affect the asset allocation decisions of households can lead to persistent effects. In the model economy, households hold two assets, one used for transactions (the checking account) and one used for investment (the savings account). There is a small transaction cost for moving funds between the accounts. Another key feature of the economy is that the business sector accumulates retained earnings and credits profits to the consumers only with a delay. I show that in this environment monetary shocks have persistent effects even when the adjustment cost is very small.

Résumé

Résumé

La littérature empirique sur les chocs de politique monétaire nous informe que des chocs restrictifs sont suivis d'une hausse persistante des taux d'intérêt et d'une diminution persistante de la production. Les modèles monétaires standards de cycle peuvent expliquer les effets directs des chocs monétaires, mais ont des difficultés à reproduire la persistance de ceux-ci. Dans cet article, j'examine si les frictions qui affectent les décisions des ménages d'allocation des ressources peuvent mener à des effets persistants. Dans le modèle, les ménages détiennent deux actifs. L'un est utilisé à des fins de transaction (le compte à vue) et l'autre à des fins d'investissement (le carnet d'épargne). Il existe un faible coût de transaction pour transférer des fonds entre les actifs. Le fait que les entreprises accumulent des bénéfices non distribués et reversent les profits aux consommateurs avec un certain délai constitue également un facteur clé du modèle. Je montre que dans cet environnement, des chocs monétaires peuvent avoir des effets persistants même si le coût d'ajustement est très faible.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 2005 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

(*)

I thank two anonymous referees and seminar participants at the University of Chicago and Universitat Hamburg for helpful discussions and comments. Financial support by the National Science Foundation and the UCLA Academic Senate is gratefully acknowledged. Address: Department of Economics, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90095. E-mail: doepke@econ.ucla.edu.

References

REFERENCES

Alvarez, Fernando, Atkeson, Andrew and Kehoe, Patrick J. (2002), “Money and Interest Rates with Endogenously Segmented Markets”, Journal of Political Economy, 110(1), pp 73112.Google Scholar
Blanchard, Olivier (1991), “Price Asynchronization and Price-Level Inertia”, in New Keynesian Economics, Vol. 1, Imperfect Competition and Sticky Prices, edited by Mankiw, N. Gregory and Romer, David, pp 243265, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chari, V.V., Christiano, Lawrence J. and Eichenbaum, Martin (1995), “Inside Money, Outside Money, and Short-Term Interest Rates”, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 27(4), pp 13541386.Google Scholar
Chari, V. V., Kehoe, Patrick J. and McGrattan, Ellen R. (2000), “Sticky Price Models of the Business Cycle: Can the Contract Multiplier Solve the Persistence Problem?”, Econometrica, 68(5), pp 1151–79.Google Scholar
Christiano, Lawrence J. and Eichenbaum, Martin (1992), “Liquidity Effects and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism”, American Economic Review, 82(2), pp 346–53.Google Scholar
Christiano, Lawrence J. and Eichenbaum, Martin (1995), “Liquidity Effects, Monetary Policy, and the Business Cycle”, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 27(4), pp 1114–36.Google Scholar
Christiano, Lawrence J., Eichenbaum, Martin and Evans, Charles L. (1996), “The Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks: Evidence From the Flow of Funds”, Review of Economics and Statistics, 78(1), pp 1634.Google Scholar
Christiano, Lawrence J., Eichenbaum, Martin and Evans, Charles L. (1999), “Monetary Policy Shocks: What Have We Learned and to What End ?”, in Handbook of Macroeconomics, edited by Woodford, Michael and Taylor, John, Amsterdam, North Holland.Google Scholar
Cole, Harold L. and Ohanian, Lee E. (2002), “Shrinking Money:The Demand for Money and the Nonneutrality of Money”, Journal of Monetary Economics, 49(4), pp 653–86.Google Scholar
Cooley, Thomas F. and Hansen, Gary D. (1989), “The Inflation Tax in a Real Business Cycle Model”, American Economic Review, 79(4), pp 733–48.Google Scholar
Dow, James P. Jr. (1995), “The Demand and Liquidity Effects of Monetary Shocks”, Journal of Monetary Economics 36 (1): pp 91115.Google Scholar
Evans, Charles L. and Marshall, David A. (1998), “Monetary Policy and the Term Structure of Nominal Interest Rates: Evidence and Theory”, Carnegie-Rochester Conference on Public Policy, 49, pp 53112.Google Scholar
Judd, Kenneth L. and Guu, Sy-Ming (1997), “Asymptotic Methods for Aggregate Growth Models”, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 21(6), pp 1025–42.Google Scholar
Lucas, Robert E. Jr. (1990), “Liquidity and Interest Rates”, Journal of Economic Theory, 50, pp 237–64.Google Scholar
Rotemberg, Julio J. (1995), “Inside Money, Outside Money, and Short-Term Interest Rates: Comment”, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 27(4), pp 13961401.Google Scholar
Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie and Uribe, Martin (2004), “Solving Dynamic General Equilibrium Models Using a Second-Order Approximation to the Policy Function”, Journal of Economics Dynamics and Control, 28(4), pp 755–75.Google Scholar
Sims, Christopher A. (1992), “Interpreting the Macroeconomic Time Series Facts: The Effects of Monetary Policy”, European Economic Review, 36 (5), pp 9751000.Google Scholar
Taylor, John B. (1980), “Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts”, Journal of Political Economy, 88(1), pp 123.Google Scholar
Uhlig, Harald (2000), What Are the Effects of Monetary Policy on Output ? Results from an Agnostic Identification Procedure, Unpublished Manuscript, CenTER, Tilburg University.Google Scholar