E52

Monetary Policy

The monetary policy of the South African Reserve Bank: stance, communication and credibility

This paper analyses the evolution of the monetary policy stance, communication and credibility of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) since 2000, when it adopted a flexible Inflation Targeting (IT) regime to facilitate the achievement of its price stability mandate. Empirical results indicate that the stance became accommodative after the global financial crisis of 2009, with a tendency of the implicit inflation target to increase, while after 2014 it turned tighter and the implicit target started declining.

Policy regime changes and central bank prefernces

This paper establishes whether central bank preferences are related to governors' preferences when there is a change in policy regime. We use a time-varying parameter approach that allows the policy preferences to vary over the sample period. The results show that the policy parameters exhibit signicant changes and that the South African Reserve Bank places more weight on output relative to inflation over the period 2000 and 2007. The dynamic responses of output and inflation under different central bank governors show different outcomes.

Credit frictions and co-movement of durable and non-durable goods in a small open economy

In this paper I investigate, numerically, the co-movement puzzle by testing the ability of borrowing and lending constraints to counter the opposite movement of durable and non-durable goods in response to foreign monetary policy and international bond shocks. I do this by simulating a small open economy sticky price model calibrated to the South African economy over the period 1990Q012014Q04.

Flow specific capital controls for emerging markets

This paper investigates the impact of capital controls on business cycle fluctuations and welfare. To perform this analysis, we deploy an asymmetric two country model that is subject to negative foreign interest rate shocks. The results show that both an inflow and outflow capital control are able to attenuate capital flow dynamics, but each control bears different implications for macroeconomic outcomes. Whilst the outflow capital control is associated with shock attenuation benefits, the inflow capital control is shown to amplify the impact of shocks.

Changes in the Liquidity Effect Over Time: Evidence from Four Monetary Policy Regimes

This paper employs a time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model to establish the nature of the relationship between central bank liabilities and the overnight policy rate. Four countries with different monetary policy regimes were considered. It was found that a clear negative relationship between these variables exists only in the case of one regime, namely the reserve regime. This result indicates that the introduction of new operational frameworks for central banks have challenged the traditional model of monetary policy implementation.

The impact of Monetary Policy Announcements and Political Events on the Exchange Rate: The Case of South Africa

Since 2000 the South African rand has been among the most volatile emerging market currencies, occasionally experiencing sharp depreciations. These sharp fluctuations in the value of the currency cannot be adequately explained by models of flow-supply and flow-demand of currency or by movements in fundamental factors, yet few studies have employed an asset pricing approach to explain exchange rate variability in emerging markets.

The welfare cost of macro-prudential policy in a two-country DSGE model

This paper builds a two-country DSGE model with financial frictions and investigates the welfare cost of macro-prudential policy and its impact on financial stability. The two countries in question are the U.S. and South Africa. The results show that macro-prudential policy results in a welfare trade-off between patient and impatient households.

Do monetary policy announcements affect foreign exchange returns and volatility? Some evidence from high-frequency intra-day South African data.

This paper examines the temporal effect of domestic monetary policy surprises on both the levels and volatility of the South African rand/United States dollar exchange rate. The analysis in this ‘event study’ proceeds using intra-day minute-by-minute exchange rate data, repo rate data from the South African Reserve Bank’s scheduled monetary policy announcements, and Bloomberg market consensus repo rate forecasts.

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