Recent Reserve Bank discussion papers (with abstracts)
Reserve Bank discussion and research papers present the detailed scholarly research of staff economists and visiting scholars. The papers are published throughout the year mainly for academic and professional economists.
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Papers for 2005
DP2005/07
Discretionary Policy, Potential Output Uncertainty, and Optimal Learning
We compare inflation targeting, price level targeting, and speed limit policies when a central bank sets monetary policy under discretion, and must learn about the level of potential output over time. We show that if the central bank learns optimally over time, a speed limit policy dominates [is dominated by] a price level target if society places a high [low] weight on inflation stability. Inefficient learning on the part of the central bank can radically change this conclusion. A speed limit policy is favoured if the central bank places too much weight on recent data when estimating potential output, while a price level target is favoured if the central bank places too much weight on historical data.
DP2005/06
A Simple, Structural, and Empirical Model of the Antipodean Transmission Mechanism
This paper studies the transmission of business cycles and the sources of economic fluctuations in Australia and New Zealand by estimating a Bayesian DSGE model. The theoretical model is that of two open economies that are tightly integrated by trade in goods and assets. They can be thought of as economically large relative to each other, but small with respect to the rest of the world. The two economies are hit by a variety of country-specific and world-wide shocks. The main findings are that the pre-eminent driving forces of Antipodean business cycles are worldwide technology shocks and foreign, i.e. rest-of-the-world, expenditure shocks. Domestic technology shocks and monetary policy shocks appear to play only a minor role. Transmission of policy shocks is asymmetric, and neither central bank is found to respond to exchange rate movements. The model can explain 15 percent of the observed exchange rate volatility.
DP2005/05
UIP, Expectations and the Kiwi
This paper looks at reduced form descriptions of changes in the USD/NZD exchange rate, with emphasis on the interest rate-exchange rate relationship. In the estimated reduced form equations, high domestic short term interest rates relative to foreign interest rates are associated with continued upward pressure on the New Zealand dollar. This effect is most pronounced for the 6-month forward interest differential, and is reinforced by some "inertia" but moderated by deviations from equilibrium as "over or under-valuation" erodes expected returns. Changes in commodity export prices are estimated to have short term effects. Some aspects of the estimated equations are consistent with forward-looking rational expectations, a standard feature of open economy models. Other aspects of the estimated equations suggest random walk exchange rate expectations consistent with Meese and Rogoff (1983). The cross correlation between interest differentials and the exchange rate may be difficult to reconcile with rational expectations. The forecasting performance of a reduced form equation is also assessed.
DP2005/04
Reaction functions in a small open economy: What role for non-traded inflation?
I develop a structural general equilibrium model and estimate it for New Zealand using Bayesian techniques. The estimated model considers a monetary policy regime where the central bank targets overall inflation but is also concerned about output, exchange rate movements, and interest rate smoothing. Taking the posterior mean of the estimated parameters as representing the characteristics of the New Zealand economy, I compare the consequences that two alternative reaction functions have on the central bank's loss, for different specifications of its preferences. I obtain conditions under which the monetary authority should respond directly to non-tradable inflation instead of overall inflation. In particular, if preferences are relatively biased towards inflation stabilization, responding directly to overall inflation results in better macroeconomic outcomes. If instead the central bank places relatively more weight on output stabilization, responding directly to non-traded inflation is a better strategy.
DP2005/03
A happy "halfway-house"? Medium term inflation targeting in New Zealand
The 2002 Policy Targets Agreement (PTA) between the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the government asks the Reserve Bank to target inflation "over the medium term" rather than over an annual target. This medium term objective shifts inflation targeting towards a "halfway-house" between inflation targeting and price level targeting. Extending the inflation averaging horizon to the medium term improves the inflation-output tradeoff by influencing inflation expectations. But how long should the medium term be? Characterizing the New Zealand economy with a small new-Keynesian model, we show that the happiest halfway house is located around a two or three year averaging horizon which leads to mild, but non-trivial, improvements in the efficiency of monetary policy.
DP2005/02
Mind your Ps and Qs! Improving ARMA forecasts with RBC priors
We utilise prior information from a simple RBC model to improve ARMA forecasts of post-war US GDP. We develop three alternative ARMA forecasting processes that use varying degrees of information from the Campbell (1994) flexible labour model. Directly calibrating the model produces poor forecasting performance whereas a model that uses a Bayesian framework to take the model to the data, yields forecasting performance comparable to a purely statistical ARMA process. A final model that uses theory only to restrict the order of the ARMA process (the ps and qs), but that estimates the ARMA parameters using maximum likelihood, yields improved forecasting performance.
DP2005/01
Factor model forecasts for New Zealand
This paper focuses on forecasting four key New Zealand macroeconomic variables using a dynamic factor model and a large number of predictors. We compare the (simulated) real-time forecasting performance of the factor model with a variety of other time series models and gauge the sensitivity of our results to alternative variable selection algorithms. We find that the factor model performs particularly well at longer horizons.
Discussion paper correspondence can be directed to:
Economics Department
Reserve Bank of New Zealand
PO Box 2498
Wellington
New Zealand
