ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Monetary Policy Announcements of the Reserve Bank of India and the Role of Information Shock

Inflation-targeting central banks supplement their monetary policy announcements with communication in the form of speeches and publication of text documents. The markets react to the surprise component of the rate action and the communication by the central bank. Thus, the monetary surprise derived from the reaction of markets, following a policy announcement, is agglutinated with the central bank information. The present paper attempts to identify and examine the efficacy of such an information shock in influencing the inflation expectations of households, interest rate expectations of agents, output and inflation.

The Battle of GameStop

What the battle of GameStop has brought into light is that democracy in financial markets is just a myth: whoever controls the valves, controls the flow.

Illusion of Democracy in Financial Markets

Democratising of financial trading fails to recognise the skewed character of finance markets.

 

Reflections on Analytical Issues in Monetary Policy

Analytical issues have arisen in the conduct of flexible inflation targeting as the framework of monetary policy, adopted formally by India in 2016, despite the noticeable downward drift in the inflation rate and concerns of many economists about its relevance in the light of the global financial crisis. Issues such as the framework’s rationale, the medium-term inflation target, the meaning of real interest rate in the Indian context, the realism in respect of inflation expectations and of the inferred logic of the yield curve, and the implications for economic inequalities have been pointed out.

Vulnerability of Emerging Market Economies to Exogenous Shocks

The transmission of global demand, oil supply and monetary policy shocks on the Indian economy are empirically examined using a parsimonious structural vector autoregression model for the period 1996 to 2016. Global demand shocks exert the most dominant effect causing fluctuations in various macroeconomic variables, whereas global monetary policy spillovers play an important role in affecting domestic short-term interest rates and financial asset prices. Global oil supply shocks, given its relative weightage as an intermediate input, have a greater impact on wholesale price index inflation than on consumer price index inflation. Given the rising trade and financial integration of the Indian economy, a quantitative impact analysis of these global shocks assumes importance for macroeconomic and monetary policy frameworks.

Determinants of Bid-ask Spread in the Indian Government Securities Market

Liquidity measurement in financial markets has generated considerable attention in financial research. In this paper, the cost of liquidity is measured by computing the bid-ask spreads of liquid securities traded in the Indian government securities market, and is analysed with other liquidity measures. Overall, volatility is found to be the key variable impacting bid-ask spreads. Trading volume has a negative impact on spreads, although at a much smaller magnitude. Trade initiation and net liquidity appear to be smaller but significant drivers of spreads. Order imbalance and trade execution variables, analysed separately with the other variables, show divergent relationship with spreads.

Is Brexit Moment a Lehman Moment?

The Lehman moment is the moment when Lehman Brothers—one of the largest investment banks in the United States (US) at the time—collapsed. The collapse happened on 15 September 2008.

Reforming the Risky Financial System

Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance by John Kay; New York: Public Affairs, 2015; pp 352, $27.99 (hardcover).

Financial Sector Reforms

Financial Sector Reforms and India’s Economic Development by N A Mujumdar (two volumes); Academic Foundation, Delhi, 2002; pp 319 + 328, price not mentioned.

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