Monetary policy

This article is the second in a series of articles on monetary policy debates in the age when deglobalisation became a buzzword. Here, we begin our discussion of the ongoing economic experiment in Turkey as an example to elaborate on these debates. In the third article, we will turn our attention to the post-2018 Turkish currency crisis phase of the experiment by focusing on macroprudential measures, capital controls and central bank independence, as promised in the first article.

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 study draws attention to the Reserve Bank of India’s communication as a policy tool and its impact on market participants. It first aims to quantify the qualitative variable—communication by employing textual analysis methods. The investigation starts by extracting the tone of monetary policy statements and trace its transmission on market sentiment in the presence of various informational, macroeconomic, and financial controls. The work concludes that market participants draw inferences from the tone of the RBI’s monetary policy statement and update their information set about the present state and prospects. 

Using an accounting framework, this article simulates the evolution of the debt ratio based on four policy interventions. It recommends pursuing an expansionary monetary policy combined with an equally active and complementary fi scal policy. The article also says that monetary policy should target the debt ratio, while fi scal policy should target output.

The flow of bank credit is crucial to revive the economy. The fear of potential asset quality woes has reduced the risk appetite of banks. Going beyond the restructuring support, banks need policy support by relaxations in prudential norms in the near term to be normalised in the next four–fi ve years. Coping with the adversities of the pandemic needs a collaborative policy support of all stakeholders to step up the lending appetite.