Optimal Monetary Policy Rules, Asset Prices and Credit Frictions

Tommaso Monacelli and Ester Faia

No 4880, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study optimal monetary policy in two prototype economies with sticky prices and credit market frictions. In the first economy, credit frictions apply to the financing of the capital stock, generate acceleration in response to shocks and the ?financial markup? (i.e., the premium on external funds) is countercyclical and negatively correlated with the asset price. In the second economy, credit frictions apply to the flow of investment, generate persistence, and the financial markup is procyclical and positively correlated with the asset price. We model monetary policy in terms of welfare-maximizing interest rate rules. The main finding of our analysis is that strict inflation stabilization is a robust optimal monetary policy prescription. The intuition is that, in both models, credit frictions work in the direction of dampening the cyclical behaviour of inflation relative to its credit-frictionless level. Thus neither economy, despite yielding different inflation and investment dynamics, generates a trade-off between price and financial markup stabilization. A corollary of this result is that reacting to asset prices does not bear any independent welfare role in the conduct of monetary policy.

Keywords: Optimal monetary policy rules; Financial distortions; Price stability; Asset prices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 F41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-fmk, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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