Trilemma or Dilemma: Inspecting the Heterogeneous Response of Local Currency Interest Rates to Foreign Rates

Luca Ricci and Wei Shi

No 2016/075, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper studies the heterogeneous response across countries of local currency interest rates to foreign and domestic factors, thus contributing to the discussion on the policy trilemma in international economics. On average, floaters appear to be less affected by the U.S. in the short run (up to about one year). However, there is large cross-country heterogeneity in the response: floaters that care less about domestic objectives, exhibit stronger fear of floating, or show higher co-cyclicality with the U.S., respond more to foreign rates. This suggests that floating does not necessarily imply a lack of response of local policy rates to foreign ones, but seems to allow independence when needed. Moreover, the effect of foreign rates on the short end of the local interest rate curve seems to operate mainly via the foreign influence on local policy rates, thus suggesting that central banks may be themselves the source of conduit of the “global credit cycle” discussed by Rey (2014). At the same time, most countries face the equivalent of a “Greenspan conundrum” as their long term rates are mainly influenced by foreign factors.

Keywords: WP; policy rate; rate; rate regression; Monetary policy; trilemma; international financial market spillovers; interest rates; rate coefficient; rate pass-through; policy choice; dilemma-trilemma policy debate; rate curve; local policy rate; Central bank policy rate; Yield curve; Exchange rate arrangements; Capital controls; Sovereign bonds; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39
Date: 2016-03-23
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=43826 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2016/075

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().