BVAR

Philip R. Lane: The banking channel of monetary policy

Retrieved on: 
Friday, February 16, 2024

for rates, credit growth in deviation from the start of the cycle (t) in p.p.

Key Points: 
    • for rates, credit growth in deviation from the start of the cycle (t) in p.p.
    • Starting months correspond to the month immediately preceding the first hike or explicit announcement of the hike of the cycle.
    • The dotted lines shows counterfactuals for lending rates and lending volumes, taking December 2021 as the last observation and
      projecting volumes conditional on the path of monetary policy rates.
    • The one for lending volumes is based on the BVAR model in Altavilla,
      Giannone, and Lenza (2016).
    • Composite funding costs are a weighted average of deposit rates
      and average monthly bond yields, with outstanding amounts as weights.
    • Right chart shows
      the contributions of the components to the change in the composite bank funding cost
      between December 2021 and November 2023.
    • Latest observations: 8 February 2024 for bond yields; December 2023 for other series.
    • Notes: ?Others? include shares (listed and not listed as well as those issued by investment
      funds), and insurance and pension schemes.
    • Retail

      Specialised

      Universal

      10

      10

      8

      8

      6

      6

      4

      4

      2

      2

      0

      0

      -2

      -2

      -4
      Jan-20 Aug-20 Mar-21 Oct-21 May-22 Dec-22 Jul-23

      -4

      Sources: ECB (iBSI, iMIR) MPC Task Force on Banking Analysis and ECB calculations.

    • Investment refers to the net
      change in property plant and equipment over assets; cash refers to cash and cash
      equivalents over assets.
    • Households
      loans, credit standards and loan demand
      Rubric
      Changes in credit standards for
      loans to households, and
      contributing factors
      (net percentage)

      0

      30

      -40

      20

      Sources: ECB (BSI) and ECB calculations.

    • Low-income households are those in the bottom 20 per cent
      of the income distribution; high-income households are those in the top 20 per cent.

Gas price shocks and euro area inflation

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
Transfer, Person, Marques, OPEC, Interval (mathematics), Policy, NBER, Research Papers in Economics, The Economic Journal, Danmarks Nationalbank, Socialism, Energy transition, VIX, Canadian International Council, Paper, E30, Great, Macroeconomics, VAR, Central bank, Balke, Quarterly Journal, Q43, Census, Elasticity, USD, Projection, PMI, Social science, Hou, Bank of France, Topa, Fertilizer, Electricity, SSRN, University, A.5, Section 2, Natural gas, COVID-19, Swings, Overalls, Rotation, Journal of Monetary Economics, Harmonization, Title Transfer Facility, Pain, Ferrari, Uncertainty, Statistics, Medical classification, C50, Harper (publisher), Democracy, Shock, IMF, TTF, Fed, PPI, Power, European Central Bank, Monetary economics, Temperature, Section 3, E31, Nature, Food, Local, Joseph Schumpeter, Website, Energy economics, Speech, DeSantis, GDP, Rigidity, BVAR, Confidence interval, Money, Refinitiv, Bank, Baumeister, Pressure, Oil, Deutsche Bundesbank, International Energy Agency, Employment, Section 4, GIZ, C54, Sun, ECB, European Economic Association, Weather, A.9, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Exercise, HICP, Technical report, Attention, Literature, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Reproduction, International economics, Political economy, Absorption, Joseph Stiglitz, Unemployment, Journal, American Economic Review, Index, Section 5, Business, IP, Bachmann, Research, Federal Reserve Bank, Government, PDF, IWH, Complexity, Failure, Energy Information Administration, Explosive

We document

Key Points: 
    • We document
      how gas price fluctuations have a heterogeneous pass-through to euro area prices
      depending on the underlying shock driving them.
    • How do gas price shocks feed through to euro area
      inflation, and is the pass-through shock-dependent?
    • We analyse the importance of gas price shocks
      for euro area inflation in two steps.
    • We identify three structural shocks driving European gas prices,
      inspired by the literature on oil but tailored to the European gas market: (i) a gas supply
      shock, which reduces the supply of natural gas to the European market, increases the
      gas price and lowers gas inventories; (ii) an economic activity shock, which lifts demand
      for gas due to higher economic production, and finally (iii) a shock to gas inventories,
      when gas prices are driven by precautionary demand by gas companies.
    • First, all three identified shocks are
      important drivers of gas price dynamics, but they differ in how persistently they push

      ECB Working Paper Series No 2905

      2

      up gas prices.

    • The effect on euro area HICP of a shock to gas supply is more
      persistent and somewhat higher than when gas prices are driven by economic activity
      shocks.
    • A final key finding is that the pass-through of gas market shocks to euro area inflation
      appears non-linear.
    • The unprecedented volatility of gas prices
      contributed to the inflation problem in the euro area, with the gas price shocks feeding
      through producer prices, wages and persistently lifting core inflation.
    • More expensive
      energy contributed substantially to the rise in inflation in Europe during 2022.2

      Figure 1: Gas price and euro area Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices.

    • How do gas price shocks feed through to euro area
      inflation, and is the pass-through shock-dependent?
    • For instance, about 75% of gas imports to the euro area arrives
      through pipelines, making gas imports difficult to substitute and gas markets subject to
      3

      See for example the evidence by Rubaszek and Uddin (2020) for the US economy.

    • We analyse the importance of gas price shocks for
      euro area inflation in two steps.
    • We identify three structural shocks driving European gas prices,
      inspired by the literature on oil but tailored to the European gas market: (i) a gas supply
      shock, which reduces the supply of natural gas to the European market, increases the
      gas price and lowers gas inventories; (ii) an economic activity shock, which lifts demand
      for gas due to higher economic production, and finally (iii) a shock to gas inventories,
      when gas prices are driven by precautionary demand by gas companies.
    • First, all three identified shocks are
      important drivers of gas price dynamics, but they differ in how persistently they push
      up gas prices.
    • But when gas prices are driven by
      inventory demand shocks, the price effect typically dies out within one quarter.
    • A final key finding is that the pass-through of gas market shocks to euro area inflation appears non-linear.
    • The unprecedented volatility of gas prices
      contributed to the inflation problem in the euro area, with the gas price shocks feeding
      through producer prices, wages and persistently lifting core inflation.
    • (2022) and Alessandri and Gazzani (2023) identify gas supply shocks using VAR models,
      finding that gas price shocks lead to persistent increases in headline inflation.14 Ba?bura
      et al.
    • (2023) find positive effects of gas price shocks on core inflation in a BVAR for
      the euro area that includes one type of gas shock along a longer list of macroeconomic
      shocks.
    • 3.1

      Data

      For the gas market BVAR model, we use gas quantities, gas prices, gas inventories and
      euro area industrial production, as displayed in Figure 2.

    • (2015) to optimize

      ECB Working Paper Series No 2905

      13

      the posterior distribution.16 The vector Y includes the European gas quantity proxy, gas
      inventories, the European gas price benchmark and euro area industrial production.

    • As demand for gas increases, the gas price also rises
      while inventories fall as agents use gas in storage to partially satisfy higher demand.
    • Shocks to gas
      quantities driven by gas supply or inventory shocks tend to revert to pre-shock levels after
      around five to seven months, while economic activity shocks lead to a more long-lived
      increase in gas demand.19 Dynamics in gas inventories are more similar across shocks.
    • 3.4

      Historical events in the European gas market

      Before analysing the transmission of the different types of gas shocks to euro area prices,
      we show how the model interprets the unprecedented gas price rise in 2022 in terms of
      driving factors, and compare it with previous historical episodes of heightened gas price
      volatility as a way of validating the model.

    • Inventory shocks play a
      slightly smaller role, accounting for 17% of gas quantity and 23% of gas price fluctuations
      while the residual component (i.e.
    • 4

      Pass-through of gas price shocks to consumer prices

      The pass-through of gas price shocks to inflation is likely to be multi-faceted.

    • We first consider four outcome variables y: the European gas price, euro area HICP,
      core HICP and energy HICP.
    • Third, depending on the driving factor, gas price increases can pass through to core
      inflation in the euro area.
    • The results underline that gas price shocks can have important implications for inflation in the euro area ? depending on the driving factor of higher gas prices.
    • Casoli, C., Manera, M., and Valenti, D. ?Energy shocks in the euro area: disentangling
      the pass-through from oil and gas prices to inflation?.

Global trade in the post-pandemic environment

Retrieved on: 
Friday, February 9, 2024

The pandemic triggered the deepest global recession (albeit short-lived) since the Second World War amid large-scale policy support, and led to a sweeping fall in world trade.

Key Points: 
  • The pandemic triggered the deepest global recession (albeit short-lived) since the Second World War amid large-scale policy support, and led to a sweeping fall in world trade.
  • Following the initial COVID-19 shock, trade staged a rapid recovery, but from the second half of 2022 world trade growth started to decelerate markedly and in 2023 it is estimated to have been considerably below its pre-pandemic average.

US Treasury market conditions and global market reactions to US monetary policy

Retrieved on: 
Friday, January 19, 2024

At the same time, leveraged funds have built up unusually large net short positions in the US Treasury futures market.

Key Points: 
  • At the same time, leveraged funds have built up unusually large net short positions in the US Treasury futures market.
  • This box provides empirical evidence that the impact of a US monetary policy shock on domestic and global bond markets may vary depending on conditions in the US Treasury market.