IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/imfswp/190.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The forward guidance trap

Author

Listed:
  • Orphanides, Athanasios

Abstract

This paper examines the policy experience of the Fed, ECB and BOJ during and after the Covid-19 pandemic and draws lessons for monetary policy strategy and its communication. All three central banks provided appropriate accommodation during the pandemic but two failed to unwind this accommodation in a timely manner. The Fed and ECB guided real interest rates to inappropriately negative levels as the economy recovered from the pandemic, fueling high inflation. The policy error can be traced to decisions regarding forward guidance on policy rates that delayed lift-off while the two central banks continued to expand their balance sheets. The Fed and the ECB fell into the forward guidance trap. This could have been avoided if policy were guided by a forwardlooking rule that properly adjusted the nominal interest rate with the evolution of the inflation outlook.

Suggested Citation

  • Orphanides, Athanasios, 2023. "The forward guidance trap," IMFS Working Paper Series 190, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:imfswp:190
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/278756/1/1860980481.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carl E. Walsh, 2022. "Inflation Surges and Monetary Policy," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 40, pages 39-66, November.
    2. Athanasios Orphanides, 2021. "The Power of Central Bank Balance Sheets," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 39, pages 35-54, November.
    3. D’Amico, Stefania & King, Thomas B., 2023. "What does anticipated monetary policy do?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 123-139.
    4. Ben S. Bernanke, 2020. "The New Tools of Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 943-983, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. de Haan, Jakob & Hoogduin, Lex, 2024. "ECB communication policies: An overview and comparison with the Federal Reserve," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Athanasios Orphanides, 2023. "The Forward Guidance Trap," IMES Discussion Paper Series 23-E-06, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    2. Benchimol, Jonathan & Bounader, Lahcen, 2023. "Optimal monetary policy under bounded rationality," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    3. Pablo Guerrón-Quintana & Alexey Khazanov & Molin Zhong, 2023. "Financial and Macroeconomic Data Through the Lens of a Nonlinear Dynamic Factor Model," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-027, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Athanasios Orphanides, 2021. "The Power of Central Bank Balance Sheets," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 39, pages 35-54, November.
    5. Bhar, Ramaprasad & Malliaris, A.G., 2021. "Modeling U.S. monetary policy during the global financial crisis and lessons for Covid-19," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 15-33.
    6. James B. Bullard, 2022. "Reflections on the Disinflationary Methods of Poincaré and Thatcher," Speech 94556, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    7. Takuji Kawamoto & Jouchi Nakajima & Tomoaki Mikami, 2021. "Supplementary Paper Series for the "Assessment" (3): Inflation-Overshooting Commitment:An Analysis Using a Macroeconomic Model," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 21-E-9, Bank of Japan.
    8. Latfe Alhusseinawi, 2020. "The Impact Of Financial Policy Tools In Reducing The Deficit Of The General Budget," European Journal of Accounting, Finance & Business, "Stefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Romania - Faculty of Economics and Public Administration, West University of Timisoara, Romania - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 13(23), pages 1-9, June.
    9. de Groot, Oliver & Mazelis, Falk & Motto, Roberto & Ristiniemi, Annukka, 2021. "A toolkit for computing Constrained Optimal Policy Projections (COPPs)," Working Paper Series 2555, European Central Bank.
    10. Bhattarai, Keshab & Mallick, Sushanta K. & Yang, Bo, 2021. "Are global spillovers complementary or competitive? Need for international policy coordination," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    11. Thomas Mayer & Gunther Schnabl, 2023. "How to escape from the debt trap: Lessons from the past," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 991-1016, April.
    12. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    13. Kábrt, Tomáš & Brůna, Karel, 2022. "Asymmetric effects of foreign capital on income inequality: The case of the Post-China 16 countries," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 613-626.
    14. Benjamin D. Keen & Alexander W. Richter & Nathaniel A. Throckmorton, 2017. "Forward Guidance And The State Of The Economy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1593-1624, October.
    15. Mitoko, Jeremiah, 2021. "Economics of Microcredit-From current crisis to new possibilities," MPRA Paper 108392, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Grandi, Pietro & Guille, Marianne, 2023. "Banks, deposit rigidity and negative rates," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    17. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2024. "Enhancing resilience with natural growth targeting," IMFS Working Paper Series 200, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    18. repec:zbw:bofitp:2021_015 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Jappelli, Ruggero & Pelizzon, Loriana & Subrahmanyam, Marti G., 2023. "Quantitative easing, the repo market, and the term structure of interest rates," SAFE Working Paper Series 395, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    20. Philippe Andrade & Jordi Gali & Hervé Le Bihan & Julien Matheron, 2021. "Should the ECB Adjust Its Strategy in the Face of a Lower r*?," Working Papers 22-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    21. Barnett, William A. & Bella, Giovanni & Ghosh, Taniya & Mattana, Paolo & Venturi, Beatrice, 2022. "Shilnikov chaos, low interest rates, and New Keynesian macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy strategy; forward guidance; policy rules;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:imfswp:190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hoffmde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.