IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2021-274.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary Policy and COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Michal Brzoza-Brzezina
  • Marcin Kolasa
  • Krzysztof Makarski

Abstract

We study the macroeconomic effects of the COVID-19 epidemic in a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium setup with nominal rigidities. We evaluate various containment policies and show that they allow to dramatically reduce the welfare cost of the disease. Then we investigate the role that monetary policy, in its capacity to manage aggregate demand, should play during the epidemic. According to our results, treating the observed output contraction as a standard recession leads to overly expansionary policy. Finally, we check how central banks should resolve the trade-off between stabilizing the economy and containing the epidemic. If no administrative restrictions are in place, the second motive prevails and, despite the deep recession, optimal monetary policy is in fact contractionary. Conversely, if sufficient containment measures are introduced, central bank interventions should be expansionary and help stabilize economic activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Michal Brzoza-Brzezina & Marcin Kolasa & Krzysztof Makarski, 2021. "Monetary Policy and COVID-19," IMF Working Papers 2021/274, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/274
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=506831
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ichino, Andrea & Favero, Carlo A. & Rustichini, Aldo, 2020. "Restarting the economy while saving lives under Covid-19," CEPR Discussion Papers 14664, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Greg Kaplan & Benjamin Moll & Giovanni L. Violante, 2020. "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S," NBER Working Papers 27794, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Mercedes Yanes-Lane & Nicholas Winters & Federica Fregonese & Mayara Bastos & Sara Perlman-Arrow & Jonathon R Campbell & Dick Menzies, 2020. "Proportion of asymptomatic infection among COVID-19 positive persons and their transmission potential: A systematic review and meta-analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-21, November.
    4. James B. Bullard, 2020. "Expected U.S. Macroeconomic Performance during the Pandemic Adjustment Period," The Regional Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 28(1), March.
    5. Andrew Atkeson, 2020. "What Will be the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in the US? Rough Estimates of Disease Scenarios," Staff Report 595, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    6. Callum Jones & Thomas Philippon & Venky Venkateswaran, 2021. "Optimal Mitigation Policies in a Pandemic: Social Distancing and Working from Home [A simple planning problem for covid-19 lockdown]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5188-5223.
    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. Sabina Marchetti & Alessandro Borin & Francesco Paolo Conteduca & Giuseppe Ilardi & Giorgio Guzzetta & Piero Poletti & Patrizio Pezzotti & Antonino Bella & Paola Stefanelli & Flavia Riccardo & Stefano, 2022. "An Epidemic Model for SARS-CoV-2 with Self-Adaptive Containment Measures," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 681, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    2. Benmir, Ghassane & Jaccard, Ivan & Vermandel, Gauthier, 2023. "Optimal monetary policy in an estimated SIR model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    3. João Tovar Jalles & Bryn Battersby & Rachel Lee, 2024. "Effectiveness of Fiscal Announcements: Early Evidence from COVID-19," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 623-658, July.
    4. Lepetit, Antoine & Fuentes-Albero, Cristina, 2022. "The limited power of monetary policy in a pandemic," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    5. Jaccard, Ivan, 2022. "The trade-off between public health and the economy in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic," Working Paper Series 2690, European Central Bank.
    6. S. Belgin Akçay & Mert Akyüz, 2024. "Why Did House Prices Go Up During COVID-19 Pandemic? Policy-Driven or Market-Driven?," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 27(2), pages 303-328.
    7. Trabandt, Mathias, 2023. "Comment on “Optimal monetary policy in an estimated SIR model by G. Benmir, I. Jaccard, and G. Vermandel”," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    8. Jakub Rybacki & Michał Gniazdowski, 2023. "Macroeconomic forecasting in Poland: lessons from the external shocks," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 54(1), pages 45-64.

    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. Enrique G. Mendoza & Eugenio Rojas & Linda L. Tesar & Jing Zhang, 2023. "A Macroeconomic Model of Healthcare Saturation, Inequality and the Output–Pandemia Trade-off," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(1), pages 243-299, March.
    2. Stefan Pollinger, 2023. "Optimal Contact Tracing and Social Distancing Policies to Suppress A New Infectious Disease," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(654), pages 2483-2503.
    3. Francesco Flaviano Russo, 2023. "Epidemics and policy: the dismal trade-offs," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 40(2), pages 561-588, July.
    4. Giagheddu, Marta & Papetti, Andrea, 2023. "The macroeconomics of age-varying epidemics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    5. Giorgio Fabbri & Salvatore Federico & Davide Fiaschi & Fausto Gozzi, 2024. "Mobility decisions, economic dynamics and epidemic," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 77(1), pages 495-531, February.
    6. Lin William Cong & Ke Tang & Bing Wang & Jingyuan Wang, 2021. "An AI-assisted Economic Model of Endogenous Mobility and Infectious Diseases: The Case of COVID-19 in the United States," Papers 2109.10009, arXiv.org.
    7. Timo Boppart & Karl Harmenberg & John Hassler & Per Krusell & Jonna Olsson, 2020. "Integrated Epi-Econ Assessment," NBER Working Papers 28282, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Christian Moser & Pierre Yared, 2022. "Pandemic Lockdown: The Role of Government Commitment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 27-50, October.
    9. Antonio Filippin & Marco Mantovani, 2024. "Moral Preferences over Health-Wealth Trade-offs," Working Papers 531, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics.
    10. Martin Bodenstein & Giancarlo Corsetti & Luca Guerrieri, 2022. "Social distancing and supply disruptions in a pandemic," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), pages 681-721, May.
    11. Martin S Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo & Mathias Trabandt, 2021. "The Macroeconomics of Epidemics [Economic activity and the spread of viral diseases: Evidence from high frequency data]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5149-5187.
    12. Yasushi Iwamoto, 2021. "Welfare economics of managing an epidemic: an exposition," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 72(4), pages 537-579, October.
    13. Miguel Casares & Paul Gomme & Hashmat Khan, 2022. "COVID‐19 pandemic and economic scenarios for Ontario," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(S1), pages 503-539, February.
    14. Francesco Flaviano Russo, 2020. "Testing Policies During an Epidemic," CSEF Working Papers 591, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    15. Christopher Blackburn & Juan Moreno-Cruz, 2021. "Work Context and Industrial Composition Determine the Epidemiological Responses in a Multi-Group SIR Model," BEA Working Papers 0185, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    16. Cristina Arellano & Yan Bai & Gabriel Mihalache, 2024. "Deadly Debt Crises: COVID-19 in Emerging Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(3), pages 1243-1290.
    17. Sewon Hur, 2023. "The Distributional Effects Of Covid‐19 And Optimal Mitigation Policies," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(1), pages 261-294, February.
    18. Lepetit, Antoine & Fuentes-Albero, Cristina, 2022. "The limited power of monetary policy in a pandemic," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    19. Leonardo Melosi & Matthias Rottner, 2023. "Pandemic Recessions and Contact Tracing," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(6), pages 2485-2517.
    20. Greg Kaplan & Benjamin Moll & Giovanni L. Violante, 2020. "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S," NBER Working Papers 27794, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; Epidemics; Containment measures; Monetary policy; containment policy; containment measure; optimal monetary policy; epidemic model; monetary policy stance; Consumption; Economic recession; Inflation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    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:imf:imfwpa:2021/274. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.