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John Hutchinson
Monetary Policy
- Division
Monetary Policy Strategy
- Current Position
-
Principal Economist
- Fields of interest
-
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics,Labour Economics
- 17 September 2024
- THE ECB BLOG
- 1 August 2024
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - BOXEconomic Bulletin Issue 5, 2024Details
- Abstract
- Since the 1980s the divergence between the returns on capital and on safe assets has increased. This box examines what might account for this wedge and finds that, while the capital risk premium is the main factor, partly reflecting the demand for safe assets and a general decline in their supply, mark-ups also play a role. Since the pandemic, divergence has increased in the euro area, while it has remained broadly stable, albeit wider, in the United States, with mark-ups playing a greater role. During this period, the contribution from the risk premium has marginally increased in the euro area, whereas mark-ups have slightly decreased. In the United States, both the risk premium and mark-ups are largely unchanged. The elevated risk premium, to the extent that it reflects capital market imperfections, is one potential explanation for subdued investment levels in the euro area, which also pose a challenge to meeting the substantial investment needed to advance the green transition.
- JEL Code
- E01 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→General→Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth, Environmental Accounts
E6 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
- 9 August 2023
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - ARTICLEEconomic Bulletin Issue 5, 2023Details
- Abstract
- This article presents a model-based assessment of the short to medium-term economic impact of carbon pricing aimed at mitigating climate change. It addresses the high level of uncertainty in gauging the effects of carbon price increases by employing a suite of macroeconomic models. Under the main scenario, the loss in euro area annual GDP growth is contained and the inflation impact is modest, implying a limited output/inflation trade-off for monetary policy. The scenario supports the transition to a low-carbon economy, but the implied reduction in carbon emissions makes only a limited contribution to achieving the EU’s intermediate emission reduction target for 2030. Accordingly, reaching the EU’s climate goals will require a mixture of ambitious carbon pricing, additional regulatory action and technological innovation.
- JEL Code
- C54 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric Modeling→Quantitative Policy Modeling
E52 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Monetary Policy
E62 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook→Fiscal Policy
H23 : Public Economics→Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue→Externalities, Redistributive Effects, Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
Q43 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Energy→Energy and the Macroeconomy
- 25 May 2023
- THE ECB BLOGDetails
- JEL Code
- Q54 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Environmental Economics→Climate, Natural Disasters, Global Warming
- 2 March 2022
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 290Details
- Abstract
- In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, central banks started being confronted with severe challenges that led to an unprecedented policy response in terms of the size and variety of monetary policy measures. One such measure centred on central banks communicating to the public more explicitly their future policy actions in order to influence expectations. In the case of interest rates, as the standard policy rate approached the effective lower bound, major central banks began providing forward guidance (FG) on interest rates with the intention of lowering expectations of future short-term rates. While FG had been used in certain jurisdictions before the crisis, its prominence in the monetary policy toolkit grew substantially in the aftermath of the crisis. This occasional paper summarises the work carried-out by the Eurosystem Taskforce on the macroeconomic impact of rate forward guidance (FG) in an environment of large central bank balance sheets. The analysis presented covers the period up to February 2020 so the implications of the pandemic as well as the ECB’s strategy review are beyond the scope of the Taskforce’s mandate. The paper describes the analytical challenges associated with assessing rate FG on account of the relative novelty of these policies, the lack of well-established empirical results and the sensitivity of model predictions to the expectations formation process. To overcome and address these challenges, the Taskforce took stock of all the available infrastructure and analysis within in the Eurosystem, and where needed, developed structural and empirical models and approaches to assess the macroeconomic impact of rate FG in an environment of large central bank balance sheets.
- JEL Code
- E37 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
E43 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
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
- 13 January 2022
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - ARTICLEEconomic Bulletin Issue 8, 2021Details
- Abstract
- Understanding the expectations of households, firms and financial markets regarding monetary policy and macroeconomic developments is important for the conduct of monetary policy. Surveys can play an important role in understanding expectations. The ECB Survey of Monetary Analysts (SMA) brings together information on financial sector expectations of monetary policy and macroeconomic developments in one coherently structured and regularly updated survey. The objective of the SMA is to “gather regular, comprehensive, structured and systematic information on market participants’ expectations”. The ECB launched the SMA as a pilot project in April 2019 and, after concluding the pilot phase, has published aggregate results since June 2021. This article looks at the structure of the survey and the rationale behind it and explains what role it plays in understanding changes in market participants’ expectations of euro area monetary policy and the macroeconomy.
- JEL Code
- E5 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
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
- 21 September 2021
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 275Details
- Abstract
- This report discusses the role of the European Union’s full employment objective in the conduct of the ECB’s monetary policy. It first reviews a range of indicators of full employment, highlights the heterogeneity of labour market outcomes within different groups in the population and across countries, and documents the flatness of the Phillips curve in the euro area. In this context, it is stressed that labour market structures and trend labour market outcomes are primarily determined by national economic policies. The report then recalls that, in many circumstances, inflation and employment move together and pursuing price stability is conducive to supporting employment. However, in response to economic shocks that give rise to a temporary trade-off between employment and inflation stabilisation, the ECB’s medium-term orientation in pursuing price stability is shown to provide flexibility to contribute to the achievement of the EU’s full employment objective. Regarding the conduct of monetary policy in a low interest rate environment, model-based simulations suggest that history-dependent policy approaches − which have been proposed to overcome lasting shortfalls of inflation due to the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates by a more persistent policy response to disinflationary shocks − can help to bring employment closer to full employment, even though their effectiveness depends on the strength of the postulated expectations channels. Finally, the importance of employment income and wealth inequality in the transmission of monetary policy strengthens the case for more persistent or forceful easing policies (in pursuit of price stability) when interest rates are constrained by their lower bound.
- JEL Code
- E52 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Monetary Policy
E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
- 21 September 2021
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 269Details
- Abstract
- The ECB’s price stability mandate has been defined by the Treaty. But the Treaty has not spelled out what price stability precisely means. To make the mandate operational, the Governing Council has provided a quantitative definition in 1998 and a clarification in 2003. The landscape has changed notably compared to the time the strategy review was originally designed. At the time, the main concern of the Governing Council was to anchor inflation at low levels in face of the inflationary history of the previous decades. Over the last decade economic conditions have changed dramatically: the persistent low-inflation environment has created the concrete risk of de-anchoring of longer-term inflation expectations. Addressing low inflation is different from addressing high inflation. The ability of the ECB (and central banks globally) to provide the necessary accommodation to maintain price stability has been tested by the lower bound on nominal interest rates in the context of the secular decline in the equilibrium real interest rate. Against this backdrop, this report analyses: the ECB’s performance as measured against its formulation of price stability; whether it is possible to identify a preferred level of steady-state inflation on the basis of optimality considerations; advantages and disadvantages of formulating the objective in terms of a focal point or a range, or having both; whether the medium-term orientation of the ECB’s policy can serve as a mechanism to cater for other considerations; how to strengthen, in the presence of the lower bound, the ECB’s leverage on private-sector expectations for inflation and the ECB’s future policy actions so that expectations can act as ‘automatic stabilisers’ and work alongside the central bank.
- JEL Code
- E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation
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
- 21 September 2021
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 264Details
- Abstract
- This paper summarises the findings of the Eurosystem’s Expert Group on Inflation Expectations (EGIE), which was one of the 13 work streams conducting analysis that fed into the ECB’s monetary policy strategy review. The EGIE was tasked with (i) reviewing the nature and behaviour of inflation expectations, with a focus on the degree of anchoring, and (ii) exploring the role that measures of expectations can play in forecasting inflation. While it is households’ and firms’ inflation expectations that ultimately matter in the expectations channel, data limitations have meant that in practice the focus of analysis has been on surveys of professional forecasters and on market-based indicators. Regarding the anchoring of inflation expectations, this paper considers a number of metrics: the level of inflation expectations, the responsiveness of longer-term inflation expectations to shorter-term developments, and the degree of uncertainty. Different metrics can provide conflicting signals about the scale and timing of potential unanchoring, which underscores the importance of considering all of them. Overall, however, these metrics suggest that in the period since the global financial and European debt crises, longer-term inflation expectations in the euro area have become less well anchored. Regarding the role measures of inflation expectations can play in forecasting inflation, this paper finds that they are indicative for future inflationary developments. When it comes to their predictive power, both market-based and survey-based measures are found to be more accurate than statistical benchmarks, but do not systematically outperform each other. Beyond their role as standalone forecasts, inflation expectations bring forecast gains when included in forecasting models and can also inform scenario and risk analysis in projection exercises performed using structural models. ...
- JEL Code
- D84 : Microeconomics→Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty→Expectations, Speculations
E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation
E37 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
E52 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Monetary Policy
- 13 April 2021
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2537Details
- Abstract
- Increased investment in clean electricity generation or the introduction of a carbon tax will most likely lead to higher electricity prices. We examine the effect from changing electricity prices on manufacturing employment. Analyzing firm-level data, we find that rising electricity prices lead to a negative impact on labor demand and investment in sectors most reliant on electricity as an input factor. Since these sectors are unevenly spread across countries and regions, the labor impact will also be unevenly spread with the highest impact in Southern Germany and Northern Italy. We also identify an additional channel that leads to heterogeneous responses. When electricity prices rise, financially constrained firms reduce employment more than less constrained firms. This implies a potentially mitigating role for monetary policy.
- JEL Code
- E52 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Monetary Policy
H23 : Public Economics→Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue→Externalities, Redistributive Effects, Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
J23 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Labor Demand
Q48 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Energy→Government Policy
- 30 July 2020
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - BOXEconomic Bulletin Issue 5, 2020Details
- Abstract
- This box examines the impact of the ECB’s monetary policy measures taken in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, focusing on asset purchases and the targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO III). It outlines how the ECB’s response centred on addressing three key issues: (i) market stabilisation, (ii) providing central bank liquidity to maintain credit provision to the real economy, and (iii) ensuring that the overall monetary policy stance is sufficiently accommodative. The box sets out in detail how the ECB’s measures have indeed proved an effective and efficient response to the COVID-19 crisis, in turn providing crucial support to the real economy and to price stability across two dimensions, namely underpinning the medium-term growth and inflation outlook and removing tail risks around the baseline outlook. These measures are a proportionate response under current conditions given that the ECB’s price stability objective would have been subject to further downside risks in the absence of such measures.
- JEL Code
- E50 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→General
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