A global perspective on macroprudential policy interaction with systemic risk,real economic activity,and monetary intervention

The study empirically assesses how macroprudential policy interacts with systemic risk,industrial production,and monetary intervention on a global level from January 2006 to December 2018.We adopt the aggregate proxies of these variables,capturing their global effects,and use a novel econometric technique,namely,smooth local projections.The study finds that global macroprudential policy leads the monetary policy,exhibiting a countercyclical pattern concerning industrial production.The latter has an inverse bidirectional linkage with systemic risk.Thus,an ex-ante tight macroprudential policy can indirectly mitigate global systemic risk through its pro-growth effect on industrial production,although no convincing evidence exists for the direct impact of a macroprudential intervention on systemic risk.The study results endure several extensions and a robustness check,which builds on alternative measures of global systemic stress and real economic activity,thereby legitimizing the increased importance attached to the macroprudential policy since the 2007–2009 global financial crisis.

Independence and Accountability of Central Banks With a Special Focus on India

According to the consensus view, central banks reached a high level of independence by the end of last century. This paper argues that as a result short-term political considerations applied during the appointment process of central bank decision-makers, their actual independence was at a lower level already that time. The global f＇mancial crisis created new tasks for central banks and forced a review of the meaning of independence. The paper argues that central banks should be responsible for safeguarding fmancial stability and their macro-prudential activity can only be executed in cooperation with governments. However, interest rate policy decisions must remain free of political influence. The novelty of this paper lies in showing the conflictual relationship of the various roles of central banks. The paper concludes that the duality of independence and cooperation represents a major uncertainty in the operation of central banks. As a result of the greater degree of politicisation of the activities of central banks, their de facto independence in interest rate policy making may further shrink in the future. The paper also shows that India represents a unique case of central bank independence. In most countries, de jure independence is higher than de facto. India is one of the very rare countries where the reverse is the case.

Can"Concerted"Macroprudential Policies Mitigate Cross-border Contagion of Financial Risks?Evidence from China and Its Financially Connected Economies

We construct a connected network between China and the economies that are financially linked to it,based on the network topology of variance decompositions,and measure the cross-border contagion of financial risks among these economies.We then examine whether the concerted use of macroprudential policies mitigates the cross-border contagion of financial risks.The empirical results show that the tightening of macroprudential policies,especially counter-cyclical capital buffers and limits on credit growth,in economies with net spillover risk(e.g.the US and China).can reduce the cross-border spillover of domestic financial risks to other economies.The concerted use of macroprudential policies can contribute to global financial stability.However,the tightening of"capital"macroprudential policy tools will increase domestic cross-border absorption of financial risks.Hence,macroprudential regulation of cross-border capital flows must be strengthened.