Economics
Lifetime achievement: Zhou Xiaochuan
The former People’s Bank of China governor stands out for his high levels of integrity, intellectual rigour and bold reforms that have served the public interest in China and elsewhere
Negative rates could have sped up US recovery – San Fran Fed paper
Output gap could have been reduced by as much as half compared to actual figures, researcher says
ECB policy affects Eastern European economies – Bank of Italy paper
Researcher uses “shadow interest rate” methodology to measure monetary policy spillovers
Podcast: Iceland removes gender bias from wages
Katrín Ólafsdóttir, MPC member at the Central Bank of Iceland, says equal pay certification will encourage women to enter the economics profession
Tighter US capital ratios eased inequality – Bundesbank paper
Richer households’ incomes fell while Fed’s easing cushioned effects on middle and low earners
Financial inclusion initiative: Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis
Improvements in the bank’s financial inclusion initiatives are helping tackle the polarisation of economic education in the US and across the globe
Book notes: EuroTragedy, by Ashoka Mody
The former International Monetary Fund insider elegantly tells the story of the creation of the currency that has defied economics, warning that it could get “worse, much worse”
New governor starts work at Belgian central bank
Former vice-governor Pierre Wunsch is backed by centre-right Francophone party
Conventional models beat machine learning in predicting crises, paper finds
Bundesbank paper contrasts performance of logit approach to machine learning
The PBoC’s efforts to solve the ‘impossible trinity’
Chinese central bank intervenes to manage offshore renminbi rate; uses swaps, rather than selling reserves in latest currency interventions
Causes of liquidity traps are ‘crucial’ to policy response – BdF paper
Liquidity traps caused by investor deleveraging may not respond to QE, researchers say
Podcast: Gender targets – friend or foe?
Officials from the ECB explain why gender targets, though controversial, are necessary to close the gender gap at central banks
Trade tensions may reflect international system design flaws
Former PBoC governor Zhou says global system faces “grave challenges” while former EC president Barroso says current framework “is not working”
Zimbabwean central bank officials cleared of wrongdoing
Governor Mangudya says investigation absolves of any wrongdoing, despite previous claims of corruption from former government official
Cleveland Fed launches centre for inflation research
Bank plans to make its inflation conference annual rather than bi-annual
Bank lending standards can worsen financial frictions, ECB paper finds
Model shows tighter lending standards can damage productivity, researcher argues
French banking crisis of 1930s far worse than previously thought – BdF paper
Central bank policies worsened crisis, Banque de France paper says
ECB unveils richer eurozone forecasting model
“NAWM II” models financial sector’s role in originating and propagating economic shocks
IMF programmes do not harm governments’ financing ability – ECB paper
Governments use IMF as an excuse when “struggling with transparency”, authors argue
Immigrants smooth eurozone labour market shocks – Bank of Italy paper
Non-EU immigrants have higher mobility than Europeans moving between countries – researchers
Eurozone may be close to potential growth – ECB paper
But all estimates of potential GDP should be treated with caution, researchers argue
Agent-based models: a new frontier for macroeconomics?
Agent-based modelling is opening up new possibilities for economics, but the discipline is still struggling to move from the sidelines to the mainstream
US regulatory sanctions lead to banks cutting credit costs – Finnish paper
Sanctioned banks cut loan costs by 22bp on average, researchers find
Daly favours Fed’s gradual normalisation policy
The San Fran Fed president will be voting in the next FOMC meeting on November 7-8