Três ensaios sobre política monetária e crédito

In the first essay, "Determinants of Credit Expansion in Brazil", analyzes the determinants of credit using an extensive bank level panel dataset. Brazilian economy has experienced a major boost in leverage in the first decade of 2000 as a result of a set factors ranging from macroeconomic stability to the abundant liquidity in international financial markets before 2008 and a set of deliberate decisions taken by President Lula's to expand credit, boost consumption and gain political support from the lower social strata. As relevant conclusions to our investigation we verify that: credit expansion relied on the reduction of the monetary policy rate, international financial markets are an important source of funds, payroll-guaranteed credit and investment grade status affected positively credit supply. We were not able to confirm the importance of financial inclusion efforts. The importance of financial sector sanity indicators of credit conditions cannot be underestimated. These results raise questions over the sustainability of this expansion process and financial stability in the future. The second essay, “Public Credit, Monetary Policy and Financial Stability”, discusses the role of public credit. The supply of public credit in Brazil has successfully served to relaunch the economy after the Lehman-Brothers demise. It was later transformed into a driver for economic growth as well as a regulation device to force private banks to reduce interest rates. We argue that the use of public funds to finance economic growth has three important drawbacks: it generates inflation, induces higher loan rates and may induce financial instability. An additional effect is the prevention of market credit solutions. This study contributes to the understanding of the costs and benefits of credit as a fiscal policy tool. The third essay, “Bayesian Forecasting of Interest Rates: Do Priors Matter?”, discusses the choice of priors when forecasting short-term interest rates. Central Banks that commit to an Inflation Target monetary regime are bound to respond to inflation expectation spikes and product hiatus widening in a clear and transparent way by abiding to a Taylor rule. There are various reports of central banks being more responsive to inflationary than to deflationary shocks rendering the monetary policy response to be indeed non-linear. Besides that there is no guarantee that coefficients remain stable during time. Central Banks may switch to a dual target regime to consider deviations from inflation and the output gap. The estimation of a Taylor rule may therefore have to consider a non-linear model with time varying parameters. This paper uses Bayesian forecasting methods to predict short-term interest rates. We take two different approaches: from a theoretic perspective we focus on an augmented version of the Taylor rule and include the Real Exchange Rate, the Credit-to-GDP and the Net Public Debt-to-GDP ratios. We also take an ”atheoretic” approach based on the Expectations Theory of the Term Structure to model short-term interest. The selection of priors is particularly relevant for predictive accuracy yet, ideally, forecasting models should require as little a priori expert insight as possible. We present recent developments in prior selection, in particular we propose the use of hierarchical hyper-g priors for better forecasting in a framework that can be easily extended to other key macroeconomic indicators.

Mudanças na política econômica são destaques nas redes sociais

Coordenador de pesquisas da FGV/DAPP, Rafael Martins de Souza, analisa mudanças na política econômica brasileira.

Polarização política nas redes

O último fim de semana forneceu mais demonstrações da atual polarização política do Brasil e da importância que as redes sociais têm como espaço público de discussão e ativismo. A publicação da lista de inquéritos que a Procuradoria Geral da República encaminhou ao Supremo Tribunal Federal na sexta-feira e o pronunciamento da Presidente Dilma Rousseff no domingo foram estopins para que o diálogo virtual sobre política nacional retomasse a vitalidade pela qual tem se notabilizado desde as eleições presidenciais

Consistência das expectativas sobre política monetária

Utilizando microdados da Sondagem do Consumidor do FGV/IBRE, investigamos se os consumidores brasileiros formam expectativas consistentes sobre a regra de Taylor e se essa consistência se altera de acordo com a condução da política monetária feita pelo Banco Central do Brasil. A partir de uma análise semelhante a de Carvalho e Nechio (2014), encontramos que o público consegue capturar corretamente a relação entre juros e inflação no arcabouço da regra, mas não a relação entre juros e desemprego, provavelmente por causa do regime de política monetária adotado no país e por particularidades dos dados. Além disso, encontramos que a consistência das expectativas sofre quedas significativas nos períodos em que o banco central desvia da regra de Taylor, indicando que uma maior tolerância a choques inflacionários por parte da autoridade monetária pode prejudicar a coordenação das expectativas da sociedade.