Monetary Policy and Debt Deflation: Some Computational Experiments
CAMA Working Paper 42/2013, July 2013
28 Pages Posted: 4 Jul 2013
Date Written: July 2, 2013
Abstract
The paper presents an agent based model to study the possible effects of different fiscal and monetary policies in the context of debt deflation. We introduce a modified Taylor rule which includes the financial position of firms as a target. Monte Carlo simulations show that an excessive sensitivity of the central bank to inflation, the output gap and firms’ debt can have undesired and destabilising effects on the system, while an active fiscal policy appears to be able to effectively stabilise the economy. The paper also addresses the puzzle of low inflation during stock market booms by testing different behavioural rules for the central bank. We find that, in a context of sticky prices and volatile expectations, endogenous credit can be identified as the main source of the divergent dynamics of prices in the real and financial sector.
Keywords: Financial fragility, monetary policy, debt deflation, agent based modelling, complex dynamics
JEL Classification: E12, E31, E44
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation