Cerdeiro, Diego A.
Description:
The paper extends Bernanke and
Mihov's [6] closed-economy strategy for identification
of monetary policy shocks to open-economy settings,
accounting for the simultaneity between interest-rate and
exchange-rate innovations. The methodology allows a separate
treatment of two distinct monetary policy shocks, one that
operates through open market operations, and another one
that takes place through interventions in the foreign
exchange market. Implementation of this strategy to the case
of Argentina provides the stylized facts necessary to choose
among competing theoretical models of this economy. In
addition to studying the effects of monetary policy
innovations, the present study sheds light on the endogenous
component of monetary policy. In this regard, the paper
finds that, notwithstanding the relative stability of the
exchange rate and the accumulation of large amounts of
international reserves, the central bank in Argentina has
been far from absorbing balance of payments shocks in a
currency-board fashion. The growing level of international
reserves can be rationalized, instead, as the monetary
authority's response to terms of trade, supply and
domestic currency demand shocks.