Optimal Monetary Policy with Collateralized Household Debt and Borrowing Constraints / Tommaso Monacelli.

By:

Monacelli, Tommaso

Contributor(s):

National Bureau of Economic Research

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w12470.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2006.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

E24 - Employment • Unemployment • Wages • Intergenerational Income Distribution • Aggregate Human Capital • Aggregate Labor Productivity
E44 - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

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Abstract: We study optimal monetary policy in an economy with nominal private debt, borrowing constraints and price rigidity. Private debt reflects equilibrium trade between an impatient borrower, who faces an endogenous collateral constraint, and a patient saver, who engages in consumption smoothing. Since inflation can positively affect borrower's net worth, monetary policy optimally balances the incentive to offset the price stickiness distortion with the one of marginally relaxing the borrower's collateral constraint. We find that the optimal volatility of inflation is increasing in three key parameters: (i) the borrower's weight in the planner's objective function; (ii) the borrower's impatience rate; (iii) the degree of price flexibility. In general, however, deviations from price stability are small for a small degree of price stickiness. In a two-sector version of our model, in which durable price movements can directly affect the ability of borrowing, the optimal volatility of (non-durable) inflation is more sizeable. In our context, and relative to simple Taylor rules, the Ramsey-optimal allocation entails a partial smoothing of real durable goods prices.

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Holdings
Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w12470 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

Total holds: 0

August 2006.

We study optimal monetary policy in an economy with nominal private debt, borrowing constraints and price rigidity. Private debt reflects equilibrium trade between an impatient borrower, who faces an endogenous collateral constraint, and a patient saver, who engages in consumption smoothing. Since inflation can positively affect borrower's net worth, monetary policy optimally balances the incentive to offset the price stickiness distortion with the one of marginally relaxing the borrower's collateral constraint. We find that the optimal volatility of inflation is increasing in three key parameters: (i) the borrower's weight in the planner's objective function; (ii) the borrower's impatience rate; (iii) the degree of price flexibility. In general, however, deviations from price stability are small for a small degree of price stickiness. In a two-sector version of our model, in which durable price movements can directly affect the ability of borrowing, the optimal volatility of (non-durable) inflation is more sizeable. In our context, and relative to simple Taylor rules, the Ramsey-optimal allocation entails a partial smoothing of real durable goods prices.