Central banks

We study whether it is desirable for the central bank to supply reserves abundantly, i.e. beyond the level that satisfies financial institutions’ aggregate liquidity needs. Using a theoretical framework, we demonstrate that abundant reserves would help fulfil the private sector’s demand for safe and liquid assets, because reserves affect financial institutions’ leverage constraints.

Huw Pill has been reappointed to the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), by the Governor, after consultation with the Chancellor.

In this paper, we propose a new framework to jointly calibrate cyclical and structural capital requirements. For this, we integrate a non-linear macroeconomic model and a stress test model. In the macroeconomic model, the severity of the scenarios depends on the level of cyclical risk. Risk-related scenarios are used as inputs for the stress test model. Banks’ capital losses derived from a scenario based on a reference level of risk are used to set the structural requirement. Additional losses associated with the current risk scenario are used to set the cyclical requirement.

This paper introduces ECB-(RE)BASE as the model-consistent, or rational expectation version of the ECB-BASE model. It brings new analytical capabilities to consider varying degrees of heterogeneity in expectation formation across the agents of the model. While the original version of ECB-BASE features VAR-based expectations, we examine two alternative versions either with full model-consistent expectations or with hybrid expectations. The paper provides a didactic exposition of the changes in the model properties brought by the various expectation settings.