Philip R. Lane: The effectiveness and transmission of monetary policy in the euro area
Contribution by Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the
ECB, to the panel on “Reassessing the effectiveness and transmission
of monetary policy” at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
Economic SymposiumJackson Hole, 24 August 2024Introduction
My
aim in this contribution is to provide a euro area perspective on the
effectiveness and transmission of monetary policy. [1] As expressed in
the monetary policy statements of the ECB’s Governing Council, the aim
of monetary policy tightening has been to deliver a timely return of
inflation to the medium-term two per cent target by dampening demand
and guarding against the risk of a persistent upward shift in
inflation expectations. Even if sectoral shocks had played an
important role in triggering the initial 2021-2022 inflation surges,
monetary policy tightening was necessary in order to contain domestic
demand and to signal clearly to price and wage-setters that monetary
policymakers would not tolerate inflation remaining above the target
for an excessively-long period. [2]
In this contribution, I
will report on the transmission of monetary policy, via financial
markets and the banking system, to domestic demand and inflation
expectations during this tightening episode. My interim conclusion is
that monetary policy has been effective in underpinning the
disinflation process, with the transmission of monetary tightening
operating to restrict demand and stabilise inflation expectations.
The effectiveness and efficiency of monetary policy has
required a data-dependent approach to the calibration of the monetary
stance. To this end, I will also discuss the importance for the
calibration of monetary policy of fully recognising the asymmetric
sectoral nature of the pandemic and energy shocks that triggered the
initial inflation surges and the impact of sectoral balance sheets on
macroeconomic dynamics. These considerations have shaped the monetary
policy reaction function of the ECB during this episode, which has
been guided by the incoming evidence on: (a) the unfolding inflation
outlook; (b) the evolution of underlying inflation; and (c) the
strength of monetary transmission (which, inter alia, depends on
sectoral balance sheets). Monetary transmission
Chart 1 shows
the evolution of the euro short-term rate (€STR) forward curve since
December 2021. In terms of the adjustment in policy rates, there were
several distinct phases. Early in 2022, the yield curve shifted up in
anticipation of future rate hikes, with the markets anticipating that
the ECB would respond forcefully to the building inflation shock. In
the second half of 2022, there was an accelerated campaign of outsized
hikes in order to move sharply away from an accommodative stance. In
the first nine months of 2023, further hikes brought the policy rate
to a level that was assessed to be sufficiently restrictive, if held
for a sufficiently long duration, to underpin a timely disinflation
process. The policy rate was then held at its peak of 4 per cent from
September 2023 to June 2024. Chart 1Policy rate path and risk-free
curve over time(percentages per annum)Sources: Bloomberg and ECB
calculations. Notes: “DFR” stands for “deposit facility rate”. The
cut-off dates for the data used for the €STR forward curves are 17
December 2021, 16 December 2022, 15 September 2023, and 13 August
2024.
A striking feature of Chart 1 is that the inflation
shock triggered a repricing of not only the near-term policy rate path
but also the long-term policy rate path. At the end of 2021, the
policy rate was expected to remain negative even in 2027 according to
market pricing (and expert surveys). The re-pricing occurred in early
2022 and has persisted, with the 2027 (and longer-horizon) policy rate
expected to settle in the neighbourhood of two per cent, which is
consistent with market views of a near-zero equilibrium real rate and
the successful delivery of the inflation target in the medium term.
This has meant the inflation shock triggered a fundamental re-
setting of the interest rate path, with no expectation of a return to
the extraordinarily accommodative monetary stance that had been in
place since 2014/2015. At the same time, Chart 2 shows the longer-term
yields rose by much less than short-term yields. The negative slope of
the yield curve reflects the market assessment that inflation would
normalise relatively quickly, such that the cumulative increase in
policy rates also had a significant cyclical component that would be
unwound. At the same time, this inversion of the yield curve also
masked a marked increase in the term premium, including due to the
significant decline in the bond market footprint of the Eurosystem
(Chart 3): since December 2021, quantitative tightening is estimated
to have raised the term premium in the overnight index swap (OIS)
curve by about 55 basis points. [3]Chart 2Slope of the risk-free yield
curve(percentage points)Sources: Bloomberg and ECB calculations.
Notes: The slope of the risk-free yield curve is calculated as the
difference between the ten-year and two-year OIS rates. The latest
observation is for 13 August 2024. Chart 3Eurosystem balance sheet(EUR
trillions)Sources: ECB calculations. Notes: “APP” stands for “asset
purchase programme”, “PEPP” for “pandemic emergency purchase
programme” and “TLTROs” for “targeted longer-term refinancing
operations”. Purchase programmes are based on book value at amortised
cost. The latest observations are for 2 August 2024.
In the
bank-based European financial system, the transmission of the
restrictive monetary policy stance to bank lending conditions plays a
central role. [4] As shown in Chart 4, banks have faced higher funding
costs (due to the combination of a rapid increase in bank bond yields
and an increase (even if slower) in bank deposit rates) and bank
lending rates to firms and households for new loans increased
significantly (the prevalence of fixed-rate mortgages has meant that
the lending rates facing existing household customers have increased
far more slowly). [5] Banks have also tightened their credit standards
applied to the approval of loans, as shown in Chart 5. [6] Credit
volumes moderated rapidly and nominal credit growth has been very low
since 2022, as shown in Chart 6. [7]Chart 4Bank lending rates to firms
and households, plus bank funding costs(percentages per annum)Sources:
ECB (BSI, MIR, MMSR) and ECB calculations. Notes: The indicators for
the total cost of borrowing for firms and households are calculated by
aggregating short-term and long-term rates using a 24-month moving
average of new business volumes. The bank funding cost series is a
weighted average of new business costs for overnight deposits,
deposits redeemable at notice, time deposits, bonds, and interbank
borrowing, weighted by outstanding amounts. The latest observations
are for June 2024. Chart 5Evolution of bank credit standards(cumulated
net percentages of banks reporting a tightening of credit
standards)Sources: ECB (BLS) and ECB calculations. Notes: Net
percentages for credit standards are defined as the difference between
the sum of the percentages of banks responding “tightened
considerably” and “tightened somewhat” and the sum of the percentages
of banks responding “eased somewhat” and “eased considerably”.
Cumulation starts in the first quarter of 2014. The latest
observations are for the second quarter of 2024. Chart 6Credit volumes
to firms and households(annual percentage changes)Source: ECB (BSI).
Notes: Bank loans to firms are adjusted for sales, securitisation and
cash pooling. Bank loans to households are adjusted for sales and
securitisation. The latest observations are for the second quarter of
2024.
The decline in credit observed so far in the current
cycle has been stronger than historical regularities, based on linear
models, would have suggested. The particularly large and rapid
increase in policy rates may have amplified the tightening impulse.
Moreover, the perceived and abrupt end of the “low for long” era
reduced the incentives to search for yield, further contributing to a
pullback in risk taking by banks and customers. [8] Large policy rate
hikes (including a persistent component) increased the riskiness of
borrowers, reducing the willingness to lend. The combination of the
war impact and rapid rate hikes also signalled a less positive
economic future, reducing the expected revenues and increasing the
expected future funding costs of potential borrowers, leading them to
reduce their demand for credit. The dampening of demand
Through
the tightening of market-based and bank-based financing conditions,
the restrictive policy stance has fed through to economic activity.
Chart 7 shows that, the recovery in output over the period 2022-2024
has been much weaker than expected. Despite the impact of the war-
related energy shock, the post-pandemic reopening did allow GDP to
grow during the first nine months of 2022 (when monetary policy was
not yet restrictive). Subsequently, economic activity stagnated
between late 2022 and late 2023, with only a limited recovery during
the first half of 2024. [9] In terms of demand components, public
consumption has been the main consistent driver of growth, while
private consumption and external demand have remained subdued in
recent quarters (Chart 8). Investment has also been weak: a decline in
housing investment has been a persistent drag on growth; while
business investment was also hit, the impact was mitigated during
2022-2023 by past order backlogs that somewhat supported the
production of capital goods. [10]Chart 7Real GDP growth and
projections(annual percentage changes)Sources: Eurostat; June 2024,
December 2023, December 2022 and December 2021 Eurosystem staff
projections; and ECB calculations. Notes: The latest observations are
for 2023 for GDP and 2024 for projections. Chart 8GDP growth
contributions(quarter-on-quarter percentage changes and
contributions)Sources: Eurostat and ECB calculations. Notes: The
latest observations are for the second quarter of 2024 for GDP and the
first quarter of 2024 for the contributions.
The subdued
economic performance is also clearly connected to the uncertainty
shock and the energy price and terms of trade shocks triggered by the
unjustified invasion of Ukraine by Russia. For instance, Chart 9 shows
that, despite the post-pandemic output recovery and strong increase in
employment, real disposable income stagnated during 2022 as inflation
rose far more quickly than wages. The decline in real incomes would
have been more severe in the absence of the countervailing fiscal
measures that were widely introduced during 2022 and that boosted
transfers to households and suppressed the most intense impact of
rising energy prices on households. Indicators of consumer confidence
fell at the onset of the war and, despite some gradual improvement,
still remain below the pre-war level. Together with the contribution
of the restrictive monetary stance, this helps to explain the still-
limited response of consumption to the improvement in real disposable
income that has been in train since the middle of 2023, due to the
recovery in wages, the decline in inflation and the improvement in the
terms of trade. Chart 9Private consumption, real disposable income and
consumer confidence(left scale: index Q4 2019 = 100, right scale: net
percentage balance)Sources: Eurostat and European Commission. Notes:
The latest observations are for the first quarter of 2024 for private
consumption and disposable income, and August 2024 for consumer
confidence.
Put differently, the adverse war-related 2022
shocks to household incomes, the terms of trade and confidence
indicators for both households and firms served as countervailing
influences on demand conditions and thereby reduced the extent of
demand dampening that needed to be generated by monetary tightening.
While employment growth also decelerated, it remained above
the rate of output growth. Unemployment has remained broadly stable at
a historically-low level, with employment growth accommodated by an
increase in the labour force through a mix of rising participation and
a recovery in immigration. This robust labour market performance
(which has also mitigated the impact of rising interest rates on
consumption) reflects the composition of activity, with services
(including public services) more robust than manufacturing. It also
reflects labour hoarding, with the anticipation of future recovery
motivating firms to retain workers. In turn, labour hoarding was
supported in 2022-2023 by strong profitability levels, the decline in
real wages and the rise in interest rates (such that the relative
price of labour versus capital declined). The moderation in the labour
market in 2024 is consistent with a weakening of these forces, with
profitability declining, real wages rising and a turn in the interest
rate cycle.
Monetary policy affects demand and prices through
multiple channels: someare more direct (via intertemporal
substitution) and others are more indirect (via growth and
employment). This means that the full impact of changes in monetary
policy on aggregate inflation occurs only with long and variable lags.
As consumers rein in their spending in response to monetary policy
tightening, they start by consuming fewer goods with a high
intertemporal elasticity of substitution, such as durables and non-
essential items. They also reduce spending on goods that are more
interest-rate sensitive, such as durable goods purchased using credit,
including housing. Analysis by ECB staff suggests that the peak price
response of items most sensitive to monetary policy shocks, which tend
to include durables and non-essential items, is around three times
larger than for less sensitive items. [11] The price reaction to
monetary policy shocks of these more sensitive consumer items has been
stronger in the recent tightening cycle than in past episodes of
monetary restraint, reflecting the effectiveness of the steep and
decisive hiking policy in dampening demand.
In summary,
monetary tightening has restricted domestic demand, especially since
late 2022. A dampened-demand environment directly reduces the capacity
of firms to raise prices and workers to obtain wage increases. It also
contributes to the stabilisation of inflation expectations, to which
we now turn. The anchoring of inflation expectations
A primary
task for monetary policy in the disinflation process has been to
ensure that the large pandemic and sectoral shocks did not translate
into an increase in the medium-term inflation trend by fostering an
upward de-anchoring of inflation expectations that could persist even
after the unwinding of the sectoral shocks. In particular, the very
sharp rise in actual and projected inflation in the course of 2022 put
a premium on guarding against the de-anchoring of inflation
expectations and motivated an accelerated approach to monetary
tightening between July 2022 and March 2023, with the policy rate
hiked by 350 basis points over six meetings.
In the post-
crisis years before the pandemic, expectations had become de-anchored
to the downside. The pre-pandemic distribution of long-term inflation
expectations in the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) was
skewed to the left, as shown in Chart 10, and had a median expectation
of 1. 7 per cent. A similar pattern was evident in market-based
indicators. [12] Between the middle of 2021 and early 2022, there was
a remarkable shift in long-term inflation expectations, with survey
respondents moving away from the long-held views that inflation would
remain below two per cent indefinitely. [13] In essence, the majority
of respondents assessed that the inflation shock opportunistically
served to re-anchor long-term inflation expectations at the target by
demonstrating that target risks were two-sided. [14] This is in line
with the behaviour of market interest rates shown in Chart 1: the re-
anchoring of medium-term inflation expectations has removed the need
for an open-ended accommodative underlying monetary stance. Chart
10Survey of Professional Forecasters: distribution of longer-term
inflation expectations(percentages of respondents) Sources: SPF and
ECB calculations. Notes: The vertical axis shows the percentages of
respondents; the horizontal axis shows the HICP inflation rate.
Longer-term inflation expectations refer to four to five years ahead.
The latest observations are for the third quarter of 2024.
Reinforced by the target-consistent monetary policy decisions
during this period, the stabilisation of medium-term inflation
expectations has provided an important anchor in the disinflation
process. [15] The sheer magnitude of the inflation surge, the
successive upward price shocks and the shifts in the short-term
inflation outlook clearly could have generated upside de-anchoring
risks. Instead, as shown in Chart 11, throughout this period the high-
inflation phase has been expected to be relatively short-lived,
supporting the timely return of inflation to the target. As shown in
Charts 12 and 13, there has also been a decline in the medium-term
inflation expectations reported by firms in the survey on the access
to finance of enterprises (SAFE) and by households in the Consumer
Expectations Survey (CES). Chart 11Term structure of inflation
expectations from professional forecasters(annual percentage
changes)Sources: Eurostat, SPF and ECB calculations. Notes: The term
structure of inflation expectations shows expectations for different
horizons in past rounds of the SPF. Chart 12Consumer Expectations
Survey(annual percentage changes) Sources: Eurostat and CES. Notes:
The series refer to the median value. The latest observations are for
July 2024. Chart 13Firms’ expectations for euro area inflation at
different horizons(annual percentages) Sources: SAFE and ECB
calculations. Notes: Survey-weighted median, mode and interquartile
ranges of firms’ expectations for euro area inflation in one year,
three years and five years. Quantiles are computed by linear
interpolation of the mid-distribution function. The statistics are
computed after trimming the data at the country-specific 1st and 99th
percentiles. Base: all enterprises.
In turn, the anticipation
of the monetary policy response helped to reduce the scale and
duration of the inflation response to the large shocks. This
anticipation effect was plausibly stronger during this episode, since
the large shocks in 2021 and especially 2022 triggered an increase in
the frequency of price adjustment. [16] A monetary policy stance that
is clearly committed to the timely return of inflation to the target
is especially powerful under state-dependent pricing. [17] An increase
in the frequency of price changes represents both an extra cost from
high inflation (since there are economic costs – including management
costs – from adjusting prices more frequently) but also an
opportunity: if price setters understand that the central bank is
committed to returning inflation to the target in a timely manner
through an aggressive interest rate response to the large shock, the
phase of intense inflation will be shorter and the sacrifice ratio in
terms of lost output will be lower since price setters only have to
focus on adjusting prices to the cost shock rather than also having to
incorporate an excessively-prolonged aftershock phase of second round
effects.
In summary, the risk of an upside de-anchoring of
inflation expectations has been contained. This has certainly been
facilitated by the nature of the initial inflation shocks, with the
relative price shifts triggered by the pandemic and the war-related
energy shock reversing fairly quickly and disinflation being further
supported by the innate demand-dampening characteristics of the war
and the terms of trade deterioration. The historical evidence and
model-based counterfactual analyses clearly indicate that an
insufficiently -vigorous monetary policy response could have resulted
in a persistent increase in the inflation trend. At the same time, the
calibration of the monetary policy response also needed to contain the
risk of returning to the downside-deanchored equilibrium that had
prevailed in the euro area before the pandemic. Sectoral shocks and
disinflation dynamics
During the disinflation process, the
calibration of monetary policy needed to take into account the
reversal in energy inflation, the easing of pipeline pressures and the
relaxation of supply bottlenecks. The pandemic and the subsequent
energy shock triggered by Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine had
asymmetric and time-varying effects on different sectors. During 2020
and 2021, the impact of the pandemic on activity was most severe for
contact-intensive services, while the goods sector was overwhelmed by
the mismatch between a positive global demand shift and a decline in
global supply capacity due to pandemic-related shutdowns and supply-
chain interruptions. During 2022, the dislocations in the oil and gas
sectors due to the Russia-Ukraine war were associated with an
extraordinary surge in energy prices, which also constituted a severe
terms of trade shock for the euro area as a net energy importer. In
Europe, the full relaxation of pandemic-related lockdown measures also
occurred only in spring 2022, after the subsidence of the Omicron
variant. Accordingly, in 2022, the mis-match in the goods sector was
succeeded by a mis-match in the services sector, with demand for
contact-intensive services rising more quickly than supply capacity in
the immediate aftermath of the full post-pandemic reopening that
spring.
Subsequently, the improvement in supply capacity and
the unwinding of the adverse terms of trade shock has both supported
economic activity and contributed to disinflation. In particular, the
normalisation of demand and the expansion in supply capacity reduced
these sectoral mismatches. After peaking in 2021, supply chain
bottlenecks gradually eased during the course of 2022 and 2023,
contributing to a decline in the relative price of goods. The decline
in energy demand and the increase in energy supply capacity, together
with the contribution from the various subsidy schemes that limited
the impact of the shocks on retail energy prices, meant that energy
prices fell by 14 per cent between their peak in October 2022 and July
2023.
The easing of bottlenecks and the decline in the
relative price of energy also helped to calm food inflation and, via
lower cost pressures, services inflation. [18] In addition, the
reversal of the adverse supply shocks also boosted activity and
employment, with the fading of the pandemic in particular supporting
activity in 2021 and 2022, and falling energy prices and the receding
impact of past bottlenecks boosting activity in 2023 and 2024.
Compared to a purely demand-driven inflation episode, the nature of
this inflation shock limited the extent to which disinflation would
necessarily be accompanied by a severe economic contraction: rather,
the aim of monetary policy was to make sure that demand grew more
slowly than supply capacity during the disinflation phase.
The
euro area implementation of the Bernanke-Blanchard model provides a
useful organising device to represent the contribution of sectoral
shocks. [19] The left panel of Chart 14 shows that shocks to energy
and food prices, together with pandemic-related shortages, accounted
for the largest part of the 2021-2022 inflation surges and the
subsequent disinflation can largely be attributed to the fading of
these shocks. In contrast, labour market tightness has played a
comparatively minor role in inflation dynamics.
The right
panel of Chart 14 shows that the phase of above-target inflation has
primarily been prolonged by the lagged adjustment of wages (and
prices) to the initial inflation shocks. The aim of monetary
tightening has been to contain this adjustment phase by making sure
that the post-shock rounds of wage and price adjustments were limited
by dampened demand and underpinned by stable longer-term inflation
expectations. Chart 14Sectoral shocksHICP inflationNegotiated wage
growth(year-on-year growth rate, pp contributions)(year-on-year growth
rate, pp contributions)Source: ECB calculations based on Arce, O. ,
Ciccarelli, M. , Kornprobst, A. and Montes-Galdón, C. (2024), “What
caused the euro area post-pandemic inflation?”, Occasional Paper
Series, No 343, ECB. Notes: The figures show decompositions of the
sources of seasonally adjusted annual wage growth and HICP inflation
based on the solution of the full model and the implied impulse
response functions. The out-sample projection is constructed by
performing a conditional forecast starting in Q1 2020, conditional on
realised variables between Q1 2020 and Q1 2024 and technical
assumptions and inverted residuals between Q2 2024 and Q4 2026 such
that HICP in the conditional projection is equal to the seasonally
adjusted June 2024 Eurosystem staff projections. Assumptions from the
June 2024 projections baseline correspond to energy and food price
inflation and productivity growth. Labour market tightness is assumed
to remain constant. The “shortages” (measured by the Global Supply
Chain Pressure Index) are known up to Q2 2024 and projected according
to an AR(3) process thereafter. The historical decomposition treats
the projection as data and is carried out from Q1 2020 onwards to
compute the contributions of the initial conditions and of the
exogenous variables.
According to this analytical framework,
the bulk of disinflation could be expected to take place relatively
quickly with the fading of the sectoral shocks, but full convergence
back to the target would be slower due to the lagged nature of wage
adjustments and the staggered pattern of economy-wide price
adjustments to cost increases. In turn, these characteristics of the
disinflation process (an initial rapid phase, followed by a slower
convergence phase) have informed the calibration of monetary
tightening.
The nature of the disinflation process has been
recognised in the Eurosystem staff projections. For instance, the
December 2022 projections foresaw that inflation would decline from
the quarterly peak of 10 per cent in Q4 2022 to 3. 6 per cent in Q4
2023, 3. 3 per cent in Q4 2024 and 2. 0 per cent in Q4 2025.
Disinflation turned out to be even more rapid during 2023, with Q4
inflation at 2. 7 per cent. The June 2024 projections foresee
inflation at 2. 5 per cent in Q4 2024 and 2. 0 per cent in Q4 2025.
In summary, diagnosing the nature of inflation dynamics has
been essential in calibrating monetary tightening. Conditional on
inflation expectations remaining anchored, the fading out of the
initial shocks that triggered the steep rise in inflation could be
expected to deliver a two-phase disinflation process, with an initial
steep decline followed by a slower convergence phase as wage-price and
price-price staggered adjustment dynamics played out. [20] The role of
a demand-dampening monetary stance has been to make sure that
inflation did not remain too far above the target for too long and to
reinforce the commitment to a timely return to the inflation target,
such that price and wage-setters could focus on “backward” adjustment
dynamics – aimed at recovering lost purchasing power and re-
establishing optimal relative prices – without worrying about the
“forward” adjustment dynamics that would be generated by any de-
anchoring of inflation expectations. Sectoral balance sheets
In
calibrating the monetary stance, it is also essential to take into
account that the impact of monetary policy depends on the condition of
sectoral balance sheets. These encompass the balance sheets of firms,
households, banks, the public sector and the rest of the world.
[21]Chart 15Euro area net lending / net borrowingSources: Eurostat and
ECB. Note: The latest observations are for the first quarter of 2024.
Chart 16Sectoral leverageSources: Eurostat, ECB and ECB calculations.
Notes: Leverage is defined as total non-equity liabilities divided by
the four-quarter sum of nominal GDP. The latest observations are for
the first quarter of 2024. Chart 17Non-financial corporations’ margins
and saving ratioSources: ECB and ECB calculations. Note: The latest
observations are for the first quarter of 2024. Chart 18Net worth of
householdsSources: Eurostat, ECB and ECB calculations. Notes: Changes
are mainly due to movements in real estate and share prices. The
latest observations are for the first quarter of 2024.
Chart
15 shows that households had exceptionally high savings rates in 2020
and 2021. While firms were net borrowers during the initial months of
the pandemic in 2020, corporate debt was contained by significant
fiscal transfers and de-risked through extensive public loan
guarantees. Taking a longer-term perspective, Chart 16 shows that
household leverage before the pandemic had declined relative to the
2010 peak but was still elevated compared to the initial years of the
euro; although there had been some decline since 2016, the pre-
pandemic level of corporate leverage was much higher than at the start
of the euro.
While the collapse of GDP meant that these
leverage ratios jumped during 2020, both now stand well below their
pre-pandemic levels, also due to the significant rise in nominal GDP.
These balance sheet improvements have helped to cushion the financial
impact of monetary policy tightening on households and firms. In
addition, the trend shift towards fixed-rate mortgages also meant that
fewer euro area households faced an immediate cash flow burden due to
higher mortgage servicing costs. Moreover, in contrast to an inflation
scenario in which the unwinding of a demand shock means that monetary
tightening is accompanied by economic contraction, the improvement in
supply capacity after the pandemic, the easing of bottlenecks and the
2023-2024 unwinding of the 2021-2022 energy shocks meant that there
was underlying positive momentum in employment and output. This
further contained credit risk premia, in contrast to tightening cycles
triggered by excess demand episodes (often accompanied also by
financial excess). One illustration is provided by Chart 17, which
shows that corporate profitability was above the pre-pandemic level in
2021 and 2022, also boosted by prices adjusting more rapidly to the
inflation surge than wages. While the monetary tightening and rising
labour costs have seen a decline in corporate profitability, it only
just returned to the pre-pandemic level in early 2024.
At the
same time, the financial exposure to rising interest rates that was
embedded in the holdings of non-bank financial intermediaries was
ultimately held either by euro area households or the global investor
community. Chart 18 shows that housing assets served as a partial
inflation hedge during 2022 even if higher interests rates resulted in
some reversal in valuations in 2023. At the same time, there were net
capital losses on household financial portfolios during 2022. The
sharp increase in inflation also eroded the real value of household
deposits. The losses on financial portfolios are likely to have been
disproportionately absorbed by higher-income households with
relatively low marginal propensities to consume, with cushioning
provided by the high share of this group in pandemic-era excess
savings. [22]
In the aftermath of the 2008-2012 global and
euro area crises, the resilience of the euro area banking system has
been improved through a mix of higher regulatory requirements, more
intensive bank supervision, the rolling-out of more extensive
macroprudential regulations and greater managerial risk aversion. As
an illustration, Chart 19 shows the marked improvement in capital
ratios in the banking system between 2015 and 2019. Simultaneously,
liquidity ratios improved significantly, further increasing the
overall resilience of the banking sector. Pandemic-related excess
savings by households, extensive fiscal transfers to households and
firms, public loan guarantees, the reversal of the pandemic and energy
shocks and low-cost funding from the ECB meant that banks did not
suffer significant credit impairments during the 2020-2021 period.
Chart 19Capital ratio of the banking system(percentages)Source: ECB
supervisory reporting. Notes: The sample consists of significant
institutions under the supervision of the ECB (changing composition).
The latest observations are for the first quarter of 2024. Chart
20Gross debt(percentage of euro area GDP) Source: June 2024 Eurosystem
staff macroeconomic projections. Notes: Supranational EU debt (not
reflected in the euro area aggregate) is the gross outstanding debt of
the EU institutions, including Next Generation EU financing.
Supranational EU debt is not an official statistic, but an internal
estimate. Chart 21Euro area net international investment position
(percentage of GDP)Sources: ECB (balance of payments) and Eurostat
(national accounts).
Note: The latest observation is for the
first quarter of 2024.
The robust state of bank balance sheets
meant that the transmission of rate hikes to banks could proceed in an
orderly manner. In particular, the increases in risk-free rates were
not amplified by an outsized increase in credit risk premia or a
severe contraction in credit supply. Moreover, the capital losses on
the bonds held by the banking sector were contained by the relatively
low bond allocation in the asset holdings of euro area banks. [23] In
a related manner, the high share of central bank reserves in the asset
holdings of banks meant that the overall duration risk was relatively
limited. Bank profitability improved substantially due to the shift to
a higher interest rate environment and was further bolstered by the
increase in interest paid on central bank reserves. [24] In effect,
the resilience of the banking sector, together with the highly-liquid
composition of bank assets, has increased the feasible monetary policy
space by muting concerns about the financial stability impact of rate
hikes. [25] The highly-liquid state of the asset side of bank balance
sheets meant that losses from fixed rate mortgage assets were
compensated by rising income from central bank reserve holdings.
While the level of central bank excess reserves in the euro
area remains high at around €3. 1 trillion, these have declined by
more than a third, or €1. 7 trillion, since the peak reached in the
second half of 2022. This has mostly been the result of the repayment
of funding from targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO),
which fell from €2. 2 trillion in June 2022 to a mere €76 billion in
July 2024 and will reach zero in December 2024. [26] The reinvestment
of the asset purchase programme (APP) portfolio stopped in June 2023,
with the APP portfolio dropping from a peak of €3. 3 trillion in June
2022 to €2. 8 trillion in July 2024. The pandemic emergency purchase
programme (PEPP) portfolio started to shrink in July, with the
intention to discontinue reinvestments altogether at the end of this
year.
From a macroeconomic perspective, the transition from a
high-reserves environment to a lower-reserves environment can trigger
a shift in the risk-taking strategies of banks (vis-a-vis both lending
and bond purchasing), in relation to a decline in the stock of
reserves that might have been expected to remain in the banking system
for an extended period as the funding counterparts to asset purchase
programmes or long-term refinancing operations (sometimes described as
“non-borrowed” reserves). [27][28][29]
Directionally, this
contraction in liquidity may have contributed to the relatively-strong
decline in lending volumes in the euro area during this tightening
episode. In particular, estimates by ECB staff suggest that banks with
lower excess liquidity are more likely to reduce their supply of
credit in response to policy rate hikes, and the increase in their
lending rates is likely to be larger. This means that, as aggregate
liquidity shrinks, the transmission of the restrictive monetary policy
stance to bank lending may strengthen further.
The counterpart
to the insulation of household, bank and corporate balance sheets
during the pandemic was an expansion in sovereign debt (see Chart 20).
The surprise inflation, together with the output recovery, has
partially offset the increase in debt-output ratios but these remain
above their pre-pandemic levels. In addition, the considerable fiscal
response to the energy shock in 2022 increased public debt levels,
even if many of these temporary measures have now been reversed.
Naturally, an integrated view of the consolidated public sector
balance sheet should take into account the decline in the net equity
position of central banks but any evaluation of the impact of monetary
tightening via this channel will depend on the specification of the
relevant counterfactual scenario.
Despite some volatility
episodes, the combination of higher policy rates, quantitative
tightening and an increase in public debt levels has not triggered a
substantial increase in sovereign risk premia in the euro area, while
so far there has only been a limited increase in term premia. This
likely reflects several factors. First, as indicated by the anchoring
of longer-term inflation expectations, this inflation episode has been
interpreted throughout as a temporary phase, with a sufficient
response from central banks to ensure that the initial inflation
shocks do not mutate into permanent inflation. In turn, this has meant
that longer-term bond yields rose by less than shorter-term interest
rates Second, the 2020 launch of the Next Generation EU (NGEU)
programme of joint debt and grants caused a reassessment of country-
level risk premia by investors, in view of the solidarity demonstrated
by EU Member States in the face of a severe tail risk. Third, the
flexible design of the 2020 PEPP and 2022 announcement of the
transmission protection instrument (TPI) provided reassurance to
investors that unwarranted, disorderly dynamics in sovereign debt
markets posing a serious threat to the transmission of monetary policy
would not be tolerated, provided that countries comply with a set of
established “prudent policy” criteria.
Finally, it is
important to take into account the external balance sheet of the euro
area, in view of its role in the international transmission of
domestic and foreign monetary tightening. In line with the impact of
the severe decline in the terms of trade on import payments relative
to export revenues, Chart 15 shows that the current account surplus of
the euro area declined between the middle of 2021 and early 2023,
which is also reflected in the decline in the net international
investment position during this period, temporarily interrupting the
rising trend observed since 2013, in Chart 21. Aside from the terms of
trade channel, the global nature of the inflation shock and the
similar monetary policy responses across countries meant that the
composition of foreign assets and foreign liabilities played only a
limited role in determining the international impact of monetary
tightening. For instance, debt-related international investment income
inflows and outflows increased by similar amounts between 2021 and
2024.
Of course, taking a wider perspective, the global
element of the inflation shock and the monetary policy response has
shaped the disinflation process and the calibration of monetary
policy. All else equal, the tightening moves by foreign central banks
limited the required scale of domestic monetary tightening by slowing
down global activity, containing globally-determined commodity prices
and pushing up the common component in term premia. At the same time,
if domestic monetary tightening had been too limited relative to
foreign monetary tightening, exchange rate depreciation might have
exerted a larger influence on the domestic disinflation process.
Conclusions
At the time of writing (August 2024), my interim
assessment of the effectiveness of ECB monetary policy in responding
to the 2021-2022 inflation surges is that there has been good progress
in delivering the overriding goal of making sure that inflation
returns to target in a timely manner. Crucially, this disinflation
process has been underpinned by the forceful transmission of monetary
policy to the financial system, the level of demand and inflation
expectations.
This has required the ECB to appropriately
calibrate its monetary policy stance to ensure that demand has been
sufficiently dampened and the anchoring of medium-term inflation
expectations sufficiently protected, while also containing the
economic costs of a restrictive monetary stance. Among other factors,
this calibration needed to take into account: the “re-anchoring from
below” of medium-term inflation expectations and the associated
pricing-out of low-for-long rate scenarios; the multiple channels by
which the unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine directly served to
moderate demand; the inflation-disinflation cycles generated by the
pandemic and the energy shock; the interactions between monetary
policy and sectoral balance sheets; and the global dimensions of the
inflation shock and the international policy response.
Of
course, this assessment is necessarily interim: the return to target
is not yet secure. In particular, the monetary stance will have to
remain in restrictive territory for as long as is needed to shepherd
the disinflation process towards a timely return to the target.
Equally, the return to target needs to be sustainable: a rate path
that is too high for too long would deliver chronically below-target
inflation over the medium term and would be inefficient in terms of
minimising the side effects on output and employment. The data-
dependent challenge for monetary policy will be to chart the
sustainable and efficient path to the target.