The World's New Financial Landscape: Challenges For Economic Policy

This book addresses how digital technology is challenging the principles of the market economy and the consequences for economic policy.

This book addresses how digital technology is challenging the principles of the market economy and the consequences for economic policy.

This book addresses how digital technology is challenging the principles of the market economy and the consequences for economic policy.

This book represents one of the key milestones of PoliVisu, an H2020 research and innovation project funded by the European Commission under the call “Policy-development in the age of big data: data-driven policy-making, policy-modelling and policy-implementation”.

The determinants of yield curve dynamics have been thoroughly discussed in finance models. However, little can be said about the macroeconomic factors behind the movements of short- and long-term interest rates as well as the risk compensation demanded by financial investors. By taking on a macro-finance perspective, the book’s approach explicitly acknowledges the close feedback between monetary policy, the macroeconomy and financial conditions. Both theoretical and empirical models are applied in order to get a profound understanding of the interlinkages between economic activity, the conduct of monetary policy and the underlying macroeconomic factors of bond price movements. Moreover, the book identifies a broad risk-taking channel of monetary transmission which allows a reassessment of the role of financial constraints; it enables policy makers to develop new guidelines for monetary policy and for financial supervision of how to cope with evolving financial imbalances.

In this study on the Japanese economy, the author focuses on three problems related to economic policy and presents their answers. The author analyzes (i) what mechanisms exist for fiscal policy and the price level, (ii) whether the MMT proposition that public deficits increase people’s wealth and savings fits into the standard macro model, and (iii) whether Blanchard's assertion that fiscal deficits are net wealth in the US economy can be applied to Japanese economy as well. The propositions of Sims’ FTPL, Kelton's MMT, Japan's Ricardian type argument, and the non-Ricardian type of government by Blanchard have been understood as independent economic perceptions, but they will be theoretically shown as a coherent story. Namely, this study presents a macroeconomic framework that includes the financial sector and derives Sims’ proposition that “fiscal policy can be the sole determinant of the price level.” It also shows that MMT's claim that "budget deficits increase our wealth and collective savings" can inevitably hold within this framework. Furthermore, it presents a model that consistently explains that public debt leads to financial collapse but contributes to economic welfare.