海外之声 | 研究、政策与零利率下限

导读

在1999年，零利率下限（the Zero Lower Bound）在美国还没有被视作一个迫近的问题。那时的经济还十分蓬勃，当年底的目标联邦基金利率为5-1/2个百分点。在那之前，零负利率的仅有参照点来自于20世纪30年代的大萧条和90年代的日本。对于战后的欧洲和美国而言，这一经验则是完全不存在的。然而，以马文·古德弗伦德（Marvin Goodfriend）为代表的少数经济学家则提出这些问题：零利率下限是否会在美国形成挑战？如果会的话，可能的后果和补救办法是什么？研究者和政策制定者们就此展开了关于零利率的探讨。

马文·古德弗伦德强调，美联储的资产购置会影响金融形势，进而影响到经济体。问题的探讨由传统货币政策扩展到了非传统的手段，例如资产负债表。更重要的是，正如日本央行当时的举措，央行收购的短期政府债券应当与长期债券区分开来。马文·古德弗伦德认为零利率下的短期债券是无效的，而长期债券则因投资者的“优先置产”动机而更具潜在影响力。大尺度下的资产购置在之后成为了美国和其他国家缓冲金融形势的重要工具。

作者 | 约翰·威廉姆斯（John C Williams），美国纽约联邦储备银行总裁

英文原文如下：

Research, policy, and the zero lower bound

Remarks by Mr John C Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Shadow Open Market Committee Spring Meeting, New York City, 6 March 2020.

Good afternoon. I would like to start by thanking Athanasios for inviting me to participate in this event. It is a real honor to highlight the influence of our esteemed colleague Marvin Goodfriend, an outstanding and original researcher, policy advisor, and friend. 

Marvin epitomized the role of policy advisor. His research dug deep into the issues, introduced new ideas into the discussion, and developed options for policymakers to consider for the most challenging issues. The fact that we have so many researchers and policymakers here is testament to the importance of his research in shaping the conversations that we are having to this day. Before I reflect more on Marvin’s contributions to monetary policy, I should give the standard Fed disclaimer that the views I express today are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Open Market Committee or others in the Federal Reserve System. In preparation for what I know will be a stimulating discussion, I’d like to highlight a few of the ways that Marvin changed the conversation in the U.S. about what was then commonly referred to as the zero lower bound on interest rates, or ZLB for short. These show how Marvin’s insights shaped some of the most prominent discussions in monetary policy. Before I do so, it’s helpful to look back about 20 years. As the clock ticked down on the 20th century, many people’s attention was not on the ZLB. Most were more concerned about the millennium bug that had the world on high alert. Truth be told, the ZLB wasn’t perceived to be a looming problem in the United States back in 1999. The economy was doing very well and the target federal funds rate was 5-1/2 percent at the end of the year. Up until then, the only historical reference points for the ZLB were from the Great Depression of the 1930s and, more recently, Japan in the 1990s. It was simply not part of the experience of postwar Europe or the Americas. However, a small group of economists, with Marvin at the forefront, was asking whether the ZLB could pose a challenge here in the U.S. and, if so, what would be the consequences and potential remedies. Researchers and policymakers began to turn the dial up on the discussion around the ZLB. On those occasions, Marvin emphasized the importance of the ZLB as a constraint on policy and urged us to think differently about how central banks could still carry out their missions, even under that constraint. He developed and analyzed what were then considered “outside the box” options for overcoming the ZLB. These helped lay the groundwork for how economists and policymakers think about these issues in both conceptual and practical terms.The Fed held a conference in Woodstock, Vermont in October 1999 on the ZLB. At that conference, Marvin presented his paper “Overcoming the Zero Bound on Interest Rate Policy,” which was subsequently published in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking (JMCB). In January 2002, Marvin briefed the FOMC on aspects of the research that he had presented at the Woodstock conference, as part of a session on the ZLB in which David Reifschneider and I presented our research as well. By that point, the federal funds rate had fallen to 1.75 percent, so the ZLB was starting to get on policymakers’ radar screens. For example, Marvin was one of the first people to think seriously about how the constraint caused by the ZLB could be relaxed by implementing negative interest rates. Now, I know that the topic of negative interest rates is controversial. But, whatever conclusions you may draw about the relative merits of negative rates, Marvin’s research early on helped identify and explore a broad dimension of issues and potential choices for policymakers. Marvin’s intellectual pursuit of all aspects of the ZLB logically drove him to explore the possibility for currency to have a digital component. Although many think of central bank digital currencies as a new-fangled idea, Marvin was thinking deeply about the prospect long ago. This has become one of the hot topics in the world of central banks today. The conversation that Marvin began in Woodstock in 1999 became the basis for discussions that were had later on at the FOMC meeting in January 2002. At that FOMC meeting, Marvin expanded upon the idea of asset purchases as a policy tool that he had proposed in his paper at the conference in Woodstock. He emphasized that the Fed asset purchases can affect financial conditions and thereby the economy. He was expanding the conversation away from thinking about conventional monetary policy to unconventional options, like the balance sheet. Importantly, he distinguished between central bank purchases of short-term government securities, as the Bank of Japan was doing at that time, versus purchases of longer-term securities. Marvin viewed purchases of short-term securities as ineffective under the ZLB, while he saw purchases of longer-duration securities as potentially powerful owing to a “preferred habitat” motive on the part of investors. Of course, large-scale asset purchases later became a tool of critical importance for easing financial conditions in the United States and abroad. Although the consequences of the predicted Y2K glitch were minimal, the ZLB became a central issue when the financial crisis hit. Thankfully, Marvin, along with others, helped lay the intellectual groundwork and created the vocabulary for us to work through some of the most significant issues facing central banks. His work is a true emblem of how researchers play a vital role in informing and shaping the policy discussion. 

I look forward to the upcoming conversation. Thank you.

编译  何映儒

编辑  李锦璇

来源  Federal Reserve Board

审校  金天、蒋旭

监制  朱霜霜

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