The granular origins of exchange-rate fluctuations

Simon Lloyd, Daniel Ostry and Balduin Bippus

How much capital flows move exchange rates is a central question in international macroeconomics. A major challenge to addressing it has been the difficulty identifying exogenous cross-border flows, since flows and exchange rates can evolve simultaneously with factors like risk sentiment. In this post, we summarise a staff working paper that resolves this impasse using bank-level data capturing the external positions of UK-based global intermediaries to construct novel ‘Granular Instrumental Variables‘ (GIVs). Using these GIVs, we find that banks’ United States dollar (USD) demand is inelastic – a 1% increase in net-dollar assets appreciates the dollar by 2% against sterling – state dependent – effects double when banks’ capital ratios are one standard deviation below average – and that banks are a ‘marginal investor’ in the dollar-sterling market.

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Covid-19 briefing: heterogeneous impacts of the pandemic

Andrea Šiško

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly spawned a literature analysing its impact on macroeconomic aggregates. But there’s also been work that seeks to look at heterogeneity of impacts across industries, households and individuals. This post summarises this literature which seeks to better understand the heterogeneous effects of the pandemic and associated policy responses on income, hours worked and employment status.

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How does monetary policy affect firms?

Saleem Bahaj, Angus Foulis, Gabor Pinter and Paolo Surico

Changes in interest rates affect different parts of the economy differently. In this post, building on a recent working paper, we consider how different types of firms respond to interest rate changes. We focus on firm level employment and ask which firms do the most hiring and firing when monetary policy adjusts. For instance, how important is the age of the firm, its balance sheet position or its size in determining the firm level response to interest rates? Furthermore, do these patterns of responses tell us something about how monetary policy affects the economy?

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