This paper retraces how financial stability considerations interacted with U.S. monetary policy before and during the Great Recession. Using text-mining techniques, we construct indicators for financial stability sentiment expressed during testimonies of four Federal Reserve Chairs at Congressional hearings.Including these text-based measures adds explanatory power to Taylor-rule models. In particular, negative financial stability sentiment coincided with a more accommodative monetary policy stance than implied by standard Taylorrule factors, even in the decades before the Great Recession. These findings are consistent with a preference for monetary policy reacting to financial instability rather than acting pre-emptively to a perceived build-up of risks.JEL classifications: E52, E58, N12

We provide evidence for a risk-taking channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area that works through an increase in shadow banks’ total asset growth and their risk assets ratio. Our dataset covers the period 2000Q1–2018Q3 and includes, in addition to the standard variables for real GDP growth, inflation, and the monetary policy stance, the aforementioned two indicators for the shadow banking sector. Based on vector autoregressive models for the euro area as a whole, we find a portfolio reallocation effect towards riskier assets and evidence for a general expansion of assets. Both effects last for roughly six quarters in the case of conventional monetary policy shocks, whereas for unconventional monetary policy shocks the responses are significant for two quarters only. Country-specific as well as sector-specific estimations confirm these findings for most of the euro area countries and all non-bank types, but also reveal some heterogeneity in the reaction of financial institutions.

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This article retraces how financial stability considerations interacted with US monetary policy before and during the Great Recession. Using text-mining techniques, this article innovates by constructing indicators for financial stability sentiment expressed during testimonies of five Federal Reserve Chairs.Including these text-based measures adds explanatory power to Taylor-rule models. Negative financial stability sentiment coincided with a more accommodative monetary policy stance than implied by standard Taylor-rule factors, even during the decades before the Great Recession. These findings are consistent with a preference for monetary policy reacting to financial instability rather than acting pre-emptively to a perceived build-up of risks.

No abstract