BIS Working Papers are written by members of the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements, and from time to time by other economists, and are published by the Bank. The papers are on subjects of topical interest and are technical in character. The views expressed in them are those of their authors and not necessarily the views of the BIS.This working paper was written for the Conference on "Changes in risk through time: measurement and policy options" that took place at the BIS on

Few areas of monetary economics have been studied as extensively as the transmission mechanism. The literature on this topic has evolved substantially over the years, following the waxing and waning of conceptual frameworks and the changing characteristics of the financial system. In this paper, taking as a starting point a brief overview of the extant work on the interaction between capital regulation, the business cycle and the transmission mechanism, we offer some broader reflections on the characteristics of the transmission mechanism in light of the evolution of the financial system. We argue that insufficient attention has so far been paid to the link between monetary policy and the perception and pricing of risk by economic agents-what might be termed the "risk-taking channel" of monetary policy. We develop the concept, compare it with current views of the transmission mechanism, explore its mutually reinforcing link with "liquidity" and analyse its interaction with monetary policy reaction functions. We argue that changes in the financial system and prudential regulation may have increased the importance of the risk-taking channel and that prevailing macroeconomic paradigms and associated models are not well suited to capturing it, thereby also reducing their effectiveness as guides to monetary policy.

It is high time we rediscovered the role of the financial cycle in macroeconomics. In the environment that has prevailed for at least three decades now, it is not possible to understand business fluctuations and the corresponding analytical and policy challenges without understanding the financial cycle. This calls for a rethink of modelling strategies and for significant adjustments to macroeconomic policies. This essay highlights the stylised empirical features of the financial cycle, conjectures as to what it may take to model it satisfactorily, and considers its policy implications. In the discussion of policy, the essay pays special attention to the bust phase, which is less well explored and raises much more controversial issues.

There has been mounting evidence that the inflation process has been changing. Inflation is now much lower and much more stable around the globe. And its sensitivity to measures of economic slack and increases in input costs appears to have declined. Probably the most widely supported explanation for this phenomenon is that monetary policy has been much more effective. There is no doubt in our mind that this explanation goes a long way towards explaining the better inflation performance we have observed. In this paper, however, we begin to explore a complementary, rather than alternative, explanation. We argue that prevailing models of inflation are too "country-centric", in the sense that they fail to take sufficient account of the role of global factors in influencing the inflation process. The relevance of a more "globe-centric" approach is likely to have increased as the process of integration of the world economy has gathered momentum, a process commonly referred to as "globalisation". In a large cross-section of countries, we find some rather striking prima facie evidence that this has indeed been the case. In particular, proxies for global economic slack add considerable explanatory power to traditional benchmark inflation rate equations, even allowing for the influence of traditional indicators of external influences on domestic inflation, such as import and oil prices. Moreover, the role of such global factors has been growing over time, especially since the 1990s. And in a number of cases, global factors appear to have supplanted the role of domestic measures of economic slack.

a b s t r a c tFew areas of monetary economics have been studied as extensively as the transmission mechanism. The literature on this topic has evolved substantially over the years, following the waxing and waning of conceptual frameworks and the changing characteristics of the financial system. In this paper, taking as a starting point a brief overview of the extant work on the interaction between capital regulation, the business cycle and the transmission mechanism, we offer some broader reflections on the characteristics of the transmission mechanism in light of the evolution of the financial system. We argue that insufficient attention has so far been paid to the link between monetary policy and the perception and pricing of risk by economic agents-what might be termed the "risk-taking channel" of monetary policy. We develop the concept, compare it with current views of the transmission mechanism, explore its mutually reinforcing link with "liquidity" and analyse its interaction with monetary policy reaction functions. We argue that changes in the financial system and prudential regulation may have increased the importance of the risktaking channel and that prevailing macroeconomic paradigms and associated models are not well suited to capturing it, thereby also reducing their effectiveness as guides to monetary policy.