This dissertation examines when and why the strength of monetary policy transmission
varies with financial and macroeconomic conditions across countries. Using a new
monthly panel of 41 economies over 1990–2019, monetary policy shocks are identified...
This dissertation examines when and why the strength of monetary policy transmission
varies with financial and macroeconomic conditions across countries. Using a new
monthly panel of 41 economies over 1990–2019, monetary policy shocks are identified
through a Bayesian sign- and zero-restricted VAR, and their state-dependent effects are
estimated via panel local projections.
The first chapter analyzes the housing collateral channel that links policy rates to
household borrowing capacity through house prices and credit limits. It considers three
interrelated credit-state dimensions—real interest rates, collateral constraint tightness,
and the credit gap—and shows that monetary transmission is far stronger when credit and
collateral conditions are loose. In such favorable states, a rate cut generates substantially
larger responses of output and house prices and a sharper decline in unemployment, particularly
in economies dominated by adjustable-rate mortgages where cash-flow channels
operate immediately. These results highlight how mortgage design and macroprudential
regulation shape the propagation of monetary policy.
The second chapter extends the analysis to business-cycle asymmetries. While aggregate
nonlinearities are modest, splitting by development level reveals a striking contrast:
in advanced economies, real activity and housing respond more in booms, whereas in
emerging markets, only inflation is more sensitive in busts. This difference in inflation
dynamics reflects the dominance of domestic collateral-demand channels in advanced
economies versus exchange-rate pass-through and external-price channels in emerging
markets.
Taken together, the thesis contributes cross-country evidence that monetary transmission
is most state-dependent when credit and collateral constraints are loose, and
that cross-country heterogeneity arises from the relative dominance of domestic versus
external channels. These findings underscore the importance of conditioning monetary
policy decisions on the prevailing financial and macroeconomic environment.