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Discussion Paper Details

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Title: Monetary Policy Shocks and Portfolio Choice

Author(s): Marcel Fratzscher, Christian Saborowski and Roland Straub

Publication Date: November 2010

Keyword(s): asset prices, capital flows, monetary policy, portfolio choice, sign restrictions, trade balance, United States and vector autoregressions

Programme Area(s): International Macroeconomics

Abstract: The paper shows that monetary policy shocks exert a substantial effect on the size and composition of capital flows and the trade balance for the United States, with a 100 basis point easing raising net capital inflows and lowering the trade balance by 1% of GDP, and explaining about 20-25% of their time variation. Monetary policy easing causes positive returns to both equities and bonds. Yet such a monetary policy easing shock also induces a shift in portfolio composition out of equities and into bonds, implying a negative conditional correlation between flows in equities and bonds. Moreover, such shocks induce a negative conditional correlation between equity flows and equity returns, but a positive conditional correlation between bond flows and bond returns. The findings thus provide evidence for the presence of a portfolio rebalancing motive behind investment decisions in equities, but the dominance of what is akin to a return chasing motive for bonds, conditional on monetary policy shocks. The results also shed light on the puzzle of the strongly time-varying equity-bond return correlations found in the literature.

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Bibliographic Reference

Fratzscher, M, Saborowski, C and Straub, R. 2010. 'Monetary Policy Shocks and Portfolio Choice'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=8099