Piti Disyatat

• Ph.D. Economics, Princeton University
• Managing Director at Bank of Thailand

This paper studies the interaction between monetary policy and macroeconomic stability in a model with two distinguishing features. First, financing-cash flows-underpins all economic activity, with banks generating deposits by granting loans. Money is non-neutral as the policy interest rate anchors the real economy. Second, bank lending is subject...

This paper utilizes disaggregated prices at the micro level to examine the patterns of price adjustment in Thailand. Among the key stylized facts, we found that the frequency of price changes are generally low, prices decreases are common, the size of price changes are large relative to the inflation rate, and there is significant dispersion in pri...

This paper uses transaction-level data from Thailand to study concentration, specialization, and fragility of export activities. The paper shows that although exports have been an integral part of the development strategy of the country for several decades, direct engagement in international trade through exports is a rare activity. Export firms ar...

The paper takes a critical look at the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of prevailing explanations for low real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates over long horizons and finds them incomplete. The role of monetary policy, and its interaction with the financial cycle in particular, deserve greater attention. By linking booms and busts, the fi...

Monetary policy has been in the grip of a pincer movement, caught between growing financial cycles, on the one hand, and an inflation process that has become quite insensitive to domestic slack, on the other. This two-pronged attack has laid bare some of the limitations of prevailing monetary policy frameworks, particularly in the analytical notion...

Prevailing explanations of the decline in real interest rates since the early 1980s are premised on the notion that real interest rates are driven by variations in desired saving and investment. But based on data stretching back to 1870 for 19 countries, our systematic analysis casts doubt on this view. The link between real interest rates and savi...

Do the prevailing unusually and persistently low real interest rates reflect a decline in the natural rate of interest as commonly thought? We argue that this is only part of the story. The critical role of financial factors in influencing mediumterm economic fluctuations must also be taken into account. Doing so for the United States yields estima...

Has financial globalisation compromised central banks’ effectiveness in managing domestic financial conditions? This paper tackles this question by studying the dynamics of bond yields encompassing 31 advanced and emerging market economies. To gauge the extent to which external financial conditions complicate the conduct of monetary policy, we isol...

This paper questions the appropriateness of popular analytical frameworks that focus on current accounts or net capital flows as a basis for assessing the pattern of cross-border capital flows, the degree of financial integration and the vulnerability of countries to financial crises. In the process, it revisits the Lucas paradox, the Feldstein-Hor...

Has financial globalisation compromised central banks' ability to manage domestic financial conditions? This paper tackles this question by studying the dynamics of bond yields encompassing 31 advanced and emerging market economies. To gauge the extent to which external financial conditions complicate the conduct of monetary policy, we isolate a "c...

A popular strategy for estimating output gaps is to anchor them to structural economic relationships. The resulting output gaps, however, are often highly sensitive to numerous auxiliary assumptions inherent in the approach. This complicates their use in policymaking. We illustrate the point using the Phillips curve, arguably the most popular struc...

This paper argues that incorporating information about the financial cycle is important to improve measures of potential output and output gaps. Conceptually, identifying potential output with non-inflationary output is too restrictive. Potential output is seen as sustainable; yet experience indicates that output may be on an unsustainable path eve...

Global current account imbalances have been at the forefront of policy debates over the past few years. Many observers have recently singled them out as a key factor contributing to the global financial crisis. Current account surpluses in several emerging market economies are said to have helped fuel the credit booms and risk-taking in the major a...

Global current account imbalances have recently been singled out by many as a key factor contributing to the global financial crisis. Current account surpluses in several emerging market economies are said to have put significant downward pressure on world interest rates, thereby fueling a credit boom and risk taking in major advanced economies wit...

This paper casts the debate regarding the role of asset prices and financial imbalances in the formulation of monetary policy from the perspective of theoretically optimal policy responses. Within the context of a standard model of the transmission mechanism, several possible motivations for responding to financial imbalances are highlighted. Howev...

A central proposition in research on the role that banks play in the transmission mechanism is that monetary policy imparts a direct impact on deposits and that deposits, insofar as they constitute the supply of loanable funds, act as the driving force of bank lending. This paper argues that the emphasis on policy-induced changes in deposits is mis...

Bank for International Settlements researchers Stephen Cecchetti and Piti Disyatat consider the implications of recent financial developments for the “lender-of-last-resort” function of central banks and whether traditional policymaking tools remain effective in the face of modern liquidity crises. Presented at "Central Bank Liquidity Tools and Per...

Despite constituting the very heart of the monetary transmission mechanism, widespread misconceptions still exist regarding how monetary policy is implemented. This paper highlights the key misconceptions in this regard and shows how they have compromised the understanding of important aspects of the monetary transmission mechanism. In particular,...

credit policy, quantitative easing, credit easing, monetary policy implementation, transmission mechanism, interest rates. 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 o...

Bank for International Settlements researchers Stephen Cecchetti and Piti Disyatat consider the implications of recent financial developments for the “lender-of-last-resort” function of central banks and whether traditional policymaking tools remain effective in the face of modern liquidity crises. Presented at "Central Bank Liquidity Tools and Per...

The recent global financial crisis has led central banks to rely heavily on "unconventional" monetary policies. This alternative approach to policy has generated much discussion and a heated and at times confusing debate. The debate has been complicated by the use of different definitions and conflicting views of the mechanisms at work. This paper...

This paper presents an analysis of capital market integration grounded in the intertemporal model of the current account. The model is extended to encompass liquidity constraints and fitted to data for euro-area countries and Italian and Canadian regions. With respect to capital mobility, regions within countries serve as a natural benchmark for th...

A central difference between emerging market and developed countries is the degree to which society's welfare is influenced by risk and volatility. Not only are the underlying nature of shocks more volatile in emerging markets, but the manner with which their economic systems propagate those shocks as well as the deficiencies in agents' ability man...

We survey the literature on the efficacy of foreign exchange market intervention in emerging market countries, emphasising the differences with the literature on industrial countries. We then use official statistics on central bank intervention by the Czech National Bank in conjunction with options market data to study the impact of intervention du...

The current configuration of global imbalances, the financing that they entail, and the possible economic fallout that may occur as they unwind have become hot topics of discussion lately and understandably so since the scale and number of countries involved are unprecedented. The aim of this paper is to highlight the challenges faced by the Asian...

This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of what is known about the effectiveness of foreign exchange intervention in emerging market countries. This is done in two steps. First, an extensive review of the literature on this topic is conducted. Second, new evidence from a systematic study in the context of the Czech Republic using ac...

This paper aims to outline the role that effective exchange rates, both real and nominal, play in Thailand’s monetary policy framework. It discusses some of the applications that effective exchange rates have been applied to in practice, highlighting some of the limitations that often arise. Finally, the paper touches on many of the key issues that...

This paper studies the monetary transmission mechanism in Thailand. It examines the degree of pass-through from money market rates to retail rates, attempts to quantify the lags associated with monetary policy shocks, and investigates the channels through which these shocks are propagated. The empirical results point to a transmission mechanism in...

Dramatic declines in inflation rates across Asia and falling prices in some countries have recently heightened fears of deflation. This paper aims to shed light on this issue by reviewing the cross-country evidence in Asia and highlighting key observations about recent price developments in the region. In light of the recent surge in popular discus...

This paper attempts to explain the divergent output effects of currency crises through a very simple and intuitive model that relates the effects of a devaluation not only to the financial fragility of banks, but also to the degree of financial market imperfection. The model shows that countries with higher degrees of financial market imperfection...

This paper addresses the important question of how far a government will run down its stock of foreign reserves in a defense of a fixed exchange rate. An optimizing model of currency crisis is presented in which the decision of whether or not to borrow in a defense of a peg is explicitly analyzed. The threshold level of reserves is then determined...

The paper decomposes GDP both in terms of level per capita and growth rate, so as to identify the sources of income differences and of economic growth for all EU27 member states. This accounting approach has multiple advantages, although a number of substantial caveats should be borne in mind when interpreting the results. In particular, the detail...

The paper compares the degree of capital market integration across euro-area countries with that across regions in Italy and provinces in Canada. Analyzing saving-investment correlations, and developing as well as fitting to the data a model of capital flows, reveal no compelling differences between the integration across countries before monetary...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Princeton University, 1999. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 313-380).