Abstract:We examine the reasons why the SNB gave up the lower floor of the 1.20 CHF/EUR exchange rate arrangement. Three types of shocks played a role: Exogenous shocks to the autonomous component of money demand, interest rate decreases of the ECB, as well as appreciation expectations. In order to defend these shocks, the SNB intervened heavily in the foreign exchange market. This led to an accumulation of reserves in the central bank's balance sheet of the size of 80% of Swiss GDP. Interestingly, the SNB did not lower the interest rate into the negative range during the time period where the peg was in place. Hence, the SNB did not do "whatever it takes" to defend the peg.
Since the ECB has lowered the interest rate on deposits into negative territory, more and more commercial banks are also passing on this negative interest rate to their customers. The main aim of this paper is to answer the question under which conditions the commercial banking sector will be more or less reluctant to pass the negative deposit rate on to its private customers. We first clarify the circumstances under which demand deposits and excess liquidity arise, and what role quantitative easing plays in this context. Within a game-theoretical framework, it is derived that the pressure to pass on the negative interest rate is particularly high if there are no switching costs, and the banking market follows a Bertrand competition.
We theoretically examine under which assumptions the impossible trinity holds. We also focus on the most recent Swiss experience and ask whether the SNB gained monetary independence by switching from a fixed to a floating exchange rate system in January 2015. The theoretical examination shows that the impossible trinity holds under the following assumptions: Equality of domestic and foreign real interest rates, the quantity theory of money holds, and that the relative PPP is fulfilled. The empirical analysis reveals that relative PPP does not hold for the Swiss case and it was necessary for the SNB to adopt its monetary policy in accordance with the ECB’s expansionary monetary policy. We show that for a small open economy, such as Switzerland, whether the central bank implements a fixed or a floating exchange rate system does not play a role in its monetary policy independence.
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