Summary:
The implementation and coordination of monetary policy and macro prudential policy require an awareness of changes in the underlying macroeconomic environment.Since 2012, China has been in the process of structual transition, from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, with rising shares of human capital intensive industries (HCIIs). Structural transitions in the real economy impact the stability of the macro economy and the financial market. Recently, the major risk to macroeconomic stability has shifted from overheating to overcooling. To stabilize macroeconomic performance, the growth in aggregate demand should be consistent with the growth in aggregate supply. The inconsistency in this relationship is indicated by the inflation rate. During the 2002-2012 period, the general price index, the GDP deflator, was as high as 4.7%, suggesting that the economy was overheating, showing the signs of aggregate demand outgrowing aggregate supply. Growth in aggregate demand is driven by growth in nominal purchasing power, which is caused by credit expansion. Credit expansion is mainly supported by the expansion of firms in capital-intensive industries. After 2012, the economic conditions changed. The average GDP deflator in the 2012-2018 period dropped by 3% to 1.8%. The price index for producers, PPI, witnessed a continuous drop for 18 quarters. There were two reasons for this phenomenon. First, there was a decrease in market-driven demand for credit by firms because HCIIs require less investment than capital intensive industries. Second, banks reduced the credit supply to startup firms in HCIIs due to their lack of collateral and credit records. As for the financial stability, the post-crisis reflections on systemic risks mainly focused on the issues of overheating and excessive risk taking, which sets the background for systemic risk has become the pressure of overcooling and insufficient risk preference. However, China is now experiencing a structural transition characterized by weak external demand. Therefore, the sources of systemic risk are now overcooling and insufficient risk taking. In the temporal dimension , new systemic risks stem from the downside pressure of both economic and financial cycles and their mutual reinforcement. In the spatial dimension, the source of contagion riskno longer “too big to fall” systemically important banks, but small financial institutions with big impacts and diversified business models. Since the implementation of the Macro-Prudential Assessment (MPA) framework in 2016, big banks that are identified as systemically important institutions have significantly improved the robustness of their balance sheets, but small and medium institutions, including urban commercial banks, rural commercial banks, and private banks, are facing larger risks. Given these issues, we use the “double pillar” regulation framework to make three key suggestions for managing the macro-economy and financial systems in a period of economic transition. First, monetary policy should not try to achieve too many goals; instead, it should prioritize the stabilization of aggregate demand and the achievement of moderate inflation. The major challenge for achieving these goals is the insufficient credit demand by firms and credit supply by traditional banks as a result of transitions in industrial structures. In the long term, the solution to this problem is to implement structural reforms of the financial system that give a bigger role to equity financing tools, as they provide better financial service to HCIIs and satisfy their market-driven financing needs. In the short term, more policy measures should be adopted, such as more flexible adjustment of the policy rate, lifting of loan restrictions in certain industries,and the coordinated implimentation of fiscal policy. Second, policy makers should consider the new systemic risks in their design of the MPA, and make improvements to related policy tools and supporting systems. To tackle the systemic risks related to troubled institutions that are small, offer diversified services, and have extensive potential impacts, we suggest three improvements to the current regulatory framework. First, to restrict high cost and high risk financial services, more of the currently unregulated financial innovations should be included in the regulatory framework. Second, there should be a stress test that considers the possibility of the simultaneous market exit of large numbers of small and medium institutions. Third, there is a need to establish a series of firewalls to prevent the contagion and aggravation of risks arising from the exit of troubled institutions. Third, the coordination of monetary policy and prudential regulations should take into consideration the current structure of China's financial system and make an effort to reduce the imbalance between the demand of the real sector and the supply of financial services. At the same time, adopting a moderately loose monetary policy could provide a buffer against the constraining effect of more stringent prudential regulations on credit supply, thus reducing the risk of the simultaneous bankruptcy of multiple problematic financial institutions and mutually enhancing the financial and economic cycles.
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