Cochrane on Reserve Banks

John Cochrane will be joining us at the Initiative for a webinar tomorrow. The topic: What central banks should and shouldn't do. 

We've been increasingly concerned by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand focusing on a rather wide range of policy areas far from their remits in monetary policy and prudential bank regulation. 

The case for incorporating climate change into prudential regulation looks particularly weak; the Bank simply hasn't any evidence of systematic risk to the banking system from either rising sea levels or carbon price risk that might justify its expeditions into climate regulation. There's plenty of evidence that sea levels will rise and that carbon prices will as well. But that doesn't in itself make a case for the Bank's getting involved. 

Central bank independence in the matters properly in its jurisdiction matters. But the deal has been that Banks get necessary independence, with a quid pro quo that they don't abuse that independence to stray into areas that are really Parliament's concern. 

John Cochrane has been looking at similar issues in Europe, and at the Federal Reserve. 

And I'll be very keen to hear what he has to say about it. 

The blurb for the event, along with Zoom links and Slido links for questions, is below. Note that times are New Zealand time. Not Pacific Time. 

Webinar tomorrow with John H. Cochrane: What central banks should and shouldn't do

Central bank independence in monetary policy was hard fought and desperately needed. The deal was simple. Central government would stay out of a Reserve Bank’s way as it dealt with monetary policy, and the Bank would not abuse its independence in pursuing other agendas.

That deal is fraying badly, if it has not fundamentally broken. If central bank independence in monetary policy is lost as consequence, rebuilding the institutions will be costly.

Join us for an insightful webinar with John H. Cochrane, Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Event details:
Time: 11.00am – 12.00pm
Date: Thursday, 2 December
Registration: Please register for this event via Zoom.

We encourage you to ask questions you have through Slido.
The access code for our event is: #024262

About the speaker:
John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adjunct scholar of the CATO Institute.

Before joining Hoover, Cochrane was a Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and earlier at its Economics Department. Cochrane earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at MIT and his PhD in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a junior staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers (1982–83).

Cochrane’s recent publications include the book Asset Pricing and articles on dynamics in stock and bond markets, the volatility of exchange rates, the term structure of interest rates, the returns to venture capital, liquidity premiums in stock prices, the relation between stock prices and business cycles, and option pricing when investors can’t perfectly hedge. His monetary economics publications include articles on the relationship between deficits and inflation, the effects of monetary policy, and the fiscal theory of the price level.

Cochrane frequently contributes editorial opinion essays to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg.com, and other publications. He maintains the Grumpy Economist blog.

If you wanted to hear John range more broadly, his conversation with Tyler is here. We'll be keeping to a narrower remit.