On the effects of monetary policy in Russia: The role of the space of spanned shocks and the policy regime shifts

This paper investigates the influence of monetary policy shocks in Russia on the basic macroeconomic and financial indicators. To identify the shocks of monetary policy, the Bayesian approach to the estimation of vector autoregressions (VARs) is applied, followed by extraction of the unexplained dynamics of monetary policy instruments (shocks) using both recursive identification and sign restrictions approach. The estimates show that the monetary policy shocks, apparently, cannot be attributed to the key drivers of cyclical movements in Russia, as they explain only less than 10% of the output variation and from 5 to10% of the prices variation. When applying recursive identification, no restraining effect of monetary policy on prices is found. Respective impact on output is negative and statistically significant in all identification procedures employed; however, the relative contribution of monetary shocks to output is not large. In addition, no significant effect of monetary policy tightening on the stabilization of the ruble exchange rate was found.