Impact of monetary policy shocks in the Peruvian economy over time

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of the impact of monetary policy (MP) shocks in Peru in 1996Q1-2018Q2 using a set of time-varying parameter VAR models with stochastic volatility (TVP-VAR-SV), as proposed by Chan and Eisenstat (2018). The main results are: (i) the volatility of MP shocks falls during the Inflation Targeting (IT) regime; (ii) a contractionary MP shock decreases both GDP growth and inflation within a five quarters time span; (iii) the interest rate reacts faster to aggregate supply shocks than to both aggregate demand shocks and exchange rate shocks; (iv) under the pre-IT regime, MP shocks explain 20%, 10%, and 85% of the uncertainty in GDP growth, inflation, and the interest rate, respectively; and under the IT regime, all these percentages shrink to 1%–2%. The sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of the main results. In general, the results show that MP has contributed to diminishing macroeconomic volatility in Peru.