Asymmetric Monetary Policy Transmission in India: Does Financial Friction Matter?
Authors
Ranjan Kumar Mohanty & N R Bhanumurthy
Details
BASE University Working Paper Series 03 /2020
Abstract
In the context of adoption of flexible inflation targeting regime in India since 2016 and is about to be reviewed soon, it is necessary to understand the effectiveness of monetary transmission mechanism. The paper investigates if there are any asymmetries in the transmission during different regimes, and also verify the role of financial frictions in such asymmetries, if it exists. By using Markov-Switching Vector Autoregression (MS-VAR) models, our results suggest that there are asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism during highly volatile and low volatile regimes with respect to both output and inflation. It also finds that financial frictions do influence the extent of policy transmission process in India. From a policy perspective, while the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may continue to target inflation especially during high volatile regimes, it could have output growth as an additional target especially during the low volatile regimes.