[뉴스콤 장태민 기자] 토마스 조던 스위스중앙은행(SNB) 총재가 한국은행 컨퍼런스에 참석해 최근 기준금리 인하 사유 등을 설명하고 이창용 한은 총재와 회담했다.

조던 총재는 30일 '2024년 BOK 국제컨퍼런스'에서 기조연설을 담당했다.

그는 "우리가 지난 3월 기준금리를 25bp 인하해 1.5%로 낮춘 것은 물가안정이란 목표 달성을 위해 노력한 좋은 예가 될 수 있다"고 소개했다.

총재는 중앙은행은 인플레이션 경로에 대해 다양한 정책 옵션 비용과 편익을 평가해야 한다면서 3월 금리 인하는 그 평가 결과라고 했다.

■ '1%대 물가상승률' 바탕으로 선진국 중 가장 먼저 금리를 내렸던 나라, 스위스

SNB는 지난 3월 21일 기준금리를 1.75%에서 1.50%로 25bp 인하한 바 있다.

당시 주요국 가운데 가장 먼저 '깜짝' 기준금리를 인하해 많은 사람들을 놀래켰다.

지난해 9월 동결을 시작한 이후 세 차례 회의만에 인하를 단행했다.

SNB는 2022년 6월 16일 기존 -0.75%에서 -0.25%로 기준금리를 50bp 높이면서 긴축 기조를 시작한 바 있다.

이후 2022년 9월에는 75bp, 12월에는 50bp 인상을 단행했다. 2023년 들어서도 3월 50bp, 6월 25bp를 인상해 2022년 6월부터 2023년 6월까지 5차례 연속으로 기준금리를 올린 바 있다.

하지만 3월에 금리를 낮추면서 6월 회의까지 기다리지 않았다.

당시 조던 총재는 "지난 2년 반 동안 인플레이션과의 싸움이 효과적이었기 때문에 통화정책의 완화가 가능했다"고 말했다.

그는 "몇 달 동안 인플레이션이 2% 미만 수준을 유지해 물가안정과 동일시하는 범위 내에 있다"며 "새로운 전망에 따르면 인플레이션은 앞으로 몇 년 동안 이 범위에서 유지될 것으로 보인다"고 덧붙였다.

인하 당시 스위스 2월 CPI는 전년비 1.2% 상승했다. 예상치인 1.1% 상승을 소폭 웃돌긴 했지만 1월(+1.3%)보다 상승폭이 축소돼 금리인하에 정당성을 부여했다.

스위스 CPI는 작년 5월 2.2% 상승에서 작년 6월 1.7%로 뚜렷한 둔화세르 보이면서 2%를 하회하기 시작했다.

작년 6월 1.7% 상승을 시작으로 올해 2월 1.2% 상승을 나타냈다. 스위스 CPI는 9개월 연속해서 1.2~1.7% 상승 범위에 머물렀으며, 이는 스위스가 선진국 중 처음으로 금리를 인하할 여지를 만들어줬다.

한편 최근 발표된 스위스 4월 CPI는 전년비 1.4% 상승했다. 예상치인 1.1% 상승을 비교적 크게 웃돈 것이다. 다만 여전히 최근 1년 내 레인지인 1.2~1.7% 상승 범위엔 머문 것이다.

■ 미국-유럽 정책 큰 영향 받는 스위스...인플레 낮추는 데 성공

조던 총재는 키노트 스피치 이후 이창용 한국은행 총재와의 정책 대화를 가졌다.

대화 자리에서 그는 "금리 결정은 오로지 스위스 인플레이션 상황에 기인한다"고 했다.

낮은 물가 상승률을 확인한 뒤 기준금리 인하를 할 수 있었다는 것이다.

이 총재가 '글로벌 통화정책 차별화' 흐름을 언급하면서 스위스의 빠른 금리 인하를 거론하자 조던 총재는 스위스가 처한 위치에 따른 선택이었다고 했다.

미국과 유로존이라는 거대한 경제 블록의 통화정책이 스위스 통화에 영향을 주는 상황에서 물가 안정을 위해 적절한 선택을 한다는 것이다.

스위스는 금리 결정을 할 때 환율 문제를 상당히 신경 쓰는 나라로 알려져 있다. 아울러 글로벌 금융위기 이후 통화정책에서 환율 문제를 중시하는 나라로 유명했다.

이날 대담에서 이창용 총재가 "스위스는 금리 뿐만 아니라 환율도 중요한 변수로 활용해 인플레이션을 타게팅하는 것 같다"고 하자 조던 총재는 "스위스에선 환율이 인플레에 큰 영향을 미치기 때문에 환율이 매우 중요한 변수"라고 답했다.

조던 총재는 또 "미국과 유럽간 통화정책 차별화는 분명히 우리 환율에 영향을 미칠 수 있다"고 말했다.

그는 그러나 "통화정책의 메인 도구는 우리의 단기 금리"라고 밝혔다.

일반적으로 단기금리를 정책의 툴로 이용하고 이자율을 움직일 룸이 없거나 환율로 인한 디플레 압력이 너무 강할 경우 환 개입 등을 활용한다고 밝혔다.

한편 조던 총재는 경제 성장 포텐셜 측면에서 유럽이 미국에 뒤처지는 문제에 대한 걱정도 드러냈다.

그는 "유럽 잠재성장률이 미국보다 낮은 것은 유로존 경제에 좋지 않다"며 "문제는 경기 순환적이 아닌 구조적인 것으로 중장기적으로 편차가 더욱 커질 수 있다는 점"이라고 했다.

■ 올해 한은 컨퍼런스 주제는 중립금리

올해 한은 국제컨퍼런스 주제는 '중립금리의 변화와 세계 경제에 대한 함의'다.

현재 한은의 기준금리는 연 3.5%이며, 최근까지 한국의 중립금리 수준은 2~3% 사이의 특정 지점에 있는 것으로 추론돼 왔다.

이런 가운데 최근 한은은 '금융안정'을 고려한 중립금리 문제를 유독 신경 썼다.

즉 금융안정을 고려하지 않은 '일반적' 중립금리 개념과 함께 금융안정까지 고려한 중립금리를 같이 신경써야 한다는 것이다.

한국의 높은 가계부채 등 금융안정을 고려한 중립금리는 그렇지 않은 경우보다 높아야 한다는 지적도 많은 편이다.

한편 이날 한은 컨퍼런스에 참석한 연준 이사회의 티아고 페레이라 그룹 매니저는 "향후 인구 고령화 등에 따라 안전자산 수요가 확대되고 이는 장기 중립금리 하락 요인으로 작용할 듯 하다"는 견해를 밝혔다.

그는 "중립금리의 결정요인으로 생산성 추세, 노동인구 비중, 글로벌 안전자산 수요공급 및 여타 국가 기초여건 변화의 영향 등을 고려한 결과"라고 했다.

중립금리에 대한 논의는 내일까지 이어진다.



◆ <참고자료> 24년 5월 30일 BOK 컨퍼런스, 이창용 총재-토마스 조던 총재 정책대담 스크립트

이창용

Let me ask two questions regarding your speech and then I probably ask a few others before I open the question to the floor. As you said, r-star is a very academic concept hard to communicate but we cannot avoid using it in our monetary policy framework. And as a practitioner, I'm very interested in your speech about how you derive the policy relevant r-star in Switzerland.Why don't I explain what we are doing in Korea? And then based on your way, if you can suggest how we can improve, it'll be really nice. So basically we also have like four or five models of estimating r-star. And instead of trying to get one policy relevant r-star level, we use the range and then compare whether our real interest rate is the upper part of the range or the lower part of the range to judge our monetary policy stance. And in doing so, definitely we sometimes discount some model over the others like as you mentioned and we also check whether our judgment is correct by using several other measures such as we look at our core inflation movement, whether it has a downward trend that indicates that probably our interest rate is the upper part of the you know, the r-star. And then we also used some other indicators such as the financial condition index and others.One problem we have is whenever we try to introduce some global factors such as exchange rate, current account, capital mobility or movement, we find that the model estimate fluctuate quite a lot. So probably tomorrow one of our staff will present a model which incorporate external sectors more. But this issue is still not resolved and we find that whenever we try to incorporate foreign variables as you mentioned, the estimates change quite a lot which makes us hard to use it.And lastly, not only price stability our mandate also is to look at the financial stability. So we're always trying to get an estimate r-star estimate in consideration of financial stability too. And we usually find that that level of r-star is slightly above the r-star when you just look at the you know, the price stability. So these are the kind of quick summary of what we are doing. So can you suggest how we can improve further?

토마스 조던

I think this is very difficult to give you some advice. You have a complete I think research strategy and it looks quite similar to the one that we are applying. I think it's important not only for communication but rather for the internal discussion to have a clear view about the equilibrium in the economy.So do we have a closed output gap? Is the exchange rate close to the equilibrium and is the interest rate or the real interest close to equilibrium?And this then defines also the discussion that we have in the governing board of the Swiss National Bank to figure out whether our monetary policy stance is adequate or not. And it's really the task of the economists to come from an uncertain world to something that is then usable for a structured discussion at the board level. And I think this is important.We know it's a lot of uncertainty but this should not be an excuse not to have a clear view more or less what is or where we believe is the most likely equilibrium. It's even much more difficult with the exchange rate there we have much more fluctuations and also the exchange rate equilibrium changes a lot.

So we have different interest rates between countries. We have also different trade developments and they can change a lot there it's even more difficult but nevertheless we try to figure out whether the Swiss frank is rather highly valued, fairly valued or undervalued because this is important for our judgment about the policy stance.

이창용

So when you actually estimate the policy relevant r-star, you have to assume some level of exchange rate as equilibrium or you just compare these two variables simultaneously?

토마스 조던

Well we try to separate that in a way. So monetary conditions in a very simple way is the sum of the deviation of r from r-star and the exchange rate from the equilibrium exchange rate. So the sum of the two mainly then reflects the stance of monetary policy. But there may be some interaction between the two but we try to estimate them separately.

이창용

And my second question is that at the end of your speech, you mentioned that some flexibility in your monetary policy stance helps to manage the risk from underestimating or overestimating the r-star. And you mentioned that I find actually two differences of your system and ours. You mentioned that you are targeting range of inflation zero to two percent rather than point target.And also you mentioned in your slide that when you actually calculate the future path of inflation, you assume that that path is based on the assumption that interest rates remain at the policy rate over the horizon of this forecast.

On the other hand, we have a point estimate, point target two percent of inflation. But we also allow flexibility by saying that this point target is a medium term goal rather than short term.So you can have some room to deviate.On the other hand, when you actually project the inflation path, we are using implied model, consistent implied interest rate even though we do not publish it outside.So what's the main motivation to use the fixed interest rate over the horizon? And I'm asking this question because Bernanke's recent report to the UK says it's not a good idea to use the market rate but also is there any reason that you use a fixed interest rate in your forecast?

토마스 조던

Well, the main reason is that we would like to give some information about future monetary policy decisions but we do not publish an interest rate path. So it's neither market rates nor our own view about future interest rates.But by publishing an inflation forecast onto the assumption of unchanged interest rates depending on the slope of the inflation forecast, you can figure out whether rather a tightening or a loosening is necessary in order to maintain inflation within the range of price stability or bring it back into the range of price stability.

The other point, I think the key difference between having a range or having a point target with some flexibility is that we can accept an inflation rate for quite a long time that may be at 0.5 or at 1.9. So depending on the economic circumstances globally and because we are a small open economy and we are,we are really exposed to in these international shocks, we can then decide on a cost benefit analysis whether it makes sense to accept a low inflation but positive inflation rate and rather not lower rates further but accept the low inflation rate or whether we should fight that and bring inflation up.So we have this flexibility there. So this is a key difference. It's not a flexibility around the point target. It's really that we have the choice to accept different inflation rates depending on the global economic situation.

이창용

OK that leads naturally to your comments on the role of exchange rate intervention and exchange rate management. So I feel like you're suggesting that you are actually targeting inflation not only through the change in the interest rate but also FX rate is a kind of important variable.

토마스 조던

The exchange rate is a very important variable because it has a big influence on inflation in Switzerland. But we do not target the inflation rate. This is an instrument if it's necessary. So the main instrument is our short term interest rate. It's called the SB policy rate. So we operate normally through the interest rate as most of the central banks do but in case we have no room of a maneuver anymore with the interest rate and if there is really a deflationary risk because of the exchange rate is too strong and then obviously we have to go to an intervention to use the FX intervention as a tool in order to bring monetary conditions to an acceptable level so that we do not fall into a deflation.

이창용

So recently I think your intervention on exchange rate is mostly to prevent too high a level of appreciation mostly for the price level. Did you have any experience of actually intervening to protect too much rapid depreciation?

토마스 조던

Actually we have the well for a very long time we had to intervene because of the excessive appreciation of the Swiss Frank that was between the financial crisis and Covid. So that was the period where there was a permanent appreciation pressure on the Swiss Frank at times very heavily overvalued.And then since the end of COVID, where the other central banks increased the interest rates but especially when inflation went up a lot abroad then we tried to sell Swiss foreign exchange. So we had a relatively strong nominal appreciation but that was helpful and protected the Swiss economy from having higher inflation. So inflation in Switzerland never went over 3.5 percent but during that time we had roughly a nominal appreciation in the magnitude of the inflation differential.

이창용

Okay so the next question is that not just for the FX exchange rate issue but now we are seeing that the, the monetary policy in major countries start to diverge. We have a quite different stance across important central banks.How do you incorporate this divergence of the monetary policy which will probably emerge more in the near future? How do you incorporate into your calculation, estimation of r-star but also overall monetary policy stance in Swiss?You recently cut your rate so probably well above others. So can you just comment on how you can incorporate this divergent paths from now on?

토마스 조던

Of course, our decisions are really only focused on the inflationary perspective in Switzerland and we have to make sure that monetary conditions are adequate and that they reflect really the outlook. So I think when the monetary policy in the US and in Europe diverge, they could have a certain impact on the exchange rate and that could have an impact for us. So it really depends the Swiss Frank vis a vis both currency. But when they diverge, that could have an impact on the dollar, euro exchange rate. And of course that could then also have a certain influence on our effective exchange rate.So we are looking at that very closely but of course these are decisions by the central banks in order to get to price stability in the respective currency areas.

이창용

Not now but during the lunchtime. I want to ask you when do you expect the ECB or the Fed will cut the rate?

토마스 조던

OK give you a very precise answer.

이창용

That's a big issue now here and now I think let's move from interest rate issue to some other important issues. We witnessed a very successful resolution of Credit Suisse Bank under your leadership in March last year. And can you let us know what lessons we have to learn from Silicon Valley Bank and spillover to the global banking industry?

토마스 조던

Well, the Swiss government just published a long report with a entire series of different lessons and also proposals. Let me concentrate maybe here on liquidity because for central banks this is very important and relevant. I think what we have learned during this crisis, not only in Switzerland but also in the US regional banking crisis is that bank-runs it can be much bigger and also faster than we experienced so far. So the outflow of liquidity was extreme in a few days a much more liquidity went out of the bank than previously ever experienced.So I think the lessons from that is we have to look at the funding structure of banks liquidity coverage ratios. What can make the funding structure more robust against these outflows so that the speed of outflows could be slowed down so it's mainly that banks should look at the longer term funding so that not all the liquidity can go out so quickly.And the other is that the banks have to prepare more of their assets as collateral that is eligible for central banks so that they can bring more collateral to a central bank in order to get the necessary liquidity. And that needs some preparation.So especially that collateral, it has to be handed over to the central bank. The central bank can or should be able to sell this collateral in case the loan is not repaid. So all these preparations have to be done so that enough collateral is available.But there will be always situations extreme situations where even with the best or the most robust funding structure and the best preparation, there might be not enough collateral. And I think this public liquidity backstop is extremely important.So this is now in the Swiss Parliament and the Swiss Parliament will decide on that. That would then give the Swiss National Bank the possibility to give liquidity without receiving collateral.And then that with a backstop, of course of the government.

이창용

Okay Credit Suisse is a Swiss bank. So in some sense that policy will be relevant. But do you think that we have to some new view about the ring fencing and or some other policies toward the resolution of the fallen subsidiaries and institutions in your country?

토마스 조던

Resolution is absolutely key. And I think the experience that we made now also with Credit Suisse shows that there are some obstacles to resolution, legal issues that were not completely clear operational issues. And we have to look at that very carefully. So I think there is an absolute necessity that the resolution remains valuable, a possible option in case of a crisis. And so we need to look at that very carefully. This is also one of the lessons in this report of the Swiss government that we have to make sure that resolution will become more credible and that it can't be executed without having the risk that maybe some legal risk will then stop the resolution after it's started. So I think these are very important issues.

이창용

Okay and my next question is that recently we see not only the interest rate policy divergence but also the real economy performance divergence between the United States and Europe.And in the United States the growth is know really high and more than we expected. And we also heard that the productivity growth is quite fast. But when I usually go to the BIS, many European bankers worry about the slow growth rate in Europe as well as a productivity growth rate.So why do you think that this difference happens and how the future economic path of the European economy will flow?

토마스 조던

Well, this is a very important question and it's indeed a problem when potential growth in Europe is lower than in the United States it's not good for the European economies.In Switzerland, we have the biggest trading partner is still the European Union. So for us this is not optimal if growth in Europe is substantially lower than in the United States.The United States is also a very important trading partner. But I think there are a couple of reasons and it's not easy to change that at the moment. Of course Europe suffers also from the war in Ukraine, from energy prices that are higher in Europe than elsewhere. So that puts the European economy at a disadvantage.I believe it's not a problem as long as it's really cyclical , it becomes a problem when it becomes structural and it really deviates in the medium to long term.And that given the proximity that we have with all the European countries, that would be not an easy situation for us as well. So I think we hope that especially also all the decision in politics in Europe go in a way that potential growth can catch up with other countries especially the United States.

이창용

Yeah sure definitely Europe has also heterogeneity some European countries doing better. So okay so before I open the floor, let me ask you a last question. I think I heard that disappointingly you will be retiring in September and I'd like to congratulate you on your retirement as you're leaving office recognized as a great leader in the central banking community. And I would like to ask what is the most memorable thing during your 12 years as the chairman of the Swiss National Bank. And if you have any recommendations or message you would like to leave for the central banking community, we will appreciate

토마스 조던

Well, memorable moments. Well, there are many because we had this long series of shocks. But I think what is really memorable is that you have this extremely good international relationship among central banks. This is really unique and it's really a very good forum for exchanging views also but learning from each other and this is exceptional.So I think in discussions like today but especially also at the BIS and the IMF, you have this really good relationship where we can interact very closely and learn from each other. It was also, I think for me an extremely good experience going through so many crises that I had the support of all my colleagues at the board but also the staff at the Swiss National Bank that we all try to deal with those crises in the same way. So I think that was very memorable and I think very positive for me.

Message this is always difficult. I'm deeply convinced that for the success of monetary policy and central banks, we need independence. Independent central banks but independence can only survive when the mandates remain narrow. So this is something when broader the mandate becomes, the more difficult it is to explain that to the public why a central bank should be independent.And usually central banks do not have instruments that are effective except for price stability, monetary policies. So I think we should fight for independence. This is not always easy and we should also then see that the mandate remains narrow focused really on monetary policy and maintaining price stability.

이창용

Thank you. I think you are too young to retire so I'm sure, sure that you will even though you deny you will remain and you will come back to the central bank society or even international community. With that I think we have about 10 minutes. You can speak up.

질문자(Eric Leeper 교수) Governor Jordan I want to thank you for what I thought was the clearest explanation of how r-star feeds into practical.You mentioned that there were two sources of uncertainty. One was model and the other statistical. And by model, I think what you meant was sort of empirical specification. But I wonder if there's a third source that plays any role in your thinking which is more conceptual that as you pointed out, you define r-star as something that will close the output gap over some medium horizon. That seems to imply that there's a u-star or a y-star lurking in the background which then seems to imply that the Phillips curve is central to your thinking.But of course there are other mechanisms out there that one could imagine. And I'm just wondering whether that third source of uncertainty plays any role in how you think about using r-star.

토마스 조던

I believe you are completely right there are many uncertainties so I concentrated on these two. I think the model uncertainty is also related to what kind of models are usable, are useful and in some specific situations, they just do not really give you a sensible estimate. But you pointed to other variables that are important and especially in the Swiss case, the exchange rate and the equilibrium exchange rate plays an important role. So also there we tried to have a rough idea where the equilibrium is in order to get a view about the actual stance of monetary policy.

Now the combination of all these variables and where exactly dental stands this is a very difficult task and it's not easy to communicate. Nevertheless, I think for a discussion about monetary policy decisions, I think it's an important duty of our economies to give us some information how they see the world and how we can use this information to link it to the inflation outlook and then to a policy decision.So it may be very complicated but I think the task is really to reduce this complexity to a level that we can have a structured discussion that is at the least possible technical level but a structured discussion where we can then take the decision so that this is, I think the, the way we structure our discussion when we have policy decisions.So our economists are the experts they are in charge of these models. They should provide us with this information then we should reduce the complexity so that we can figure out whether the policies correct or incorrect and then we can adjust.But it's very complex and you are completely right that there are probably even more uncertainties around that and it's not always easy to take into account all these uncertainties, especially when they are unknown.

질문자2(Carlos Viana de Carvalho)Thanks for a great presentation great panel. I was curious to learn a bit more about sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Carlos Carvalho from Pukerio and Capital Investimentos to learn a bit more about the choice between exchange rate and interest rate as the intervention tool.It's very clear when you are against a zero lower bound and there's an asymmetry. But when there isn't like in 2022, what kind of things would you look at to say look now I'm going to sell some FX rather than hike rates some more. I thought it was kind of interesting. Thank you.

토마스 조던

This is a very important point. Well, in fact, in 2021 there was this very important discussion whether the increase in inflation was only temporary or more permanent. In Switzerland, inflation was still low but we observed inflation increasing elsewhere and the uncertainty was big. But we came to the conclusion that under those circumstances, it may not be a bad idea to let the Swiss Frank appreciate at least in the magnitude of the inflation differential.And we then went in that direction and so we had more or less a constant real exchange rate but an appreciating nominal exchange rate. And through that we had some protection against high inflation from abroad not complete. But I think that then led to a different monetary policy stance.In case we had not let the Swiss bank appreciate at that time and also let the interest rate at the same level the monetary policy stance would have become much more expansionary and most likely inflation would have gone up more or less similar than in other countries. So that was a kind of a risk management decision that we took. And then we had almost two years really an appreciation that reflected the inflation differential and that we were in a way in a fortunate situation that we had those foreign exchange reserves accumulated in the past and it had a positive side effect that we could also reduce the balance sheet at least to some extent. So we can do that under those circumstances. But of course this is not an instrument that we can apply in every situation.

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If I just add one our cases, I think one major concern for your question is whether our exchange rate move together with other countries. If it's common shock or whether it's our own individual shock that actually affects our choice of interest rate versus exchange rate flexibility.

질문자3 (Thomas Sargent 교수)

Yeah this is, this is, this is an old man comment from an old man and it's very non-technical. Okay so so if you're my age or you've read, this is a remarkable that was a remarkable talk and this was a remarkable exchange. And I'll tell you what I mean. There's a, one of John Taylor's conferences at Hoover. He has an annual. Alan Meltzer, before he passed away, he gave a lunch talk about his second volume of his book about the history of the Fed. And he talked about what William Mcchesney Martin and Arthur Burns how they described how they thought about the economy and what they were doing. And they would have no idea what you two guys are talking about and you would have no idea what they are talking about. Because what you're talking about models different models stochastic models shocks what's kind of in equilibrium what's unobserved what's observed model uncertainty not trusting your model, shifting the weights you know, kind of going beyond basing all of those things.They're very technical okay and I think it's if you kind of look at the outcomes that both of you are presiding over they're much better than the ones that those guys were presiding over.And I think those are connected. Ah, so it's just a tremendous amount of progress. Again this isn't you don't know what I'm talking about. This is an omen I just think it's, it's remarkable.

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Sargent I think you have a selection bias you haven't asked our press yet.

질문자3

And so one more thing, one more thing okay fine. So there's been a lot of progress. Meanwhile, because Eric's sitting there what about fiscal authorities the people like, I'm just going to speak for my country.The discussion of fiscal policy and how it's related to monetary policy was much more sophisticated by congressmen and presidents in the 1950s. So don't be so optimistic about progress.

토마스 조던

You are right about the progress in economics. Sometimes you have to be fair with our predecessor the technology was not available. So at the Swiss National Bank for a very long time used money aggregates. The thinking was more or less the same but the tools they had the data was completely different. So it was a different world. For example, quarterly data in GDP was introduced only in the 80s or even later in Switzerland. There was no easy models available on computers.So the world was very different. It was very cumbersome to get to these models and results. Today you push on a button. You have a huge literature about everything. You have 40 PHDs that can do run these models. That was not the case at that time, at least not at the Swiss National Bank. So I think that is a certain progress.

But yeah Alan Meltzer and Karl Brunner actually Alan Melzer came to Switzerland. We have this Karl Brunner lecture and a Karl Brunner conference. So that was a very close relationship with both.

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But not academic. But I think I agree with you that I strongly believe that if there is any crisis in the future, it's most likely come from fiscal mismanagement rather than monetary mismanagement.

이수형 금통위원

Thank you very much for your insightful presentation and panel discussion with Governor Rhee. My question is more practical side given that I'm a new recent member of Monetary Policy Committee here at BOK.And during your talk about Switzerland experience, the estimate of r-star is quite large in terms of the policy decision part although there is a slow moving trend.And during the presentation you mentioned about expertise selection may play a big role. So I would like to know more about what exactly experts can add up to in terms of the model selection or the direction of the monetary policy.And in particular during the period when the business cycle may turn around or new shock comes in, then maybe model may spit out very different numbers may or may not be a relevant information we as a decision maker may play in a role. So I'd like to know more about some of the details. Thank you.

토마스 조던

Well, thank you for this question. I think this is really a crucial task of our economists to figure out the what type of models are useful in a specific situation and which models should be discounted. And I made an example before that especially during COVID we had these large swings in macroeconomic data and they came to the conclusion that certain type of model is not useful now for making these estimates. So I think they have to figure out, given their knowledge, given their expertise in looking at the different drivers to what extent certain estimates are plausible, helpful or whether they should discount.So I think this is not easy but it's essential. And I think when central bank researchers in a way can help us, they can help by interpreting these models not just believing in the models, but interpreting the models and make the models useful for a structured discussion.So we know all models are by definition wrong. But without models, we cannot have structured discussions. We have to have some views how the world is functioning, where equilibria are, what are the transmission mechanisms, etc. And I think here it's really this is an art for economists to a little bit abstract from just the pure model to something that is then usable for a policy decision.So it's not that you just see the equations and then the results but rather than take that and compare it with other things and then say, well, my conviction is that should be more or less something that is useful as a base for a policy decision.

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Sorry I'd like to match Korea precision to Swiss precision. So I know you have many questions but let's close the session and I will pass to the mike to the MC.

장태민 기자 chang@newskom.co.kr