Asymmetric effects of monetary policy: A Markov-Switching SVAR approach

This paper examines the effects of monetary policy on macroeconomic variables in Botswana as a developing small macro-economy using the Markov-switching structural vector autoregressive (MS-SVAR) framework, utilising time-series data from 1994: Q1 to 2019: Q4. The study makes use of bank rate (interest rate), inflation and output gap. The first model is a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model that takes the form employed by Rudebusch and Svensson (1999), whilst the second one makes use of the same structure but includes Markov switching in the policy rule (i.e., Markov switching SVAR). Regime-switching models can effectively describe the data generating process when considering both in-sample and out of sample evaluations compared to the linear models, which submerge the structural changes that have occurred in the economy over the years. The results from the SVAR shows that monetary policy has a symmetric impact on the output gap and inflation. Therefore, it can be noted that non-linearities in the structural model do not necessarily imply asymmetric effects of shocks. Furthermore, the MS-SVAR shows that the Central Bank of Botswana responds differently to policy shocks in different regimes. This underscores the importance of regime-switching features in providing a more accurate description of the economy