General Economics (econ.GN)

Abstract: We introduce a novel approach to solving dynamic programming problems, such as those in many economic models, on a quantum annealer, a specialized device that performs combinatorial optimization. Quantum annealers attempt to solve an NP-hard problem by starting in a quantum superposition of all states and generating candidate global solutions in milliseconds, irrespective of problem size. Using existing quantum hardware, we achieve an order-of-magnitude speed-up in solving the real business cycle model over benchmarks in the literature. We also provide a detailed introduction to quantum annealing and discuss its potential use for more challenging economic problems.

Abstract: This paper shows that disregarding the information effects around the European Central Bank monetary policy decision announcements biases its international spillovers. Using data from 23 economies, both Emerging and Advanced, I show that following an identification strategy that disentangles pure monetary policy shocks from information effects lead to international spillovers on industrial production, exchange rates and equity indexes which are between 2 to 3 times larger in magnitude than those arising from following the standard high frequency identification strategy. This bias is driven by pure monetary policy and information effects having intuitively opposite international spillovers. Results are present for a battery of robustness checks: for a sub-sample of ``close'' and ``further away'' countries, for both Emerging and Advanced economies, using local projection techniques and for alternative methods that control for ``information effects''. I argue that this biases may have led a previous literature to disregard or find little international spillovers of ECB rates.