China’s financial prices are informative enough for the PBC to introduce a monetary
policy framework centered around interest rates. While bond yields are not fully
efficient—reflecting regulation, liquidity, and segmentation—we find they contain
considerable information about the state of the economy as well as evidence of an
emerging transmission channel: changes in PBC rates influence the structure of Treasury,
financial, and corporate bond yield curves, which are then associated with changes in
growth and inflation. Coporate spreads are also a leading indicator of growth and
inflation. While further liberalization will strengthen both efficiency and transmission,
several necessary elements to move towards indirect monetary policy are already in place.
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