This new puzzling reality has triggered more profound discussion on the monetary policy frameworks with the academia and policy making community. Are the main traditional monetary policy principles -price stability as a main objective, some form of flexible IT as a most adequate strategy, policy rate as a main instrument- still valid? As crisis clearly demonstrated that price stability is not a guarantee for financial stability and that financial instability can have long lasting effects on output and inflation, the discussions focus on the need to take into account financial stability in the monetary policy frameworks. Thus, the question: Is the so called “flexible IT” enough flexible to deal with the current and future challenges or maybe as some observers have suggested, a thought should be given to the other alternative strategies such as targeting price level or nominal GDP. The discussions even touch upon the question of adding explicit financial stability objective. For example, as Borio (2016) claims ”if mandates (of the central banks) are seen as overly constraining the room for maneuver, revisiting them should not be taboo. After all, mandates are a means to an end.” Concerning the instruments, the current debates focus on whether the unconventional tool kit is temporary, as initially considered, or will become conventional tool supplementing the traditional monetary instrument. This is, in particular, in the context of the ultra-low interest rate environment and still anemic recovery.
Credit registry established in 1998 that provides a loan–by-loan data appears to be very useful tool for financial stability and monetary policy purposes. The recent crisis has emphasized that despite the fact that there is a vast data on credit available, still more granular, frequent and flexible credit data is needed. Though this is mainly for the purpose of credit risk assessment and financial stability issues, to which I will refer later, the availability of loan-by-loan data and their characteristics allows for more profound monetary policy research. In particular, the individual loan-by-loan data can be utilized for instance, for exploring the risk-taking monetary policy channel, which has been on the margin of the research. Further, data from the credit registry allowed us to investigate where are the credit flows channeled – to what extent it supports the SME segment, which is a key segment in reviving the growth and boosting employment, to what extent it is channeled to non-tradable sector creating possible bubbles down the road. Of course, the banking system is only one sequence of the monetary policy transmission mechanism. The corporates and households are the other very important part, whose behavior affects the outcome of the undertaken monetary policy measures. As a first line of policymaking, we surely still rely on stylized macro models, where we strive to estimate or calibrate the average behavior of the economy, or the behavior of representative agents. Of course, the reality can be much more different and heterogeneity much more pronounced than envisaged.