In theory, prices of current-month federal funds futures contracts should reflect market expectations of near-term movements in the Federal Reserve's target level for the federal funds rate. However, empirical results show that such measures of market expectations are too noisy to predict...

Using an empirical New-Keynesian model with optimal discretionary monetary policy, we calibrate key parameters - the central bank's preference parameters; the degree of forward-looking behavior in the determination of inflation and output; and the variances of inflation and output shocks - to...

We investigate, theoretically and empirically, the relationship between monetary policy and the term structure of interest rates. In particular, we show in a dynamic macroeconomic model that if monetary policy reveals information about economic developments, interest rates of all maturities move...

In a simple dynamic macroeconomic model, it is shown that uncertainty about structural parameters does not necessarily lead to more cautious monetary policy, refining the accepted wisdom concerning the effects of parameter uncertainty on optimal policy. In particular, when there is uncertainty...

We use a quantitative model of the U.S. economy to analyze the response of long-term interest rates to monetary policy, and compare the model results with empirical evidence. We find that the strong and time-varying yield curve response to monetary policy innovations found in the data can be...

This paper demonstrates how a target for money growth can be beneficial for an inflation targeting central bank acting under discretion. Because the growth rate of money is closely related to the change in the interest rate and he growth of real output, delegating a money growth target to the...

We develop a structural model of a small open economy with gradual exchange rate pass-through and endogenous inertia in inflation and output. We then estimate the model by matching the implied impulse responses with those obtained from a VAR model estimated on Swedish data. Although our model is...

Economic outcomes in dynamic economies with forward-looking agents depend crucially on whether or not the central bank can precommit, even in the absence of the traditional inflation bias. This paper quantifies the welfare differential between precommitment and discretionary policy in both a...

Simple models of monetary policy often imply optimal policy behavior that is considerably more aggressive than what is commonly observed. This paper argues that such counterfactual implications are due to model restrictions and a failure to account for multiplicative parameter uncertainty,...