We measure soft information contained in the congressional testimonies of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairs and analyze its effect on financial markets. Our measures of Fed Chairs' emotions expressed in words, voice and facial expressions are created using machine learning. Increases in the Chair's...

We use controlled laboratory experiments to test the causal effects of central bank communication on economic expectations and to distinguish the underlying mechanisms of those effects. In an experiment where subjects learn to forecast economic variables, we find that central bank communication...

This paper examines the value of direct communication to households about inflation and the uncertainty around inflation statistics. All types of information about inflation are effective at immediately managing inflation expectations, with information about outlooks being more effective and...

Kryvtsov and Midrigan (2008) study the behavior of inventories in an economy with menu costs, fixed ordering costs and the possibility of stock-outs. This paper extends their analysis to a richer setting that is capable of more closely accounting for the dynamics of the US business cycle. We...

Models with imperfect information that generate persistent monetary nonneutrality predominantly rely on assumptions leading to substantial heterogeneity of information across price-setters. This paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium model in which the degree of heterogeneity of...

Using the Bank of Canada's main projection and policy-analysis model, ToTEM, this paper measures the welfare gains of switching from inflation targeting to price-level targeting under imperfect credibility. Following the policy change, private agents assign a probability to the event that the...

This paper examines the role of monetary policy in an environment with aggregate risk and incomplete markets. In a two-period overlapping-generations model with aggregate uncertainty and nominal bonds, optimal monetary policy attains the ex-ante Pareto optimal allocation. This policy aims to...

Recent New Keynesian models of macroeconomy view nominal cost rigidities, rather than nominal price rigidities, as the key feature that accounts for the observed persistence in output and inflation. Kryvtsov and Midrigan (2010a,b) reassess these conclusions by combining a theory based on nominal...