The cost of the FED maintaining a low target level of inflation is measured by Lucas (2000) and Ireland (2009) as the welfare cost of inflation based on money demand. Their estimates require stability of the money demand function. Ireland finds that money demand in the post-Volcker period is...

While a standard academic presumption has been that wage indexation reduces the cost of disinflation, policymakers generally contend that wage indexing makes disinflation more difficult. To shed light on these views, this paper reexamines the effects of wage indexing on the output loss caused by...

This work adds to Lucas (2000) by providing analytical solutions to two problems that are solved only numerically by the author. The first part uses a theorem in control theory (Arrow's sufficiency theorem) to provide sufficiency conditions to characterize the optimum in a shopping-time problem...

This paper investigates the determinants of the "sacrifice ratio" for disinflation: the ratio of the loss in output to the fall in trend inflation. I develop a method for estimating the sacrifice ratio in individual disinflation episodes, and apply it to 65 episodes in moderate-inflation OECD...

This paper analyzes a nominal anchor exchange rate policy as a domestic distortion, in the tradition of international trade theory. It is shown that, in addition to the problems of sustainability and exit pinpointed in the exchange rate literature, a nominal anchor exchange rate policy, while in...