By the end of the Great Moderation, over two dozen central banks were formal inflation targeters, and others, such as the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Swiss National Bank behaved essentially as inflation targeters even though they were resistant to identifying themselves...

Beginning with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act of 1989, central banking reforms have focused on assigning clear goals for which monetary policy authorities can be held accountable. Inflation targeting regimes provide examples of such goal-based policy frameworks. An alternative approach,...

In a standard New Keynesian model, a myopic central bank concerned with stabilizing inflation and changes in the output gap will implement a policy under discretion that replicates the optimal, timeless perspective, precommitment policy. By stabilizing output gap changes, the central bank...

In this paper, I revisit an old question in the analysis of monetary policy that was first studied by Rogoff (1985) - should central banks pursue objectives that differ systematically from social welfare? I investigate how the answer to this question is affected by the degree of transparency...

During the past three years, central banks have faced challenges that few foresaw during the period known as the Great Moderation. During the crisis, central banks have responded with traditional interest rate tools, been forced to deal with the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates, and...

The canonical new Keynesian Phillips Curve has become a standard component of models designed for monetary policy analysis. However, in the basic new Keynesian model, there is no unemployment, all variation in labor input occurs along the intensive hours margin, and the driving variable for...