In this paper, we derive a linear-quadratic model for monetary policy analysis that is consistent with sticky prices and search and matching frictions in the labor market. We show that the second-order approximation to the welfare of the representative agent depends on inflation and "gaps" that...

We explore the distortions in business cycle models arising from inefficiencies in price setting and in the search process matching firms to unemployed workers, and the implications of these distortions for monetary policy. To this end, we characterize the tax instruments that would implement...

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...

Huizinga and Mishkin (1986) have recently proposed a simple method for testing whether monetary policy regime changes have affected the ex-ante real rate of interest. This paper shows that care must be taken in choosing the set of variables on which to project the ex-post real rate if inferences...

Recent empirical studies have found that consumption is more sensitive to current income than the life-cycle, permanent income hypothesis would predict.The present paper studies a model in which the fraction of consumers exhibiting excess sensitivity is endogenously determined. The presence of...

A model of interest rate movements in response to new information on the money stock is developed.The model, which incorporates several earlier approaches as special cases, makes explicit the manner in which estimated interest rate responses to money surprises depend on the relative variances of...

Reserve requirements imposed against bank deposits, nominal interest payments on bank reserves (or on base money), and inflation can all be viewed as generating tax effects. Any analysis of optimal monetary policy in a steady-state equilibrium needs to consider the simultaneous choice of all the...

In October 1979 the Federal Reserve shifted from an interest rate oriented operating procedure to a reserves oriented procedure. It is argued in this paper that part of the very large increase in interest rate volatility which resulted from the policy switch may have been due to shifts in the...