Even low levels of trend inflation substantially affect the dynamics of a basic new Keynesian DSGE model when monetary policy is conducted by a contemporaneous Taylor rule. Positive trend inflation shrinks the determinacy region. Neither the Taylor principle, which requires the inflation...

In the monetary policy literature it is commonly assumed that trend inflation is zero, despite overwhelming evidence that zero inflation is neither empirically relevant nor a practical objective for central bank policy. We therefore extend the standard New Keynesian model to allow for positive...

We explain why the macroeconomic effects of shocks to inflation of the same size, but opposite sign, are not necessarily symmetric. All in all, the costs of deflation and disinflation tend to exceed those of inflation due to the presence of constraints in the economy, namely the zero lower bound...

The paper exploits a unique panel, covering some 2,000 Italian manufacturing firms and 14 years of data on individual prices and individual interest rates paid on several types of debt, to address the question of the existence of a channel of transmission of monetary policy operating through the...

The flattening of the Phillips curve observed in the industrial countries has been attributed to globalisation, while the traditional explanation centres on monetary policy credibility. The empirical literature is not conclusive, since macroeconomic data are affected by substantial...

When the economy is subject to recurrent structural shifts, the monetary authority cannot credibly commit to a systematic approach to policy, since consistency between promises and actions is not easily verifiable; moreover, since agents have incomplete knowledge of the surrounding environment,...

The paper assesses the effects of increasing competition in the service sector in Italy which, based on cross-country comparisons, is the OECD country with the highest markups in non-manufacturing industries. We propose a two-region (Italy and the rest of the euro area) dynamic general...

Empirical studies of the shoe-leather costs of inflation are typically computed using M1 as a measure of money. Yet, official data on M1 includes all currency issued, regardless of the country of residence of the holder. Using adjusted monetary data, we show that the failure to control for...

We assess the short- and medium-term macroeconomic effects of competition-friendly reforms in the service sector when the monetary policy rate is stuck at the zero lower bound (ZLB) in a monetary union. We calibrate a large-scale multi-country multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium model to...

The applied literature on adaptive learning has mostly focused on small, linear models, with homogenous expectations. In non-linear models heterogeneous expectations prevail and the process through which agents select (and change) a forecasting model becomes a necessary ingredient of the...