We give an appraisal of the New Keynesian Phillips curve (NPC) as an empirical model of European inflation. We show that existing evidence reported in favour of the NPC on Euro-area and country data is due to a corroborative research strategy. In particular, goodness-of-fit is a weak criterion,...

Based on the equilibrium correction structure of a cointegrated vector autoregression it is rejected that US monetary policy 1988-2002 can be described by a traditional Taylor (1993) rule. Instead we find a stable long-term relationship between the Federal funds rate, the unemployment rate, and...

This paper explores the implications of time varying volatility for optimal monetary policy and the measurement of welfare costs. We show how macroeconomic models with linear and quadratic state dependence in their variance structure can be used for the analysis of optimal policy within the...