In analyses of "liquidity trap" problems associated with the zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates, it is important to emphasize the difference between policy rule changes, intended to help escape an existing ZLB situation, and maintained policy rules designed so as to avoid ZLB...

A Keynesian idea of considerable historical importance is that, in the presence of a liquidity trap, a competitive economy may lack--despite price flexibility--automatic market mechanisms that tend to eliminate excess supplies of labor. The standard classical counterargument, which relies upon...

This paper considers whether 'liquidity trap' issues have important bearing on the desirability of inflation targeting as a strategy for monetary policy. From a theoretical perspective, it has been suggested that 'expectation trap' and 'indeterminacy' dangers are created by variants of inflation...

This paper reconsiders a result obtained by Sargent and Wallace, namely, that price level indeterminacy obtains in their well-known model if the monetary authorities adopt a policy feedback rule for the interest rate rather than the money stock. Since the Federal Reserve seems often to have used...

To consider the prospects, looking 20-30 years into the future, for monetary policymaking in accordance with policy rules, one must evaluate their present importance. That requires some definition of what constitutes rule-based monetary policy in practice, since no actual central bank will ever...

This paper reviews the distinction between the timeless perspective and discretionary modes of monetary policymaking, the former representing rule-based policy as recently formalized by Woodford (1999b). In models with forward-looking expectations, this distinction is greater than in the models...

Recent experience does not include a "monetarist experiment," as some have argued, but may slightly reinforce preexisting reasons for doubting that the best way of formulating monetarist policy prescriptions is in the form of a constant growth rule for the money stock.A more desirable rule would...

Svensson (JEL, 2003) argues strongly that specific targeting rules first order optimality conditions for a specific objective function and model are normatively superior to instrument rules for the conduct of monetary policy. That argument is based largely upon four main objections to the latter...

The new open-economy macroeconomics' seeks to provide an improved basis for monetary and exchange-rate policy through the construction of open-economy models that feature rational expectations, optimizing agents, and slowly adjusting prices of goods. This paper promotes an alternative approach...