Three issues regarding asset prices and monetary policy are clarified. First, increases in asset prices due to monetary expansion, despite their “paper” wealth nature, tend to make current consumers as a whole wealthier. Second, the weaker (stronger) effect of monetary policy on investment...

We study how the use of judgement or “add-factors” in macroeconomic forecasting may disturb the set of equilibrium outcomes when agents learn using recursive methods. We isolate conditions under which new phenomena, which we call exuberance equilibria, can exist in standard macroeconomic...

We examine global economic dynamics under infinite-horizon learning in a New Keynesian model in which the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. As in Evans, Guse and Honkapohja, European Economic Review (2008), we find that under normal monetary and fiscal policy the intended...

Using New Keynesian models, we compare Friedman’s k-percent money supply rule to optimal interest rate setting, with respect to determinacy, stability under learning and optimality. We first review the recent literature. Open-loop interest rate rules are subject to indeterminacy and...

The paper shows that there is a substantial degree of heterogeneity in forecast accuracy among Fed watchers. Based on a novel database for 268 professional forecasters since 1999, the average forecast error of FOMC decisions varies 5 to 10 basis points between the best and worst-performers...

Monetary policy in the euro area is conducted within a multi-country, multicultural, and multi-lingual context involving multiple central banking traditions. How does this heterogeneity affect the ability of economic agents to understand and to anticipate monetary policy by the ECB? Using a...

Media coverage of monetary policy actions is a central channel of a central bank’s communication with the wider public, and thus an important factor for its credibility and policy effectiveness. This paper analyses the coverage which ECB monetary policy decisions receive in the print media,...

Using New Keynesian models, we compare Friedman’s k-percent money supply rule to optimal interest rate setting, with respect to determinacy, stability under learning and optimality. We first review the recent literature. Open-loop interest rate rules are subject to indeterminacy and...

Recent models of monetary policy have analysed the desirability of different optimal and ad hoc interest-rate rules under the restrictive assumption that forecasts of the private sector and central bank are homogeneous. In this paper, we study from a learning perspective the implications of...

We examine global dynamics under infinite-horizon learning in New Keynesian models where the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. As in Evans, Guse and Honkapohja (2008), the intended steady state is locally but not globally stable. Unstable deflationary paths emerge after...