This paper studies the role of the yen/dollar exchange rate in the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy reaction function. In contrast to prior estimations of reaction functions based on the Taylor-rule, we allow for regime shifts by estimating rolling coefficients from January 1974 to March 1999....

Estimating a forward-looking monetary policy rule by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) has become a popular approach since the influential paper by Clarida, Gali, and Gertler (1998). However , an abundant econometric literature underlines to the unappealing small- samples properties of GMM...

Liquidity traps occur when the natural nominal interest rate becomes negative. In a model with capital price dynamics explicitly considered, we find that shocks in the future can cause current and lasting liquidity traps. We propose that the central bank can prevent or fix liquidity traps by...

Recently, several central banks have abandoned the usual secrecy in monetary policy and become very transparent. This paper provides an explanation for this puzzling fact, focusing on the disclosure of central bank forecasts. It shows that transparency reduces the inflationary bias and gives the...

This paper examines the long-run effects of supply shocks (such as oil shocks) on inflation in the United States. The persistence of supply shocks in U.S. inflation fell considerably during the period of Volcker’s disinflation (1979-1982). My empirical results suggest that the difference...

This paper presents the Czech approach to inflation targeting (IT) that was co-authored by the authors of the paper. The IT strategy was introduced by the Czech National Bank in 1997. The paper gives an overview of history of monetary policy in the Czech Republic and reasons for a change in...

In this paper, we examine the incentives for central bank activism and caution in a two-country open-economy model with uncertainty and learning. We find that the presence of a strategic interaction between the home and foreign central banks creates an additional motivation for caution in...

This paper introduces staggered wage contracts a la Taylor (1979)into a standard model of monetary policy credibility. The overlapping wage structure is shown to considerably exacerbate the time consistent inflation rate in Markov perfect equilibrium. If the central bank can commit to its...

In this paper we consider inflation and government debt dynamics when monetary policy employs a global interest rate rule and private agents’ forecasts using adaptive learning. Because of the zero lower bound on interest rates, active interest rate rules are known to imply the existence of a...

Modern monetary policy analysis is built around the concept of an interest rate rule that responds to both inflation and output. This paper evaluates the quantitative implications of having a policy rule target different definitions of the output gap in a New Keynesian model with endogenous...