The relatively infrequent nature of major credit distress events makes a historical approach particularly useful. Using a combination of historical narrative and econometric techniques, we identify major periods of credit distress from 1875 to 2007, examine the extent to which credit distress...

Do steep recoveries follow deep recessions? Does it matter if a credit crunch or banking panic accompanies the recession? Moreover, does it matter if the recession is associated with a housing bust? We look at the American historical experience in an attempt to answer these questions. The...

This paper brings historical evidence to bear on the stylized fact that the yield curve predicts future growth. The spread between corporate bonds and commercial paper reliably predicts future growth over the period 1875-1997. This predictability varies over time, however, particularly across...

Considering time inconsistency as a problem of irreversible investment brings some neglected points to the fore. Making a policy choice in real time and under current conditions emphasizes the importance of the timing of commitment, the regret over past decisions, and the option value of not...

This paper develops an adaptive learning formulation of an extension to the Ball, Mankiw, and Reis (2005) sticky information model that incorporates endogenous inattention. We show that, following an exogenous increase in the policymaker’s preferences for price vs. output stability, the...

This paper addresses the output-price volatility puzzle by studying the interaction of optimal monetary policy and agents' beliefs. We assume that agents choose their information acquisition rate by minimizing a loss function that depends on expected forecast errors and information costs....

An examination of the dynamics of commitment, showing that because the decision regarding rules versus discretion occurs in real time, opting for discretion is often the better choice, since it leaves open the possibility of adopting rules later on.