This paper examines how the scale and composition of public debt can affect economies that implement a combination of “passive” monetary policy and “active” fiscal policy. This policy configuration is argued to be of both historical and contemporary interest in the cases of the U.S. and...

Under rational expectations, monetary policy is generally highly effective in stabilizing the economy. Aggregate demand management operates through the expectations hypothesis of the term structure: Anticipated movements in future short-term interest rates control current demand. This paper...

This paper analyzes how the formation of expectations constrains monetary and fiscal policy design. Economic agents have imperfect knowledge about the economic environment and the policy regime in place. Households and firms learn about the policy regime using historical data. Regime uncertainty...

This paper estimates the impact of monetary policy actions on bill, note, and bond yields, using data from the futures market for federal funds to separate changes in the target funds rate into anticipated and unanticipated components. Bond rates' response to anticipated changes is essentially...

This paper analyzes the impact of unanticipated changes in the federal funds rate target on equity prices, with the aim of both estimating the size of the typical reaction and understanding the reasons for the market's response. We find that over the June 1989-December 2002 sample period, a...

This paper proposes a theory of the fiscal foundations of inflation based on imperfect knowledge and learning. The theory is similar in spirit to, but distinct from, unpleasant monetarist arithmetic and the fiscal theory of the price level. Because the assumption of imperfect knowledge breaks...

Interpretations of inflation targeting (IT) have ranged widely, from “inflation-only targeting” without regard for output, to cheap talk without effect, to transparency increasing flexibility without cost. We characterize five interpretations of the adoption if IT as shifts between...