A central proposition in the Phillips curve view of the inflation process is that prices are marked up over productivity-adjusted labor costs. If that is true, then long-run movements in prices and labor costs must be correlated. If long-run movements in a time series are modeled as a stochastic...

We study discretionary equilibrium in the Calvo pricing model for a monetary authority that chooses the money supply. The steady-state inflation rate is above 8 percent for a baseline calibration, but it varies substantially with alternative structural parameter values. If the initial condition...

We derive and estimate a New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) in a model where consumers are assumed to have deep habits. Habits are deep in the sense that they apply to individual consumption goods instead of aggregate consumption. This alters the NKPC in a fundamental manner as it introduces...

Optimal monetary policy maximizes welfare, given frictions in the economic environment. Constructing a model with two sets of frictions - the Keynesian friction of costly price adjustment by imperfectly competitive firms and the Monetarist friction of costly exchange of wealth for goods - we...

Reasoning within the New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) we previously recommended that price stability should be the primary objective of monetary policy. We called this a neutral policy because it keeps output at its potential, defined as the outcome of an imperfectly competitive real business...

This paper characterizes optimal monetary policy in the context of a general equilibrium model with optimizing agents and staggered price setting. Starting from a steady state with positive inflation, a rapid disinflation is desirable when announcements of future monetary policy are fully...

Traditionally, central banks seeking to stabilize general prices have followed policies similar to those advocated by Knut Wicksell: when prices are higher that desired, raise interest rates to exert downward pressure on prices, and conversely. Despite the historical predominance of interest...

The paper proposes three options for overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy: a carry tax on money, open market operations in long bonds, and monetary transfers. A variable carry tax on electronic bank reserves could enable a central bank to target negative nominal interest rates. A...

This paper analyzes the effects of inflation variability on economic growth in a model where money is introduced via a cash-in-advance constraint. In this setting, we find that inflation adversely affects long-run growth, even when the cash-in-advance constraint applies only to consumption. At...

This paper analyzes the quantitative significance of Sargent and Wallace's (1981) "Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic" in a model that is parameterized to correspond with U.S. data. The major result is that the monetarist arithmetic is not overly unpleasant and that the nominal side of the...