The zero lower bound on nominal interest rates has constrained the Federal Reserve’s setting of the overnight federal funds rate for over three years running. According to many macroeconomic models, such an extended period of being stuck at the zero bound has important implications for the...

This paper forms the basis for Janet Yellen's Presidential address to the Western Economic Association International, delivered July 1, 2004, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Presentation to the Financial Women’s Association of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, October 15, 2012

This paper reexamines the implications of the zero lower bound on interest rates for monetary policy and the optimal choice of steady-state inflation in light of the experience of the recent global recession. There are two main findings. First, the zero lower bound did not materially contribute...

This paper analyzes how the feasible mix of government expenditure and financing arrangements may change in a monetary union such as that presently under discussion for the European Community. The effect of this institutional change on the incentives facing fiscal policymakers in their budgetary...

This paper analyzes how the feasible mix of government expenditure and financing arrangements may change with the establishment of a monetary union such as that planned by members of the European Community. We find that a monetary union reduces the feasible divergence across countries in their...

We demonstrate that previous tests of money and fiscal "policy ineffectiveness" are likely to be biased because they ignore interaction effects between policies, induced either by direct policy linkages or through the variation of policies in response to common factors. Our analysis takes into...