In a stylized DSGE model with an energy sector, the optimal policy response to an adverse energy supply shock implies a rise in core inflation, a larger rise in headline inflation, and a decline in wage inflation. The optimal policy is well-approximated by policies that stabilize the output gap,...

We construct an optimizing-agent model of a closed economy which is simple enough that we can use it to make exact utility calculations. There is a stabilization problem because there are one-period nominal contracts for wages, or prices, or both and shocks that are unknown at the time when...

It is common practice to estimate the response of asset prices to monetary policy actions using market-based measures of monetary policy shocks, such as the federal funds futures rate. I show that because interest rates and market-based measures of monetary policy shocks respond simultaneously...

This paper revisits the issue of money growth versus the interest rate as the instrument of monetary policy. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework, we examine the effects of alternative monetary policy rules on inflation persistence, the information content of monetary data,...

a speech at the Center for Economic Policy Studies and on the occasion of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

remarks at the Economic Club of New York, New York, New York, April 11, 2011

A major criticism of standard specifications of price adjustment in models for monetary policy analysis is that they violate the natural rate hypothesis by allowing output to differ from potential in steady state. In this paper we estimate a dynamic optimizing business cycle model whose...

We analyze optimal discretionary monetary policy in an endogenous sticky prices model. Similar models with exogenous sticky prices can deliver multiple equilibria. This is a necessary condition for the occurrence of expectation traps (when private agents’ expectations determine the equilibrium...

A model that contains no costs to changing prices but in which prices do not respond to nominal shocks is presented. In models that do not feature superneutrality of money flexible price equilibria will allow certain types of monetary shocks to affect the real economy. Sticky price behavior may...

We consider monetary-policy rules with inflation-rate targets and interest-rate or money-growth instruments using a flexible-price, perfect-foresight model. There is always a locally-unique target equilibrium. There may also be below-target equilibria (BTE) with inflation always below target and...