Monetary policy has significant but overlooked effects on entry and exit of firms. We study optimal monetary stabilization policy in a DSGE model with microfounded money demand and endogenous firm entry. Due to a congestion externality affecting firm entry, the optimal policy deviates from the...

This paper advances the hypothesis that the transition from there-is-little-central-banks-can-do-to-control-inflation to inflation targeting occurred because central banks, especially the Federal Reserve, demonstrated that central banks can control inflation rather than a consequence of marked...

We construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to study optimal monetary stabilization policy. Prices are fully flexible and money is essential for trade. Our main result is that if the central bank pursues a price-level target, it can control inflation expectations and improve...

I use the monetary version of the neoclassical growth model developed by Aruoba, Waller and Wright (2008) to study the properties of the model when there is exogenous growth. I first consider the planner's problem, then the equilibrium outcome in a monetary economy. I do so by first using...

Considering the dynamics of commitment highlights, some neglected features of time inconsistency problems. We modify the standard rules-versus-discretion question in three ways: (1) A government that does not commit today retains the option to do so tomorrow, (2) the government's commitment...

Recently Marini (1985) demonstrates that a policy rule with proportional feedback to the current money stock from disturbances dated t-2 or further in the past will be effective at stabilizing output in Barro's (1976) model. This paper questions the robustness and logical consistency of Marini's...

This paper applies regime-switching methods to the problem of measuring monetary policy. Policy preferences and structural factors are specified parametrically as independent Markov processes. Interaction between the structural and preference parameters in the policy rule serves to identify the...

We study how the use of judgement or "add-factors" in macroeconomic forecasting may disturb the set of equilibrium outcomes when agents learn using recursive methods. We isolate conditions under which new phenomena, which we call exuberance equilibria, can exist in standard macroeconomic...

This paper discusses criticisms of the IS-LM framework in the macroeconomic literature of the last 40 years, and how the modern optimizing version of IS-LM addresses those criticisms. It is argued that many of the criticisms had been addressed by best-practice traditional IS-LM. Relative to this...

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...