This paper exposits and relates two distinct approaches to bounding the average treatment effect. One approach, based on instrumental variables, is due to Manski (1990, 1994), who derives tight bounds on the average treatment effect under a mean independence form of the instrumental variables...

This paper presents stochastic simulation results pertaining to the performance of nominal income targeting, here represented as a monetary policy rule that sets quarterly values of an interest rate instrument in response to deviations on existing studies of nominal income growth from a...

This paper explores several issues concerning a possible zero lower bound (ZLB) including its theoretical rationale; the magnitude of effects of low sustained inflation on real interest rates; the validity of analyzing monetary policy in models with no monetary variables; and the dynamic...

This paper argues that, in studying the monetary policy transmission process, more emphasis should be given to the systematic portion of policy behavior and correspondingly less to random shocks basically because shocks account for a very small fraction of policy-instrument variability. Analysis...

This paper estimates a dynamic model of schooling attainment to investigate the sources of discrepancy by race and ethnicity in college attendance. When the returns to college education rose, college enrollment of whites responded much more quickly than that of minorities. Parental income is a...

This paper considers the problem of policy evaluation in a modern society with heterogeneous agents and diverse groups with conflicting interests. Several different approaches to the policy evaluation problem are compared including the approach adopted in modern welfare economics, the classical...

This paper is concerned with the optimal inflation rate in an overlapping-generations economy in which (i) aggregate output is constrained by a standard neoclassical production function with diminishing marginal products for both capital and labor and (ii) the transaction-facilitating services...

The purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate the most important existing criticisms of policy strategies that feature adherence to money stock targets. Four main categories of criticism (and counterargumerits) are analyzed. The first of these involves the claim that accurate money stock...

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate the most important existing ideas concerning credibility of monetary policy, with special emphasis given to matters pertaining to the U.S. economy and the practices and procedures of the Fed. The main discussion begins with Fellner's...

In a recent paper, Canzoneri, Henderson, and Rogoff have shown that it is possible for the monetary authority to peg the nominal interest rate without creating price level indeterminacy in a simplified version of the 1975 Sargent-Wallace model. The present paper begins by reviewing that result,...