This paper studies the interactions between an individual's self esteem and his social environment in the workplace, at school, and in personal relationships. Because a person generally has only imperfect knowledge of his own abilities, people who derive benefits from his performance (parent,...

This paper considers the desirability of the observed tendency of central banks to adjust interest rates only gradually in response to changes in economic conditions. It shows, in the context of a simple model of optimizing private-sector behavior, that such inertial policy can be optimal. The...

We analytically characterize optimal monetary policy for an augmented New Keynesian model with a housing sector. With rational private sector expectations about housing prices and inflation, optimal monetary policy can be characterized by a standard "target criterion" in terms of inflation and...

We propose a new approach to modeling the cost of information structures in rational inattention problems, the "neighborhood-based" cost functions. These cost functions have two properties that we view as desirable: they summarize the results of a sequential evidence accumulation problem, and...

This paper reconsiders the degree to which macroeconomic stabilization is possible when the zero lower bound is a relevant constraint on the effectiveness of conventional monetary policy, under an assumption of bounded rationality. In particular, we reconsider the potential role of...

This paper analyzes the possibility and the consequences of rational bubbles in a dy- namic economy where financially constrained firms demand and supply liquidity. Bub- bles are more likely to emerge, the scarcer the supply of outside liquidity and the more limited the pledgeability of...

While many analyses of monetary policy consider only a target for a short-term nominal interest rate, other dimensions of policy have recently been of greater importance: changes in the supply of bank reserves, changes in the assets acquired by central banks, and changes in the interest rate...

The paper elicits a mechanism by which private leverage choices exhibit strategic complementarities through the reaction of monetary policy. When everyone engages in maturity transformation, authorities have little choice but facilitating refinancing. In turn, refusing to adopt a risky balance...