Microeconomic evidence indicates a very high frequency of price adjustment in low income countries (LICs), raising the question of whether LICs may be reasonably characterized as exhibiting monetary neutrality. To address this question, we analyze a cross-country panel dataset of 79 LICs over...

We conduct a systematic analysis of the costs and benefits of large-scale securities purchases, using the Federal Reserve's QE4 program as a concrete example. This program was initiated at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 and continued for two years, leading to a doubling of the Fed's...

This paper formulates a structural dynamic programming model of preschool investment choices of altruistic parents and then empirically estimates the structural parameters of the model using the NLSY79 data. The paper finds that preschool investment significantly boosts cognitive and...

This paper documents the evolution of long-run inflation expectations and models the stance of monetary policy from 1965 to 1980. A host of survey-based measures and financial market data indicate that long-run inflation expectations rose markedly from 1965 to 1969, leveled off in the mid-1970s,...

This paper analyzes the role of transparency and credibility in accounting for the widely divergent macroeconomic effects of three episodes of deliberate monetary contraction: the post-Civil War deflation, the post-WWI deflation, and the Volcker disinflation. Using a dynamic general equilibrium...

In this paper, we investigate the properties of alternative monetary policy rules using four structural macroeconometric models: the Fuhrer-Moore model, Taylor's Multi-Country Model, the MSR model of Orphanides and Wieland, and the FRB staff model. All four models incorporate the assumptions of...

In this paper, we propose a parametric spectral estimation procedure for constructing heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent (HAC) covariance matrices. We establish the consistency of this procedure under very general conditions similar to those considered in previous research, and we...

This paper analyzes the performance of heteroskedasticity-and-autocorrelation-consistent (HAC) covariance matrix estimators in which the residuals are prewhitened using a vector autoregressive (VAR) filter. We highlight the pitfalls of using an arbitrarily fixed lag order for the VAR filter, and...

If the global economy encounters another severe adverse shock in coming years, will major central banks be able to provide sufficient monetary stimulus to preserve price stability and foster economic recovery? Our empirical analysis indicates that the Federal Reserve's QE3 program was not an...