The world economy has experienced the largest financial crisis in generations, a global pandemic, and a resurgence in inflation during the first quarter of the 21st century, yielding important insights for central banking. Price stability has important benefits and is the responsibility of a...

We develop a general equilibrium model that highlights the trade-offs between physical and digital forms of retail central bank money. The key differences between cash and central bank digital currency (CBDC) include transaction efficiency, possibilities for tax evasion, and, potentially,...

Lucas (1972) is the pathbreaking analysis of the neutrality and temporary non-neutrality of money. But our central banks set interest rate targets, and do not even pretend to control money supplies. How is inflation determined under an interest rate target?

This paper assesses the proximate causes of the post pandemic surge in US inflation, the Federal Reserve's real time reaction to and interpretation of incoming data in 2021, and the pivot to raising rates and shrinking the balance sheet that commenced in 2022 and continues in 2023. Particular...

This paper uses the recent cross-country experience with quantitative tightening (QT) to assess the impact of shrinking central bank balance sheets. We analyze the experience in seven advanced economies (Australia, Canada, Euro area, New Zealand, Sweden, UK and US)--documenting different...

This study analyzes how firms form their inflation expectations during a regime change in monetary policy and a transition to a low-inflation environment. Using the Bank of Israel survey of firms, we document the basic properties of firms' inflation expectations and examine how Israeli firms...

This paper addresses the problem of multiple equilibria in a model of time-consistent monetary policy. It suggests that this problem originates in the assumption that agents have rational expectations and proposes several alternative restrictions on expectations that allow the monetary authority...

We characterize the optimal sequential choice of monetary policy in economies with either nominal or indexed debt. In a model where nominal debt is the only source of time inconsistency, the Markov-perfect equilibrium policy implies the progressive depletion of the outstanding stock of debt,...

In this paper we examine how target ranges work in the context of a Barro-Gordon (1983) type model, in which the time-inconsistency problem stems from political pressures from the government. We show that target ranges turn out to be an excellent way to cope with the time-inconsistency problem,...

This paper demonstrates how time consistency of the Ramsey policy - the optimal fiscal and monetary policy under commitment - can be achieved. Each government should leave its successor with a unique maturity structure for the nominal and indexed debt, such that the marginal benefit of a...