We show that if the central bank operates without commitment and faces constraints on its balance sheet, helicopter drops can be a useful stabilization tool during a liquidity trap. With commitment, even with balance sheet constraints, helicopter drops are irrelevant

The fiscal theory states that inflation adjusts so that the real value of government debt equals the present value of real primary surpluses. Monetary policy remains important. The central bank can set an interest rate target, which determines the path of expected inflation, while news about the...

This paper studies the implications of central bank credibility for long-run inflation and inflation dynamics. We introduce central bank lack of commitment into a standard non-linear New Keynesian economy with sticky-price monopolistically competitive firms. Inflation is driven by the...

In response to the Global Financial Crisis, central banks engaged in large-scale asset purchases funded by the issuance of reserves. These "unconventional" policies continued during the pandemic, so that by 2022 central banks' balance sheets had grown up to ten-fold. As a result of rapidly...

This paper uses evidence from the Federal Open Market Committee's Summary of Economic Projections to show that US monetary policymakers have objectives over unemployment and inflation outcomes that are not well-approximated through a conventional quadratic loss function. Rather, policymakers...

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...

Recent research has found that monetary policy works in part by influencing the risk premiums on both traded financial-market securities and intermediated loans. Research has also shown that when risk premiums are compressed, there is an increased likelihood of a reversal that damages the...

I separately identify and estimate the effects of the Federal Reserve's federal funds rate, forward guidance, and large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) policies on the U.S. economy. I extend the high-frequency identification strategy of Bauer and Swanson (2023b) for monetary policy VARs by allowing...

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,...