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

Most governments are mandated to maintain their economies at full employment. We propose that the best marker of full employment is the efficient unemployment rate, u*. We define u* as the unemployment rate that minimizes the nonproductive use of labor--both jobseeking and recruiting. The...

We study the propagation of nominal shocks in a dispersed information economy where firms learn from and respond to information generated by their activities in product and factor markets. We prove the existence of a "Hayekian benchmark", defined by conditions under which imperfect information...

We study the relation between inflation and real activity over the business cycle. We employ a Trend-Cycle VAR model to control for low-frequency movements in inflation, unemployment, and growth that are pervasive in the post-WWII period. We show that cyclical fluctuations of inflation are...

We empirically characterize episodes of large inflation surges that have been observed worldwide in the last three decades. We document four facts. (1) Inflation following surges tends to be persistent, with the duration of disinflation exceeding that of the initial inflation increase. (2)...

Expansionary fiscal policies have increased significantly following the subprime crisis in 2007 and the COVID-19 crisis, leading to fiscal dominance concerns, where a growing share of monetary authorities may be forced to deviate from policy targets to accommodate fiscal policies. Meanwhile,...

Why do some attempts at disinflation lead to substantial reductions in inflation while others do not? We investigate this question in the context of the Federal Reserve's attempts at disinflation since World War II. Our central finding is that a fundamental determinant of success in reducing...

When countries are hit by supply shocks, central banks often face the dilemma of either looking through such shocks or reacting to them to ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored. In this paper, we propose a tractable framework to capture this dilemma and explore optimal policy under...