When a policymaker is better informed than the public, public beliefs about the hidden informationemerge as additional state variables, managed by the policymaker. General methodsare presented to compute optimal commitment and discretion policies.Under commitment, policy is additive in two...

Monetary policy is most effective when public beliefs about future policies are activelymanaged. This is the appeal of policy rules and commitment strategies, typically absent underdiscretion. But when a policymaker has some private information — as is the case in reality— belief management...

This paper provides a stylized choice-thoretic model to analyze optimal monetary policies among interdependent economies. In response to marcoeconomic shocks, policymakers strike a balance between two objectives. The first is to stabilize marginal costs and markups to offset the distortions...

The evidence from many experiments suggests that people are heterogeneous with regard to their abilities to make rational, forward looking, decisions. This raises the question when the rational types are decisive for aggregate outcomes and when the boundedly rational types shape aggregate...

The paper investigates the effect of interest rate policy on price bubbles, trading behavior, and portfolio choice in experimental stock markets. In a series of experiments, participants trade an asset over 15 periods. Alternatively, the participants can invest money in interest-bearing bonds....

For decades economists have considered money illusion aslargely irrelevant. Here we show, however, that money illusion haspowerful effects on equilibrium selection. If we represent payoffs innominal terms almost all subjects play at or close to an inefficientequilibrium whereas if we lift the...

The enlargement of the EU will eventually lead to an enlargement of the Euroarea. Since the accession countries are economically very small, the implications for the ECB will be limited to its decision-making structure. I argue that the enlargementrepresents an opportunity for the ECB to adjust...