The paper considers optimal monetary stabilization policy in a forward-looking model, when the central bank recognizes that private sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any beliefs that are close...

This paper shows that a small amount of individual-level money illusion may cause considerable aggregate nominal inertia after a negative nominal shock. In addition, our results indicate that negative and positive nominal shocks have asymmetric effects because of money illusion. While nominal...

We ask whether the following observations may result from endogenously determined fluctuations in the money multiplier rather than a causal influence of money on output: (i) M1 is positively correlated with real output; (ii) the money multiplier and deposit-to-currency ratio are positively...

We analyze the impact of monetary policy on the supply of bank credit. Monetary policy affects both loan supply and demand, thus making identification a steep challenge. We therefore analyze a novel, supervisory dataset with loan applications from Spain. Accounting for time-varying firm...

This paper studies a New Keynesian business cycle model with agents who are averse to ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty). Shocks to confidence about future TFP are modeled as changes in ambiguity. To assess the size of those shocks, our estimation uses not only data on standard macro variables,...

The newsworthiness of an event is partly determined by how unusual it is and this paper investigates the business cycle implications of this fact. Signals that are more likely to be observed after unusual events may increase both uncertainty and disagreement among agents. In a simple business...

This paper explores investment fluctuations due to discrete changes in a plant's capital stock. The resulting aggregate investment dynamics are surprisingly rich, reflecting the interaction between a replacement cycle, the cross-sectional distribution of the age of the capital stock, and an...

The countercyclical pattern of inventory-sales ratios is a striking feature of inventory behavior. In a model where inventories are productive for sales, both the markup of price over marginal cost and expected changes in marginal cost are key determinants of that ratio. This paper argues that...

Existing empirical evidence suggests that real exchange rates exhibit hump-shaped dynamics. I show that this is a robust fact across nine large, developed economies. This fact can help explain why sticky price business cycle models have been unable to match the persistence of the real exchange...