Central bankers’ conventional wisdom suggests that nominal interest rates should be raised to implement a lower inflation target. In contrast, I show that the standard New Keynesian monetary model predicts that nominal interest rates should bedecreased to attain this goal. Real interest rates,...

This paper investigates the implications of cross-country heterogeneity within the euro area for the design of optimal monetary policy. We build an optimizing-based multi-country model (MCM) describing the euro area in which differences between structural parameters across countries are allowed....

Even though they can last for decades, fixed exchange rate regimes are increasingly seen as temporary arrangements, (Eichengreen, 1994). The hollowing out hypothesis, see, e.g. Fischer (2001), holds that fixed but adjustable exchange rate regimes of various kinds are scheduled to disappear in...

The effect of monetary policy on financial risk premia is analysed in a simple general equilibrium model with sticky wages and an optimising central bank. Analytical results show that equity risk premia and term premia are higher under inflation targeting than under output targeting, and that...

Stylized facts on output and interest rates in the U.S. have so far proved hard to match with business cycle models. But these findings do not acknowledge that the economy might well be driven by different shocks, and by each in different ways. I estimate covariances of output, nominal and real...