Expectations about the future are central for determination of current macroeconomic outcomes and the formulation of monetary policy. Recent literature has explored ways for supplementing the benchmark of rational expectations with explicit models of expectations formation that rely on...

A fundamentals-based monetary policy rule, which would be the optimal monetary policy without commitment when private agents have perfectly rational expectations, is unstable if in fact these agents follow standard adaptive learning rules. This problem can be overcome if private expectations are...

Commitment in monetary policy leads to equilibria that are superior to those from optimal discretionary policies. A number of interest rate reaction functions and instrument rules have been proposed to implement or approximate commitment policy. We assess these optimal reaction functions and...

We review the recent work on interest rate setting, which emphasizes the desirability of designing policy to ensure stability under learning. Appropriately designed expectations-based rules can yield optimal rational expectations equilibria that are both determinate and stable under learning....

Using New Keynesian models, we compare Friedman ’s k-percent money supply rule to optimal interest rate setting, with respect to determinacy, stability under learning and optimality. First we review the recent literature: open-loop interest rate rules are subject to indeterminacy and...

We consider "robust stability" of a rational expectations equilibrium, which we define as stability under discounted (constant gain) least-squares learning, for a range of gain parameters. We find that for operational forms of policy rules, i.e. rules that do not depend on contemporaneous values...

We consider inflation and government debt dynamics when monetary policy employs a global interest rate rule and private agents forecast using adaptive learning. Because of the zero lower bound on interest rates, active interest rate rules are known to imply the existence of a second, low...

We examine global economic dynamics under infinite-horizon learning in a New Keynesian model in which the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. As in Evans, Guse and Honkapohja (2008), we find that under normal monetary and fiscal policy the intended steady state is locally but...

We examine global economic dynamics under learning in a New Keynesian model in which the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. Under normal monetary and fiscal policy, the intended steady state is locally but not globally stable. Large pessimistic shocks to expectations can lead...