Lucas (1972) is the pathbreaking analysis of the neutrality and temporary non-neutrality of money. But our central banks set interest rate targets, and do not even pretend to control money supplies. How is inflation determined under an interest rate target?

I analyze monetary policy with interest on reserves and a large balance sheet. I show that conventional theories do not determine inflation in this regime, so I base the analysis on the fiscal theory of the price level. I find that monetary policy can peg the nominal rate, and determine expected...

Unexpected inflation devalues nominal government bonds. It must therefore correspond to a decline in expected future surpluses, or a rise in their discount rates, so that the real value of debt equals the present value of surpluses. I measure each component via a vector autoregression, in...

This paper addresses a prominent empirical failure of the expectations theory of the term structure of interest rates under the assumption of rational expectations. This failure concerns the magnitude of slope coefficients in regressions of short rate (or long- rate) changes on long-short...

The paper reconsiders the role of money and banking in monetary policy analysis by including a banking sector and money in an optimizing model otherwise of a standard type. The model is implemented quantitatively, with a calibration based on U.S. data. It is reasonably successful in providing an...

Should central banks, because of the zero-lower-bound problem, raise their inflation-rate targets? Several arguments are relevant. (1) In the absence of the ZLB, the optimal steady-state inflation rate, according to standard New Keynesian reasoning, lies between the Friedman-rule value of...

The market value of government debt equals the present discounted value of primary surpluses. Applying present value decompositions from asset pricing to this valuation equation, I find that half of the variation in the market value of debt to GDP ratio corresponds to varying forecasts of future...

This paper studies time variation in expected excess bond returns. We run regressions of annual excess returns on forward rates. We find that a single factor predicts 1-year excess returns on 1-5 year maturity bonds with an R2 up to 43%. The single factor is a tent-shaped linear function of...

Much recent monetary policy analysis has featured stochastic simulations with small structural macroeconomic models that include: a spending vs. saving ( IS') sector; a price-adjustment sector; and an interest rate policy rule. The first two are frequently specified so as to reflect optimizing...

This paper considers whether 'liquidity trap' issues have important bearing on the desirability of inflation targeting as a strategy for monetary policy. From a theoretical perspective, it has been suggested that 'expectation trap' and 'indeterminacy' dangers are created by variants of inflation...