In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the state of macroeconomicmodeling and the use of macroeconomic models in policy analysis has come under heavy criticism. Macroeconomists in academia and policy institutions have been blamed for relying too much on a particular class of...

We estimate perceptions about the Fed's monetary policy rule from panel data on professional forecasts of interest rates and macroeconomic conditions. The perceived dependence of the federal funds rate on economic conditions is time-varying and cyclical: high during tightening episodes but low...

We estimate perceptions about the Fed's monetary policy rule from panel data on professional forecasts of interest rates and macroeconomic conditions. The perceived dependence of the federal funds rate on economic conditions is time-varying and cyclical: high during tightening episodes but low...

Previous macro-finance term structure models (MTSMs) imply that macroeconomic state variables are spanned by (i.e., perfectly correlated with) model-implied bond yields. However, this theoretical implication appears inconsistent with regressions showing that much macroeconomic variation is...

How does the need to preserve government debt sustainability affect the optimal monetary and fiscal policy response to a liquidity trap? To provide an answer, we employ a small stochastic New Keynesian model with a zero bound on nominal interest rates and characterize optimal time-consistent...

I characterize optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a stochastic New Keynesian model when nominal interest rates may occasionally hit the zero lower bound. The benevolent policymaker controls the short-term nominal interest rate and the level of government spending. Under discretionary policy,...