Occasionally binding constraints (OBCs) like the zero lower bound (ZLB) can lead to multiple equilibria, and so to belief-driven recessions. To aid in finding policies that avoid this, we derive existence and uniqueness conditions for otherwise linear models with OBCs. Our main result gives...

Since the 2001 recession, average core inflation has been below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. This deflationary bias is a predictable consequence of a symmetric monetary policy strategy that fails to recognize the risk of encountering the zero-lower-bound. An asymmetric rule according to...

Central banks wish to avoid self-fulfilling fluctuations. Monetary rules with a unit response to real rates achieve this under the weakest possible assumptions about the behaviour of households and firms. They are robust to household heterogeneity, hand-to-mouth consumers, non-rational...

We examine how private sector agents might learn a new monetary strategy that is adopted while at the ELB. Little can be discovered until the economy improves enough that rates would be near liftoff under the old strategy. Recessionary shocks would thus delay learning while large inflationary...

We document that expansionary monetary policy shocks are less effective at stimulating output and investment in periods of high volatility compared to periods of low volatility, using a regime-switching vector autoregression. The lower effectiveness of monetary policy can be linked to weaker...

We assess the effects of financial shocks on inflation, and to what extent financial shocks can account for the "missing disinflation" during the Great Recession. We apply a vector autoregressive model to US data and identify financial shocks through sign restrictions. Our main finding is that...