The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates more vigorously in the recent recession than the European Central Bank did. By comparison with the Fed, the ECB followed a more measured course of action. We use an estimated dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions to show that...

Two approaches are considered to incorporate judgment in DSGE models. First, Bayesian estimation indirectly imposes judgment via priors on model parameters, which are then mapped into a judgmental interest rate decision. Standard priors are shown to be associated with highly unrealistic...

Discretionary monetary policy produces a dynamic loss in the New Keynesian model in the presence of cost-push shocks. The possibility to commit to a specific policy rule can increase welfare. A number of authors since Woodford (1999) have argued in favour of a timeless perspective rule as an...

The purpose of the paper is to design optimal monetary policy rules in a New-Keynesian model featuring the presence of non-atomistic unions. It is shown that concentrated labor markets call for more aggressive inflation stabilization. This is because the central bank is able to induce wage...

This paper compares two contrasting approaches to robust monetary policy design. The first developed by Hansen and Sargent (2003, 2007) assumes unstructured model uncertainty and uses a minimax robustness criterion to design monetary rules. This contrasts with an older literature that structures...

Recent interest in 'Risk Management' has highlighted the relevance of Bayesian analysis for robust monetary-policy making. This paper sets out a comprehensive methodology for designing policy rules inspired by such considerations. We design rules that are robust with respect to model uncertainty...

Policymakers do not always follow a simple rule for setting policy rates for various reasons and thus their choices are co-driven by a decision to follow a rule or not. Consequently, some observations are censored and cause bias in conventional estimators of typical Taylor rules. To account for...

This paper studies optimal monetary policy rules in a framework with sticky prices, matching frictions and real wage rigidities. Optimal monetary policy is given by a constrained Ramsey plan in which the monetary authority maximizes the agents' welfare subject to the competitive economy...

This paper develops a small New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and government debt dynamics. The paper discusses the design of simple monetary and fiscal policy rules consistent with determinate equilibrium dynamics in the absence of Ricardian equivalence. Under this assumption,...

The paper studies the inflation rate associated with optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a number of standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with nominal price rigidities. While the focus is on Calvo-style nominal price contracts with a range of indexation rules for constrained...