While the global financial crisis was centered in the United States, it led to a surprising appreciation in the dollar, suggesting global dollar illiquidity. In response, the Federal Reserve partnered with other central banks to inject dollars into the international financial system. Empirical...

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...

This paper conducts counterfactual historical analysis of several monetary policy rules by contrasting actual settings of instrument variables with values that would have been specified by the rules in response to prevailing conditions. Of particular interest is whether major policy mistakes,...

This paper explores several issues concerning a possible zero lower bound (ZLB) including its theoretical rationale; the magnitude of effects of low sustained inflation on real interest rates; the validity of analyzing monetary policy in models with no monetary variables; and the dynamic...

This paper argues that, in studying the monetary policy transmission process, more emphasis should be given to the systematic portion of policy behavior and correspondingly less to random shocks basically because shocks account for a very small fraction of policy-instrument variability. Analysis...

The purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate the most important existing criticisms of policy strategies that feature adherence to money stock targets. Four main categories of criticism (and counterargumerits) are analyzed. The first of these involves the claim that accurate money stock...

In a recent paper, Canzoneri, Henderson, and Rogoff have shown that it is possible for the monetary authority to peg the nominal interest rate without creating price level indeterminacy in a simplified version of the 1975 Sargent-Wallace model. The present paper begins by reviewing that result,...

Recent experience does not include a "monetarist experiment," as some have argued, but may slightly reinforce preexisting reasons for doubting that the best way of formulating monetarist policy prescriptions is in the form of a constant growth rule for the money stock.A more desirable rule would...

This paper conducts a theoretical comparison of the potential effectiveness, in terms of money stock controllability, of interest rate and reserve instruments. Whereas previous studies have been basically static, the present analysis is carried out in the context of a dynamic macroeconomic model...

This paper reconsiders a result obtained by Sargent and Wallace, namely, that price level indeterminacy obtains in their well-known model if the monetary authorities adopt a policy feedback rule for the interest rate rather than the money stock. Since the Federal Reserve seems often to have used...