In models of monetary policy, discretionary policymaking often lacks the ability to manage public beliefs, which explains the theoretical appeal of policy rules and commitment strategies. But as shown in this paper, when a policymaker possesses private information, belief management becomes an...

Some key structural features of the U.S. economy appear to have changed in the recent decades, making the conduct of monetary policy more challenging. In particular, there is high uncertainty about the levels of the natural rate of interest and unemployment as well as about the effect of...

Over the past few years, the Federal Reserve's use of unconventional monetary policy tools has led it to hold a large portfolio of securities. The securities holdings in excess of historical norms have been shown to be putting downward pressure on longer-term interest rates. One question asked...

We examine the implications of less powerful forward guidance for optimal policy using a sticky-price model with an effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates as well as a discounted Euler equation and Phillips curve. When the private-sector agents discount future economic conditions...

In low-rate environments, policy strategies that involve holding rates "lower for longer" (L4L) may mitigate the effects of the effective lower bound (ELB). However, these strategies work in part by managing the public's expectations, which is not always realistic. Using the Fed's large-scale...

Standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models assume a Taylor rule and forecast an increase in interest rates immediately after the 2007-2009 economic recession given the predicted output and inflation, contradictory to the extended period of near-zero interest rate policy (ZIRP)...

A central tenet of inflation targeting is that establishing and maintaining well-anchored inflation expectations are essential. In this paper, we reexamine the role of key elements of the inflation targeting framework towards this end, in the context of an economy where economic agents have an...

We investigate whether the response of the macro-economy to oil price shocks undergoes episodic changes. Employing a regime-switching vector autoregressive model we identify two regimes that are characterized by qualitatively different patterns in economic activity and inflation following oil...

This note focuses on the longer-run implications of alternative monetary policy strategies for the evolution of the price level. The analysis compares the properties of optimal policy in regimes ranging from pure inflation targeting (IT), to a form of weighted-average inflation targeting (WAIT),...

We analyze the framework for monetary policy in view of the effective lower bound (ELB). We find that the ELB is likely to bind in most future recessions and propose some ways that theoretical models imply that the framework could be strengthened. We also discuss ways that commitment strategies,...