Meyer (1999) has suggested that episodes of heightened uncertainty about the NAIRU may warrant a nonlinear policy response to changes in the unemployment rate. This paper offers a theoretical justification for such a nonlinear policy rule, and provides some empirical evidence on the relative...

There is a growing consensus among economists that real wages in the postwar U.S. have been moderately to strongly procyclical, particularly in panel data on workers. From the point of view of hiring decisions of firms, however, this conclusion may be premature or even erroneous. Whether a...

A standard result in the literature on monetary policy rules is that of certainty equivalence: given the expected values of all the state variables of the economy, policy should be set in a way that is independent of all higher moments of those variables. Some exceptions to this rule have been...

The 1990s and early 2000s witnessed an unprecedented increase in central bank transparency around the world, yet there has been little empirical work that convincingly demonstrates any economic benefits of increased central bank transparency. This paper shows that, since the late 1980s, U.S,...

One strategy for disinflation prescribes a deliberate path towards low inflation. A contrasting opportunistic approach eschews deliberate action and instead waits for unforeseen shocks to reduce inflation. This paper compares the ability of these two approaches to achieve disinflation---and at...