In models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. In this paper, we develop a two-sector two-good closed economy new Keynesian model to study the optimal choice of price index in markets with...

While many analyses of monetary policy consider only a target for a short-term nominal interest rate, other dimensions of policy have recently been of greater importance: changes in the supply of bank reserves, changes in the assets acquired by central banks, and changes in the interest rate...

This paper studies the limitations of monetary policy transmission within a credit channel frame- work. We show that, under certain circumstances, the credit channel transmission mechanism fails in that liquidity injections by the central bank into the banking sector are hoarded and not lent...

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 is about the effectiveness of qualitative easing; a government policy that is designed to mitigate risk through central bank purchases of privately held risky assets and their replacement by government debt, with a return that is guaranteed by the taxpayer. Policies of this kind have...

In spite of the mystique behind a central bank's balance sheet, its resource constraint bounds the dividends it can distribute by the present value of seignorage, which is a modest share of GDP. Moreover, the statutes of the Federal Reserve or the ECB make it difficult for it to redistribute...

It has recently become popular to argue that globalization has had or will soon have dramatic consequences for the nature of the monetary transmission mechanism, and it is sometimes suggested that this could threaten the ability of national central banks to control inflation within their...

An exchange-rate system is a set of contracts which commits central banks to intervene in the foreign-exchange market. The design features of the system include: the rules of intervention, the limits placed on exchange rates and the quot;crisis scenarioquot; which describes possible transitions...

Bank balance sheet lending is commonly viewed as the predominant form of lending. We document and study two margins of adjustment that are usually absent from this view using microdata in the $10 trillion U.S. residential mortgage market. We first document the limits of the shadow bank...