This paper quantitatively evaluates the effects of several unconventional monetary policies for small open economies. In particular, a New Keynesian model is extended to include a liquidity premium, deviations from uncovered interest rate parity, and a premium in the term structure of interest...

We explore the possibility that a housing market boombust cycle may arise when public beliefs are driven by news shocks. News, imperfect and noisy by nature, may generate expectations that are overly optimistic or pessimistic. Overoptimism easily leads to excessive accumulation of housing assets...

This article analyzes the role of credit market frictions in business-cycle fluctuations and in the transmission of monetary policy. We estimate a closed-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the euro area with financially constrained households and firms and embedding...

Firms in emerging markets are exposed to severe financial frictions and credit constraints that are exacerbated by the sudden stop of capital inflows. Can monetary policy offset this external credit squeeze? We show that although this may be the case during moderate contractions (or in partial...

This short paper employs individual voting records of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England to study heterogeneity in policy preferences among committee members. The analysis is carried out using a simple generalization of the standard New Keynesian framework that allows...

Central banking transparency is now a topic of great interest, but its impact on the implementation of monetary policy has not been studied. This paper documents that anticipated changes in the target federal funds rate complicate open market operations. We provide theoretical and empirical...

This paper reports updated measures of transparency and independence for more than 100 central banks. The indices show that there has been steady movement in the direction of greater transparency and independence over time. In addition, we show that outcomes such as the variability of inflation...

This paper estimates an arbitrage-free term structure model with both observable yield factors and Treasury and agency MBS supply factors, and uses it to evaluate the term premium effects of the Federal Reserve’s large-scale asset purchase programs. Our estimates show that the first and second...

This commentary is motivated by the papers “Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Great Recession: Estimating the Macroeconomic Effects of a Spread Compression at the Zero Lower Bound” by Christiane Baumeister and Luca Benati (this issue) and “House Prices, Credit Growth, and Excess...

A comprehensive measure of financial friction is the difference between the return businesses earn from capital—plant and equipment—and the market cost of capital. The latter is the amount that investors earn from holding financial claims. I measure this friction as the difference between...