We challenge the widely held belief that New Keynesian models cannot predict optimal positive inflation rates. In fact, interest rates are justified by the Phelps argument that monetary financing can alleviate the burden of distortionary taxation. We obtain this result because, in contrast with...

Reserve requirements are a prominent policy instrument in many emerging countries. The present study investigates the circumstances under which reserve requirements are an appropriate policy tool for price or financial stability. We consider a small open-economy model with sticky prices,...

A two-country general equilibrium model with large wage setters is developed to investigate the welfare implications of moving from a flexible exchange rate regime to a monetary union. The paper shows that the currency regime not only affects the central bank’s incentive to improve the terms...

This paper examines the bilateral composition of international bond portfolios for the euro area and the individual EMU member countries. I find considerable support for euroarea bias: EMU member countries disproportionately invest in one another relative to other country pairs. Another striking...

In this paper, we describe a new multicountry open economy SDGE model named "SIGMA" that we have developed as a quantitative tool for policy analysis. We compare SIGMA's implications to those of an estimated large-scale econometric policy model (the FRB/Global model) for an array of shocks that...

This paper evaluates how successful a policy of exchange rate stabilization is in counteracting the negative effects of a Dutch disease episode. We consider a small open-economy model that incorporates nominal rigidities and a learning-bydoing externality in the tradable sector. The paper shows...

In this paper, we analyze the impact of a persistent productivity increase in a set of countries—which we think of as the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC)—on inflation in their trading partners, the Group of Seven (G-7). In particular, we want to understand the conditions...

This paper examines the roles of bank capital regulation and monetary policy in mitigating procyclicality and promoting macroeconomic and financial stability. The analysis is based on a dynamic stochastic model with imperfect credit markets. Macroeconomic stability is defined in terms of a...

This paper investigates the implications of cross-country heterogeneity within the euro area for the design of optimal monetary policy. We build an optimization-based multicountry model (MCM) describing the euro area in which differences between structural parameters across countries are...

We study welfare-based monetary policy in a two-country DSGE model characterized by financial frictions. We compare the cooperative Ramsey monetary policy with standard policy benchmarks as well as with the optimal Ramsey policy in a currency area. Our main results are the following. First,...