We estimate a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function for the postwar US economy, pre- and post-October 1979. Our results point to substantial differences in the estimated rule across periods. In particular, interest rate policy in the Volcker-Greenspan period appears to have been much...

We use a unique high-frequency micro-dataset to estimate the slope of the primitive form of the New Keynesian Phillips curve, which features marginal cost as the relevant real activity variable. Our dataset encompasses product-level prices, costs, and output within the Belgian manufacturing...

This paper reviews the recent literature on monetary policy rules. We exploit the monetary policy design problem within a simple baseline theoretical framework. We then consider the implications of adding various real world complications. Among other things, we show that the optimal policy...

We study the international monetary policy design problem within an optimizing two-country sticky price model, where each country faces a short run tradeoff between output and inflation. The model is sufficiently tractable to solve analytically. We find that in the Nash equilibrium, the policy...

This paper reports estimates of monetary policy reaction functions for two sets of" countries: the G3 (Germany, Japan, and the U.S.) and the E3 (UK, France that since 1979 each of the G3 central banks has pursued an implicit form of inflation targeting which may account for the broad success of...

We develop an analytically tractable Phillips curve based on state-dependent pricing. We differ from the existing literature by considering a local approximation around a zero inflation steady state and introducing idiosyncratic shocks. The resulting Phillips curve is a simple variation of the...

We explore the implications of asset price volatility for the management of monetary policy. We show that it is desirable for central banks to focus on underlying inflationary pressures. Asset prices become relevant only to the extent they may signal potential inflationary or deflationary...