A number of commentators have argued that the desirability of inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policy analysis should be reconsidered in light of the global financial crisis, on the ground that it requires neglect of the implications of monetary policy for financial stability....

The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates more vigorously in the recent recession than the European Central Bank did. By comparison with the Fed, the ECB followed a more measured course of action. We use an estimated dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions to show that...

A simple New-Keynesian model is set out with AS-AD graphical analysis. The model is consistent with modern central banking, which targets shortterm nominal interest rates instead of money supply aggregates. This simple framework enables us to analyze the economic impact of productivity or markup...

We analyze the policy trade-offs generated by local currency price stability of imports in economies where upstream producers strategically interact with downstream firms selling the final goods to consumers. We study the effects of staggered price setting at the downstream level on the optimal...

Japanese monetary and fiscal policy uses the consumer price index as a metric for price stability. Despite a major effort to improve the index, the Japanese methodology of calculating the CPI seems to have a large number of deficiencies. Little attention is paid in Japan to substitution biases...

The inertia of the local-currency prices of traded goods in the face of exchange-rate changes is a well-documented phenomenon in International Economics. This paper develops a structural model to identify the sources of this local-currency price stability and applies it to micro data from the...

Even when the exchange-rate plays no expenditure-switching role, countries may wish to have flexible exchange rates in order to free the domestic interest rate as a stabilization tool. In a setting with nontraded goods, exchange-rate movements may also enhance international risk sharing

Border prices of traded goods are highly sensitive to exchange rates, but the CPI, and the retail prices of these goods, are more stable. Our paper decomposes the sources of this stability for twenty-one OECD countries, focusing on the important roles of distribution margins and imported inputs...

The fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) has attracted much attention but disagreement remains concerning its defining characteristics. Some writers have emphasized implications regarding interest-rate pegging and determinacy of RE solutions, whereas others have stressed its capacity to...

The paper studies the inflation rate associated with optimal monetary policy in a standard suite of DSGE models, when fiscal policy is either unrestricted optimal or restricted but supportive of monetary policy. Full nominal price flexibility, nominal prices set one period in advance and...