Adverse shocks to the economy may be amplified by worsening credit-market conditions-- the financial 'accelerator'. Theoretically, we interpret the financial accelerator as resulting from endogenous changes over the business cycle in the agency costs of lending. An implication of the theory is...

This paper attempts to provide a step towards understanding the role of financial intermediaries (quot;banksquot;) in aggregate economic activity. We first develop a model of the intermediary sector which is highly simplified, but rich enough to motivate several special features of bauks. Of...

Bad economic times are typically associated with a high incidence of financial distress, e.g., insolvency and bankruptcy. This paper studies the role of changes in borrower solvency in the initiation and propagation of the business cycle. We first develop a model of the process of financing real...

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...

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model that is intended to help clarify the role of credit market frictions in business fluctuations, from both a qualitative and a quantitative standpoint. The model is a synthesis of the leading approaches in the literature. In particular, the...

Applied macroeconomists (e.g., Eckstein and Sinai (1986)) have stressed the role of financial variables, such as firm balance sheet positions, in the determination of investment spending and output. Our paper presents a formal analysis of this link. We develop a model of the process of...

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...

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...

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...

This paper develops a new open economy macro model of optimal monetary for a small open economy. Our main result is that in this model, the optimal policy problem for the small open economy is isomorphic to the closed economy case studied in Clarida, Gali, Gertler (1999). In particular, the...