We evaluate the effect of the Federal Reserve's purchase of long-term Treasuries and other long-term bonds ("QE1" in 2008-2009 and "QE2" in 2010-2011) on interest rates. Using an event-study methodology we reach two main conclusions. First, it is inappropriate to focus only on Treasury rates as...

The “reversal interest rate” is the rate at which accommodative monetary policy reverses its intended effect and becomes contractionary for lending. It occurs when banks' asset revaluation from duration mismatch is more than offset by decreases in net interest income on new business,...

We present a signalling theory of Quantitative Easing (QE) at the zero lower bound on the short term nominal interest rate. QE is effective because it generates a credible signal of low future real interest rates in a time consistent equilibrium. We show these results in two models. One has...

This paper reconsiders a result obtained by Sargent and Wallace, namely, that price level indeterminacy obtains in their well-known model if the monetary authorities adopt a policy feedback rule for the interest rate rather than the money stock. Since the Federal Reserve seems often to have used...

Most central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve System, implement their monetary policy by setting interest rates. This paper reviews the major changes that have taken place along the way from the Federal Reserve's interest rate-based policy structure of the 1960s to the interest...

Using an optimizing model we derive the optimal monetary and exchange rate policy for a small stochastic open economy with imperfect competition and short run price rigidity. The optimal monetary policy has an exact closed-form solution and is obtained using the utility function of the...

The paper establishes the following: First, money is neutral even if there is a non-zero stock of non-monetary nominal public debt, because the government adjusts real taxes to satisfy its intertemporal budget constraint. Second, Woodford's fiscal theory of the price level, according to which...

Central banks no longer set the short-term interest rates that they use for monetary policy purposes by manipulating the supply of banking system reserves, as in conventional economics textbooks; today this process involves little or no variation in the supply of central bank liabilities. In...

This paper provides an introduction to the recent literature on macroeconomic stabilization in closed and open economies. We present a stylized theoretical framework, and illustrate its main properties with the help of an intuitive graphical apparatus. Among the issues we discuss: optimal...

This paper discusses what recent economic research tells us about exchange rate pass-through and what this suggests for the control of monetary policy. It first focuses on exchange rate pass-through from a macroeconomic perspective and then examines the microeconomic evidence. In light of this...