Reserve requirements imposed against bank deposits, nominal interest payments on bank reserves (or on base money), and inflation can all be viewed as generating tax effects. Any analysis of optimal monetary policy in a steady-state equilibrium needs to consider the simultaneous choice of all the...

This paper develops the quantitative implications of optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model. In a stationary equilibrium the ex ante tax rate on capital income is approximately zero. There is an equivalence class of ex post capital income tax rates and bond policies that support a given...

A model of interest rate movements in response to new information on the money stock is developed.The model, which incorporates several earlier approaches as special cases, makes explicit the manner in which estimated interest rate responses to money surprises depend on the relative variances of...

In October 1979 the Federal Reserve shifted from an interest rate oriented operating procedure to a reserves oriented procedure. It is argued in this paper that part of the very large increase in interest rate volatility which resulted from the policy switch may have been due to shifts in the...

Monetary DSGE models are widely used because they fit the data well and they can be used to address important monetary policy questions. We provide a selective review of these developments. Policy analysis with DSGE models requires using data to assign numerical values to model parameters. The...

We evaluate the Friedman-Schwartz hypothesis that a more accommodative monetary policy could have greatly reduced the severity of the Great Depression. To do this, we first estimate a dynamic, general equilibrium model using data from the 1920s and 1930s. Although the model includes eight...

What are the economic effects of an interest rate cut when an economy is in the midst of a financial crisis? Under what conditions will a cut stimulate output and employment, and raise welfare? Under what conditions will a cut have the opposite e ffects? We answer these questions in a general...

Why is it that inflation is persistently high in some periods and persistently low in other periods? We argue that lack of commitment in monetary policy may bear a large part of the blame. We show that, in a standard equilibrium model, absence of commitment leads to multiple equilibria, or...