This article assesses the importance of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates for the conduct of monetary policy. The article employs a small, forward-looking model developed by Fuhrer and Moore. The model is simulated under several policy rules that involve either high or low inflation...

Recent research has clarified the nature of measurement errors in U.S. price indexes. Changes in the quality of goods create severe problems. Laspeyres-type indexes suffer from substitution bias from one good to another and from one type of outlet to another. Available evidence suggests that the...

This paper develops a simple rational expectations model of the inflation process that is used to test the Fisher effect. The model emphasizes the link between money and expected inflation, and hence the monetary regime followed by the central bank. The model is estimated with U.S. data over the...

This paper uses Whiteman's(1986) frequency-domain optimization methodology to parameterize the precommitment period in a standard rational expectations policy design model. This allows researchers to adopt an empirical approach to the time consistency issue. That is, the operative commitment...

This paper describes potential new markets for long-term inflation risk, and shows the relationship such markets would have to other potential new markets, markets for long-term claims on income aggregates. One inflation-risk market which would be very useful is a market for long-term (or...

Estimates are provided for the social cost of inflation in the U.S. economy. The estimated cost, expressed as a fraction of income, is proportional to the square root of the nominal interest rate. This approximation assigns much higher costs to low rates of inflation than does the familiar...