The substantial fluctuations in house prices recently experienced by many industrialized economies have stimulated a vivid debate on the possible implications for monetary policy. In this paper, we ask whether the U.S. Fed, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England have reacted to house prices....

Many argue that, in the presence of a lower bound on nominal interest rates, central banks should use a risk management approach for setting policy, which implies commit- ting to a more expansionary policy to deal with uncertainty about the economic recovery. Using a standard model for monetary...

I compare nominal GDP level targeting to flexible inflation targeting in a small New Keynesian model subject to the zero lower bound on nominal policy rates. First, I study the performance of optimal discretionary policies. I find that, for a standard calibration, inflation targeting under...

In this paper I study the effects of monetary policy on economic activity and asset prices in Sweden, separately identifying the effects of a conventional policy change from effects of new information about economic fundamentals. Recent research has shown that high-frequency changes in policy...

Many argue that, because the outlook for the economy is uncertain, monetary policy should apply a risk management approach by raising the policy interest rate gradually from its lower bound. Using a small New Keynesian model, I study the impact of outlook uncertainty on the economic performance...

We revisit the optimal-contract approach to the design of monetary institutions, in the light of the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) on interest rates and the resort to Quantitative Easing (QE) in recent years. Four of our lessons have not yet been incorporated in the practices of inflation targeting...

This paper revisits the equilibrium and welfare effects of long-run inflation in the presence of distortionary taxes and financial constraints. Expected inflation interacts with corporate taxation through the deductibility of i) capital expenditures at historical value and ii) interest payments...

"Leaning against the wind" - a tighter monetary policy than necessary for stabilizing inflation around the inflation target and unemployment around a long-run sustainable rate - has been justified as a way of reducing household indebtedness. In a recent paper Lars Svensson claims that this...

Gesell taxes on money holdings have received attention in recent decades as a way of alleviating the zero lower bound on interest rates. Less known is that such a tax was the predominant method used to generate seigniorage in large parts of medieval Europe for around two centuries. When the...

In this paper, we evaluate the consequences of super-active fiscal policy rules - that is, rules that call for tax cuts and/or spending increases as the government's debt level rises - in a standard New Keynesian model subject to an occasionally-binding zero lower bound on the monetary policy...