Historically high levels of private and public debt coupled with already very low short-term interest rates appear to limit the options for stimulative monetary policy in many advanced economies today. One option that has not yet been considered is monetary financing by central banks to boost...

Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) have experienced an extraordinary decline in inflation since the early 1970s. After peaking in 1974 at 17.3 percent, inflation in these economies declined to 3.5 percent in 2017. Despite a checkered history of managing inflation among many EMDEs,...

This paper presents a model that pictures how inflation is determined in a decentralized market process where prices are set in both simultaneous and sequential contracts. Price setting is seen as a coordination game between the price setters of sequential contracts. An important property of the...

The implementation of economic reforms under new economic policies in India was associated with a paradigmatic shift in monetary and fiscal policy. While monetary policies were solely aimed at "price stability" in the neoliberal regime, fiscal policies were characterized by the objective of...

In December 2015, the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) initiated the process of "normalization," with the objective of gradually raising the federal funds rate back to "normal"-i.e., levels that are "neither expansionary nor contrary" and are consistent with the established 2 percent longer-run goal...

The equitable rate of interest represents a benchmark to evaluate the cross-sectional effects of monetary policy. I define it as the real rate of interest that minimizes the welfare losses associated to cross-sectional heterogeneity, under flexible prices. In a large class of models, it can be...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of delegation in solving the time inconsistency problem of monetary policy using a microfounded general equilibrium model where delegation and reappointment are explicitly included into the government's strategy. The method of Chari and Kehoe (1990) is...

We develop a New Keynesian model with staggered price and wage setting where downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) arises endogenously through the wage bargaining institutions. It is shown that the optimal (discretionary) monetary policy response to changing economic conditions then becomes...

We show that the credibility gain from permanently committing to a fixed exchange rate by joining the European Monetary Union can outweigh the loss from giving up independent monetary policy if the domestic monetary authority does not enjoy full credibility. Using a DSGE model, this paper shows...