During the last thirty years, labor markets in advanced economies were characterized by their remarkable polarization. As job opportunities in middle-skill occupations disappeared, employment opportunities concentrated in the highest- and lowest-wage occupations. I develop a two-country...

We investigate a monetary regime with persistent, near-zero policy interest rates ("permazero" in the terminology of Bullard 2015). This regime was implemented in 1683 by a prominent early central bank called the Bank of Amsterdam ("Bank"). The Bank fixed its policy rate at one-half percent and...

This paper considers monetary and fiscal policy when tangible assets can be accumulated after shocks that increase desired savings, like Joseph's biblical prophecy of seven fat years followed by seven lean years. The model's flexible-price allocation mimics Joseph's saving to smooth consumption....

As projections have inflation heading back toward target and the labor market continuing to improve, the Federal Reserve has begun to contemplate an increase in the federal funds rate. There is however substantial uncertainty around these projections. How should this uncertainty affect monetary...

While high uncertainty is an inherent implication of the economy entering the zero lower bound, deflation is not, because agents are likely to be uncertain about the way policymakers will deal with the large stock of debt arising from a severe recession. We draw this conclusion based on a...

We analyze the implications for monetary policy when deficient aggregate demand can cause a permanent loss in potential output, a phenomenon termed as output hysteresis. In the model, incomplete stabilization of a temporary shortfall in demand reduces the return to innovation, thus reducing TFP...

Concerns of prolonged stagnation periods with near-zero interest rates and deflation have become widespread in many advanced economies. We build a theoretical framework that rationalizes two theories of low interest rates: expectations-trap and secular stagnation in a unified setting. We...

Economists typically make simplifying assumptions to make the solution and estimation of their highly complex models feasible. These simplifications include approximating the true nonlinear dynamics of the model, disregarding aggregate uncertainty or assuming that all agents are identical. While...

The growing asymmetry in the size of fiscal imbalances poses a serious challenge to the macroeconomic stability of the Euro Area (EA). We show that following a contractionary shock, the current monetary and fiscal framework weakens economic growth even in lowdebt countries because of the zero...

We investigate the role of macroprudential policies in mitigating liquidity traps driven by deleveraging, using a simple Keynesian model. When constrained agents engage in deleveraging, the interest rate needs to fall to induce unconstrained agents to pick up the decline in aggregate demand....