We study the welfare cost of inflation in a general equilibrium life cycle model with growth, costly financial intermediation, and taxes on nominal quantities. We find a stationary equilibrium of the model matches a wide variety of facts about the postwar U.S. economy. We then calculate that the...

We distinguish between three different ways of using real-time data to estimate forecasting equations and argue that the most popular approach should generally be avoided. The point is illustrated with a model that uses monthly industrial production, employment, and retail sales data to predict...

Studies of the predictive ability of the Federal Reserve's Beige Book, an anecdotal measure of regional economic conditions, for aggregate output and employment have proven inconclusive. This might be attributed, in part, to the irregular release schedule of the Beige Book. In this paper, we use...

The rapid increase in U.S. economic growth during the late 1990s inspired speculation that an acceleration in the rate of technological progress had given rise to an increase in potential output growth. This paper considers the transition dynamics associated with such a change using a general...

This paper presents a model of economic growth based on the life-cycle hypothesis to determine the path of international capital flows as the baby boom passes through the U.S. economy. The model predicts that a baby boom causes a temporary increase in capital flow into the U.S. but the increase...

The U.S. economy appears to have experienced a pronounced shift toward higher productivity over the last five years or so. We wish to understand the implications of such shifts for the structure of optimal monetary policy rules in simple dynamic economies. Accordingly, we begin with a standard...

Paul Krugman’s essay “Who Was Milton Friedman?” seriously mischaracterizes Friedman’s economics and his legacy. In this paper we provide a rejoinder to Krugman on these issues. In the course of setting the record straight, we provide a self-contained guide to Milton Friedman’s impact...

When commitment is lacking, intertemporal trade is facilitated with the use of exchange media—interpreted broadly to include monetary and collateral assets. We study the properties of a model commonly used to motivate monetary exchange, extended to include a physical asset whose expected...

With its interest rate instrument at the zero lower bound, the Federal Open Market Committee has turned to unconventional methods to stimulate economic growth and increase employment. Prominent among these is quantitative easing (QE)—the purchase of a large quantity of longer-term debt....

Data on the monetary aggregates are the fundamental raw material for research in many facets of economics and finance. Money demand modeling, measurement of money stock announcement effects, tests of the rationality of preliminary money stock forecasts and financial market efficiency, and...