Are optimal monetary and fiscal policies time consistent in a monetary economy? Yes, but if and only if under commitment the Friedman rule of setting nominal interest rates to zero is optimal. This result is of applied interest because the Friedman rule is optimal for the standard preferences...

We find conditions for the Friedman rule to be optimal in three standard models of money. These conditions are homotheticity and separability assumptions on preferences similar to those in the public finance literature on optimal uniform commodity taxation. We show that there is no connection...

We use the limited participation model of money as a laboratory for studying the operating characteristics of Taylor rules for setting the rate of interest. Rules are evaluated according to their ability to protect the economy from bad outcomes such as the burst of inflation observed in the...

We review the recent work on interest rate setting, which emphasizes the desirability of designing policy to ensure stability under learning. Appropriately designed expectations-based rules can yield optimal rational expectations (REs) equilibria that are both determinate and stable under...

Over the last three decades, macroeconomic theory and the practice of macroeconomics by economists have changed significantly—for the better. Macroeconomics is now firmly grounded in the principles of economic theory.

The authors consider inflation and government debt dynamics when monetary policy employs a global interest rate rule and private agents forecast using adaptive learning. Because of the zero lower bound on interest rates, active interest rate rules are known to imply the existence of a second,...

We examine global dynamics under infinite-horizon learning in New Keynesian models where the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. The intended steady state is locally but not globally stable. Unstable deflationary paths emerge after large pessimistic shocks to expectations. For...

We examine global economic dynamics under infinite-horizon learning in a New Keynesian model in which the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. As in Evans, Guse and Honkapohja (2008), we find that under normal monetary and fiscal policy the intended steady state is locally but...