This paper identifies a new source of business-cycle fluctuations. Namely, a common stochastic trend in neutral and investment-specific productivity. We document that in U.S. postwar quarterly data total factor productivity (TFP) and the relative price of investment are cointegrated. We show...

In this paper, we characterize conditions under which interest rate feedback rules that set the nominal interest rate as an increasing function of the inflation rate induce aggregate instability by generating multiple equilibria. We show that these conditions depend not only on the...

This paper studies the role of asset-market completeness for the properties of optimal policy. A suitable framework for this purpose is the small open economy with complete international asset markets. For in this environment changes in policy represent country-specific risk diversifiable in...

Since John Taylor's (1993) seminal paper, a large literature has argued that active interest rate feedback rules, that is, rules that respond to increases in inflation with a more than one-for-one increase in the nominal interest rate, are stabilizing. In this paper, we argue that once the zero...