This paper characterizes a robust optimal policy rule in a simple forward-looking model, when the policymaker faces uncertainty about model parameters and shock processes. We show that the robust optimal policy rule is likely to involve a stronger response of the interest rate to fluctuations in...

We study the problem of a policymaker who seeks to set policy optimally in an economy where the true economic structure is unobserved, and he optimally learns from observations of the economy. This is a classic problem of learning and control, variants of which have been studied in the past, but...

Empirical evidence suggests that banking panics are a natural outgrowth of the business cycle. In other words panics are not simply the result of quot;sunspotsquot; or self-fulfilling prophecies. Panics occur when depositors perceive that the returns on the bank's assets are going to be...

Recent events in international financial markets have revived the scientific interest in conceivable institutional alternatives to prevailing monetary arrangements. In the essays reprinted in this book, the author critically examines some of the more influential arguments which have been made in...

In this paper we propose a Good Asset Purchase Plan (GAPP), as a cure for the falling U.S. housing market and a stimulus for economic recovery. The central theme of the plan is that the U.S. Government directly purchases minority shares (say, up to 20%) of good assets such as residential...

Focused especially on the causes, Woods elegantly discovers in the tradition of the Austrian School of economics that the main culprit for the creation of crises is the monetary system’s nature. As he goes, this is a system that allows a process of artificially expanded money supply which...

The European sovereign debt crisis revived the discussion concerning the pros and cons of exchange rate adjustment in the face of asymmetric shocks. Exit from the euro area is to regain rapidly international competitiveness. Exchange rate stability with structural reforms could be beneficial for...

This paper seeks to develop an optimal fiscal policy rule for the Colombian economy that interacts with the monetary policy in order to stabilize the product and inflation gap. It proposes a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model (DSGE) with nominal rigidities and proposes a fiscal rule...

In this paper, I analyse the synchronisation of business cycles within the European Union (EU), as this is an important ingredient for the implementation of a successful monetary policy. The business cycles of twelve EU countries and two sub-groups of countries are extracted for the period...

The objective of this paper is to point out that dollarization may be used as a signaling device. To this end, we introduce into a standard monetary policy model two types of governments: good and bad. Information is asymmetric, the government type is uncertain and the policy of the bad...