We wish to understand the implications of recent shifts in US productivity for the structure of optimal monetary policy rules. Accordingly, we augment a standard inflation targeting model in which a forward-looking version of the Taylor rule constitutes the optimal monetary policy with regime...

In this paper, I survey the issue of exchange rate regime choice from the perspective of both the industrial and emerging economies taking an historical perspective. I first survey the theoretical issues beginning with a taxonomy of regimes. I then examine the empirical evidence on the...

May 23, 2013. Presentation. "Monetary Policy in a Low Policy Rate Environment." OMFIF Golden Series Lecture, London.

November 8, 2012. Presentation. "Shadow Interest Rates and the Stance of U.S. Monetary Policy." Presented at the Center for Finance and Accounting Research Annual Corporate Finance Conference, Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis

We study a simple, microfounded macroeconomic system in which the monetary authority employs a Taylor-type policy rule. We analyze situations in which the self-confirming equilibrium is unique and learnable according to Bullard and Mitra (2002). We explore the prospects for the use of ‘large...

November 8, 2012. Presentation. "Shadow Interest Rates and the Stance of U.S. Monetary Policy." Presented at the Center for Finance and Accounting Research Annual Corporate Finance Conference, Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis

May 23, 2013. Presentation. "Monetary Policy in a Low Policy Rate Environment." OMFIF Golden Series Lecture, London.

This paper brings historical evidence to bear on the stylized fact that the yield curve predicts future growth. The spread between corporate bonds and commercial paper reliably predicts future growth over the period 1875-1997. This predictability varies over time, however, particularly across...

If official interventions convey private information useful for price discovery in foreign exchange markets, then they should have value as a forecast of near-term exchange rate movements. Using a set of standard criteria, we show that approximately 60 percent of all U.S. foreign exchange...

Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz published A Monetary History of the United States: 1867 to 1960 with Princeton University Press in 1963, to critical acclaim. Since then the book's reputation has grown and it clearly has become one of the most influential volumes in economics in the...