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...

Why is inflation persistently high in some periods and low in others? The reason may be absence of commitment in monetary policy. In a standard model, absence of commitment leads to multiple equilibria, or expectation traps, even without trigger strategies. In these traps, expectations of high...

The authors’ model, embodying moderate amounts of nominal rigidities, accounts for the observed inertia in inflation and persistence in output. The key features of their model are those that prevent a sharp rise in marginal costs after an expansionary shock to monetary policy. Of these...

Macroeconomic and microeconomic data paint conflicting pictures of price behavior. Macroeconomic data suggest that inflation is inertial. Microeconomic data indicate that firms change prices frequently. We formulate and estimate a model which resolves this apparent micro - macro conflict. Our...

This study analyzes two monetary economies, a cash-credit good model and a limited-participation model. In these models, monetary policy is made by a benevolent policymaker who cannot commit to future policies. The study defines and analyzes Markov equilibrium in these economies and shows that...

We argue that discretionary monetary policy exposes the economy to welfare-decreasing instability. It does so by creating the potential for private expectations about the response of monetary policy to exogenous shocks to be self-fulfilling. Among the many equilibria that are possible, some have...

We explore a hypothesis about the take-off in inflation that occurred in the early 1970s. According to the expectations trap hypothesis, the Fed was pushed into producing the high inflation out of a fear of violating the public's inflation expectations. We compare this hypothesis with the...

This article characterizes the change in the nature of the money growth-inflation and unemployment-inflation relationships between the first and second halves of the twentieth century. The changes are substantial, and the authors discuss some of the implications for modeling inflation dynamics,...

This article explores a hypothesis about the take-off in inflation in the early 1970s. According to the expectations trap hypothesis, the Fed was driven to high money growth by a fear of violating the expectations of high inflation that existed at the time. The authors argue that this hypothesis...

The authors examine the inflation take-off of the early 1970s in terms of the expectations trap hypothesis, according to which fear of violating the public’s inflation expectations pushed the Fed into producing high inflation. This interpretation is compared with the Phillips curve hypothesis,...