Commitment in monetary policy leads to equilibria that are superior to those from optimal discretionary policies. A number of interest-rate reaction functions and instrument rules have been proposed to implement or approximate commitment policy. We assess these rules in terms of whether they...

The development of tractable forward looking models of monetary policy has lead to an explosion of research on the implications of adopting Taylor-type interest rate rules. Indeterminacies have been found to arise for some specifications of the interest rate rule, raising the possibility of...

Using New Keynesian models, we compare Friedman's k-percent money supply rule to optimal interest rate setting, with respect to determinacy, stability under learning and optimality. We first review the recent literature. Open-loop interest rate rules are subject to indeterminacy and instability...

A fundamentals based monetary policy rule, which would be the optimal monetary policy without commitment when private agents have perfectly rational expectations, is unstable if in fact these agents follow standard adaptive learning rules. This problem can be overcome if private expectations are...

A fundamentals based monetary policy rule, which would be the optimal monetary policy without commitment when private agents have perfectly rational expectations, is unstable if in fact these agents follow standard adaptive learning rules. This problem can be overcome if private expectations are...

A striking implication of the replacement of adaptive expectations by Rational Expectations was the "Lucas Critique," which showed that expectation parameters, and endogenous variable dynamics, depend on policy parameters. We consider this issue from the vantage point of bounded rationality,...