Much recent research has focused on the development and analysis of extensions of the New Keynesianframework that model labor market frictions and unemployment explicitly. The present paper describessome of the essential ingredients and properties of those models, and their implications for...

The New Keynesian framework has emerged as the workhorse for the analysis of monetary policy and its implications for inflation, economic fluctuations, and welfare. It is the backbone of the new generation of medium-scale models under development at major central banks and international policy...

The present Paper provides an overview of recent developments in the analysis of monetary policy in the presence of nominal rigidities. The Paper emphasizes the existence of several dimensions in which the recent literature provides a new perspective on the linkages among monetary policy,...

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, we characterize de Fed's systematic response to technology shocks and its implications for US output, hours and inflation. Second we evaluate the extent to which that responses can be accounted for by a simple monetary policy rule in the...

We characterize the macroeconomic performance of a set of industrialized economies in the aftermath of the oil price shocks of the 1970s and of the last decade, focusing on the differences across episodes. We examine four different hypotheses for the mild effects on inflation and economic...

This paper reviews the recent literature on monetary policy rules. To organize the discussion, we exposit the monetary policy design problem within a simple baseline theoretical framework. We then consider the implications of adding various real word complications. We concentrate on developing...

We study how changes in the value of the steady-state real interest rate affect the optimal inflation target, both in the U.S. and the euro area, using an estimated New Keynesian DSGE model that incorporates the zero (or effective) lower bound on the nominal interest rate. We find that this...

We address the question in this paper's title using an estimated New Keynesian DSGE model of the euro area with trend inflation, imperfect indexation, and a lower bound on the nominal interest rate. In this setup, a decrease in the steady-state real interest rate, r*, increases the probability...

I discuss several lessons regarding the design and conduct of monetary policy that have emerged out of the New Keynesian research program. Those lessons include the benefits of price stability, the gains from commitment about future policies, the importance of natural variables as benchmarks for...

We analyze the welfare impact of greater wage flexibility while taking into account explicitly the existence of the zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate. We show that the ZLB constraint generally amplifies the adverse effects of greater wage flexibility on welfare when...