We examine the standard New Keynesian economy's Ramsey problem written in terms of instrument settings instead of allocations. Its standard formulation makes two instruments available: the path of current and future interest rates, and an "open mouth operation" which selects one of the many...

This paper develops a small New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and government debt dynamics. The paper discusses the design of simple monetary and fiscal policy rules consistent with determinate equilibrium dynamics in the absence of Ricardian equivalence. Under this assumption,...

Policymakers do not always follow a simple rule for setting policy rates for various reasons and thus their choices are co-driven by a decision to follow a rule or not. Consequently, some observations are censored and cause bias in conventional estimators of typical Taylor rules. To account for...

It is now a few years since the introduction of the common currency, and Europe is still experiencing high unemployment. The conventional logic attributes this problem to strong trade unions and other flaws in the labour market. This article takes a different approach. Using a game theoretic...

We develop an estimated model of the U.S. economy in which agents form expectations by continually updating their beliefs regarding the behavior of the economy and monetary policy. We explore the effects of policymakers' misperceptions of the natural rate of unemployment during the late 1960s...

In this paper, I evaluate the performance deterioration that occurs when the central bank employs an optimal targeting rule that is based on incorrect parameter values. I focus on two parameters — the degree of inflation inertia and the degree of price stickiness. I explicitly account for the...

We examine the performance and robustness properties of monetary policy rules in an estimated macroeconomic model in which the economy undergoes structural change and where private agents and the central bank possess imperfect knowledge about the true structure of the economy. Policymakers...

We apply a monopoly trade union model and analyze employment, wage and budgetary effects of (i) an inflow of migrant workers and (ii) an increase in the labor market participation rate of migrants. Per assumption, natives and migrants solely differ with respect to the level of benefit claims in...

In a unionised labour market, a substitution of a payroll for an income tax will not alter employment if tax obligations are fulfilled. However, if workers or firms can evade taxes this irrelevance result might no longer apply. This will especially be the case if the fine for tax evasion depends...

Monetary policy is most effective when public beliefs about future policies are actively managed. This is the appeal of policy rules and commitment strategies, typically absent under discretion. But when a policymaker has some private information - as is the case in reality - belief management...