The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically...

Inflation in the euro area has been falling since mid-2013, turned negative at the end of 2014 and remained below target thereafter. This paper employs a Bayesian VAR to quantify the contribution of a set of structural shocks, identified by means of sign restrictions, to inflation and economic...

In this paper, we show that low trend inflation strongly affects the dynamics of a standard Neo-keynesian model where monetary policy is described by a standard Taylor rule. In particular, we show that trend inflation: (i) enlarges the indeterminacy region in the parameter space, substantially...

In this paper we generalise the standard optimal monetary policy literature as in Galí (2003) to the case of positive trend inflation. We present a simple framework that provides straightforward analytical results directly comparable with the standard case. Optimal monetary policy is strongly...

When used to examine disinflation monetary policies, the current workhorse dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of business cycle fluctuations is able to quantitatively account for the main stylized facts in terms of recessionary effects and sacrifice ratio. We complement the...

Successful disinflation episodes have been shown to involve a sustained period of output contraction. We revisit the largely debated issue on the costs of different speed and timing of disinflations when monetary policy is implemented either via a money supply rule (MSR) or an interest rate rule...

Even low levels of trend inflation substantially affect the dynamics of a basic new Keynesian DSGE model when monetary policy is conducted by a contemporaneous Taylor rule. Positive trend inflation shrinks the determinacy region. Neither the Taylor principle, which requires the inflation...

We use a unique design feature of a survey of Italian firms to study the causal effect of inflation expectations on firms' economic decisions. In the survey, a randomly chosen subset of firms is repeatedly treated with information about recent inflation (or the European Central Bank's inflation...

When taken to examine disinflation monetary policies, the current workhorse DSGE model of business cycle fluctuations successfully accounts for the main stylized facts in terms of recessionary effects and sacrifice ratio. We complement the transitional analysis of the short-run costs with a...

Using randomized control trials (RCTs) applied over time in different countries, we study whether the economic environment affects how agents learn from new information. We show that as inflation rose in advanced economies, both households and firms became more attentive and informed about...