Over the last thirty years or so the developments in the area of monetary and macroeconomic policies have been quite substantial. Within the new consensus macroeconomics (NCM), monetary policy is upgraded while fiscal policy is downgraded. This new monetary policy has been the main instrument of...

Within the New Consensus Macroeconomics, monetary policy is upgraded while fiscal policy is downgraded. This new monetary policy has been the main instrument of policy under the guise of inflation targeting, an approach pursued by a number of central banks worldwide. This book raises problems...

This thesis comprises three self-contained chapters that each contributes new insights to this field of empirical macroeconomics. Chapter 1 examines the role of shocks to consumer misperceptions in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations. This chapter employs a Bayesian estimation of a New...