Our study examines whether there is a systematic relationship between the monetary standard under which a country operates and the rate of inflation it experiences. It also explores whether there are other properties of inflation, money, and output that differ between economies operating under a...

Christopher Sims, Princeton economist, on inflation targets, vector autoregression and the importance of monetary policy.

We examine the responses of prices and inflation to monetary shocks in an inventory-theoretic model of money demand. We show that the price level responds sluggishly to an exogenous increase in the money stock because the dynamics of households' money inventories leads to a partially offsetting...

This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the effects of inflation through changes in the value of nominal assets. We document nominal positions in the U.S. across sectors as well as different groups of households, and estimate the redistribution brought about by a moderate inflation...

Why is inflation persistently high in some periods and low in others? The reason may be absence of commitment in monetary policy. In a standard model, absence of commitment leads to multiple equilibria, or expectation traps, even without trigger strategies. In these traps, expectations of high...

This paper studies the effects of anticipated inflation on aggregate output and welfare within a search-theoretic framework. We allow money-holders to choose the intensities with which they search for trading partners, so inflation affects the frequency of trade as well as the quantity of output...

Stochastic inflation affects the risk characteristics, measured by the equity premium and the correlation of the equity’s return with consumption, in a fundamental way. The riskiness of a dollar-denominated asset depends on two conditional covariances: the covariance of the marginal rate of...

We study economies where government currency and electronic money, drawn from interest bearing deposits in private financial intermediary institutions, are full substitutes. We analyze the impact of competition on policy outcomes under different assumptions regarding: the objectives of the...