I use the valuation equation of government debt to understand fiscal and monetary policy in and following the great recession of 2008-2009, to think about fiscal pressures on US inflation, and what sequence of events might surround such an inflation. I emphasize that a fiscal inflation can come...

Efforts to attribute the recent financial crisis to “exotic” mortgages, “risky” derivatives, “loose” central bank policies, or global saving imbalances overlook an important issue: Why did short-term credit suddenly seize up in September 2008, in the wake of Lehman Brothers' failure,...

Bennett McCallum (2009), applying Evans and Honkapohja's (2001) results, argues that "learnability" can save New-Keynesian models from their indeterminacies. He claims the unique bounded equilibrium is learnable, and the explosive equilibria are not. However, he assumes that agents can directly...

We measure monetary policy shocks as changes in the Fed funds target rate that surprise bond markets in daily data. These shock series avoid the omitted variable, time-varying parameter, and orthogonalization problem of monthly VARs, and do not impose the expectations hypothesis. We find...

Financial innovation challenges the foundations of monetary theory, and standard monetary theory has not been very successful at describing the history of U.S. inflation. Motivated by these observations, I ask: Can we understand the history of U.S. inflation using a framework that ignores...

The parameters of the Taylor rule relating interest rates to inflation and other variables are not identified in new-Keynesian models. Thus, Taylor rule regressions cannot be used to argue that the Fed conquered inflation by moving from a passive to an active policy in the early 1980s

The new-Keynesian, Taylor-rule theory of inflation determination relies on explosive dynamics. By raising interest rates in response to inflation, the Fed does not directly stabilize future inflation. Rather, the Fed threatens hyperinflation or deflation, unless inflation jumps to one particular...

I construct a simple model with sticky prices and interest rate targets, closed by fiscal theory of the price level with long-term debt and fiscal and monetary policy rules. Fiscal surpluses rise following deficits, to repay accumulated debt, but surpluses do not respond to all values of...

The fiscal theory says that the price level is determined by the ratio of nominal debt to the present value of real primary surpluses. I analyze long-term debt and optimal policy in the fiscal theory. I find that the maturity structure of the debt matters. For example, it determines whether news...

I use the valuation equation of government debt to understand fiscal and monetary policy in and following the great recession of 2008-2009, to think about whether the US is headed for a fiscal inflation, and what that inflation will look like. I emphasize that a fiscal inflation can come well...