Recent developments in measuring the stance of monetary policy have highlighted an interesting puzzle--namely, that an unexpected tightening in monetary policy leads to an increase rather than a decrease in the price level. In this article, Nathan Balke and Kenneth Emery present evidence on the...

Empirical studies suggest that monetary policy shocks can have a sustained impact on aggregate output. How is it possible for nominal shocks to have persistent real effects? One popular explanation centers on overlapping price contracts. However, recent theoretical work has cast doubt on the...