We explore the effects of forward guidance at the zero lower bound when there is uncertainty over the lift-off date arising from: (i) the imperfect credibility of time-inconsistent forward-guidance promises; (ii) incomplete communication. We use a simple New Keynesian model to demonstrate that a...

Using a structural factor-augmented VAR and a large novel database of daily time series, we examine the impact of unconventional monetary policy on financial and economic uncertainty. Our findings indicate that expansionary unconventional monetary shocks lead to large reductions in uncertainty...

We study the relationship between monetary policy and long-term rates in a structural, general equilibrium model estimated on both macro and yields data from the United States. Regime shifts in the conditional variance of productivity shocks, or "uncertainty shocks", are an important model...

The strongest predictor of changes in the Fed Funds rate in the period 1982–2008 was the layoff rate. That fact is puzzling from the perspective of representative-agent models of the economy, which imply that the welfare gains of stabilizing employment fluctuations are small. This paper...

Large risk shocks give rise to cost-push effects in the canonical New Keynesian model. At the same time, monetary policy becomes less effective. Therefore, stochastic volatility introduces occasional trade-offs for monetary policy between inflation and output gap stabilisation. The cost-push...

It is well known that a tightening or easing of the United States' monetary policy affects financial markets in emerging economies. This paper argues that uncertainty about future monetary policy is a separate transmission channel. We focus on the taper tantrum episode in 2013, a period with an...

Even when the policy rate is currently not constrained by its effective lower bound (ELB), the possibility that the policy rate will become constrained in the future lowers today's inflation by creating tail risk in future inflation and thus reducing expected inflation. In an empirically rich...

We build a New Keynesian business-cycle model with rich household heterogeneity. A central feature is that matching frictions render labor-market risk countercyclical and endogenous to monetary policy. Our main result is that a majority of households prefer substantial stabilization of...