How does central bank conservatism affect labor market reform? In this paper we examine the economic forces at work. An increase in conservatism triggers two opposite effects. It reduces the inflation bias of discretionary monetary policy and hence the benefits of a reform. It also increases...

Recently macroeconomic researchers have begun studying models of optimal monetary policy within the Real Business Cycle (RBC) framework. A standard RBC model is augmented by New Keynesian elements like sticky prices and monopolistically competitive firms. The monetary authority acts as a social...

This paper considers the implications of adding capital as a factor of production in a stochastic DGE model with sticky prices. Particular attention is given to the role of money demand and to the form of the utility function. I consider cash-in-advance- (CIA) as well as...

Recently macroeconomists have intensified their efforts to develop models that are able to generate persistent reactions of real variables to monetary shocks in stochastic DGE models with nominal rigidities. This has proven to be quite difficult in models with price staggering only. Most papers...

Theoretical and empirical studies of different sciences suggest that an optimal committee consists of roughly 5-9 members, although it can swell mildly under specific circumstances. This paper develops a conceptual model in order to analyze the issue in case of monetary policy formulation. The...

We develop the Generalized Taylor Economy (GTE) in which there are many sectors with overlapping contracts of di§erent lengths. In economies with the same average contract length, monetary shocks will be more persistent when longer contracts are present. Using the Bils-Klenow distribution of...

A recent paper by Ruge-Murcia [European Economic Review 48 (2004), 91-107] on asymmetric central bank objectives provides a new perspective on the policy roots of inflation in developed economies. More precisely, the paper demonstrates that if the distribution of the supply shocks is normal,...

The paper derives a Taylor condition as part of the agentís equilibrium behavior in an endogenous growth monetary economy. It shows the assumptions necessary to make it almost identical to the original Taylor rule, and that it can interchangably take a money supply growth rate form. From the...

Recent research has suggested that in deriving optimal policy under discretion, policymakers should react as if there were no structural inflation persistence in order to improve welfare. This paper considers whether such a strong result extends to an inflation targeting central bank with a more...

Most analyses of the U.S. Great Moderation have been based on VAR methods, and have consistently pointed toward good luck as the main explanation for the greater macroeconomic stability of recent years. Using data generated by a New-Keynesian model in which the only source of change is the move...