This paper contributes to the policy evaluation literature by developing new strategies to study alternative policy rules. We compare optimal rules to simple rules within canonical monetary policy models. In our context, an optimal rule represents the solution to an intertemporal optimization...

In the empirical literature, monetary policy shocks are commonly measured as an innovation to a short-term nominal interest rate. In contrast, the majority of monetary business cycle models treats a broad monetary aggregate as the central bank's policy measure. We try overcome this disparity and...

This paper studies the effect on monetary policy of a non-homogeneous degree of competition across the (two) members of a monetary union. In particular, we assess the welfare loss brought about by the use of a simple interest rate rule that does not take into account such structural differences....

This paper studies the implication, in terms of welfare and monetary policy, of unequal degrees of competition across members of a currency area. We look at two ways in which the degree of competition in the market for goods can affect welfare in a currency area. One is through different average...

The paper studies the inflation rate associated with optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a number of standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with nominal price rigidities. While the focus is on Calvo-style nominal price contracts with a range of indexation rules for constrained...

This paper compares the welfare implications of two widely used pricing assumptions in the New-Keynesian literature: Calvo-pricing vs. Rotemberg-pricing. We show that despite the strong similarities between the two assumptions to a first order of approximation, in general they might entail...

We review the recent literature that studies new, detailed micro data on prices. We discuss implications of the new micro data for macro models. We argue that the new micro data are helpful for macro models, but not decisive. There is no simple mapping from the frequency of price changes in...

This paper presents a model in which price setting firms decide what to pay attention to, subject to a constraint on information flow. When idiosyncratic conditions are more variable or more important than aggregate conditions, firms pay more attention to idiosyncratic conditions than to...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the limits of the "originate to distribute" model of banking, but its nexus with the macroeconomy and monetary policy remains unexplored. I build a DSGE model with banks (along the lines of Holmström and Tirole [28] and Parlour and Plantin [39]) and...

The literature has shown that product market frictions and firms dynamic play a crucial role in reconciling standard DSGE with several stylized facts. This paper studies optimal monetary policy in a DSGE model with sticky prices and oligopolistic competition. In this model firms' monopolistic...