The recent global economic crisis originated in the midst of a commodity price boom that had triggered sharp increases in inflation in many world countries. The crisis also came in the context of a rally in asset prices and large domestic imbalances in the United States. This paper uses a small...

Cross-country estimates of Taylor rules suggest that higher data uncertainty is associated with a more inertial behavior of interest rates. Data uncertainty is measured by the volatility of differences between real-time data and their revisions. Using a simple structural model with Kalman filter...

We develop a two-sector, heterogeneous-agent model with incomplete financial markets to study the distributional effects and aggregate welfare implications of alternative monetary policy rules in emerging market economies. Relative to inflation targeting, exchange rate management benefits...

Kraay (2003) documents the lack of any systematic association between monetary policy and the outcome of a speculative attack. This paper revisits Kraay's work and modifies it by introducing an improved measure of monetary policy and an additional country-specific fundamental, short-term...

We create a new measure of the political pressure faced by the Federal Reserve based on the analysis of transcripts of the Chairs' testimonies to Congress. We find that the use of non-traditional policies at low interest rates led to increased political criticism. We develop a model where the...

The U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) is expected to start raising policy interest rates in the near term and thus commence a tightening cycle for the first time in nearly a decade. The taper tantrum episode of May-June 2013 is a reminder that even a long anticipated change in Fed policies can trigger...

We identify structural vector autoregressions using narrative sign restrictions. Narrative sign restrictions constrain the structural shocks and the historical decomposition around key historical events, ensuring that they agree with the established narrative account of these episodes. Using...

Abstract Negative interest rates policies (NIRP), usually depicted in economic textbooks as an impossibility due to the prospect of infinite demand for money, are now a reality in several countries due to different reasons. But while the ZLB has been surpassed when it comes to Central Banks, it...