This paper discusses the likely evolution of U.S. inflation in the near and medium term on the basis of (1) past U.S. experience with very low levels of inflation, (2) the most recent Japanese experience with deflation, and (3) recent U.S. micro evidence on downward nominal wage rigidity. Our...

The implementation of economic reforms under new economic policies in India was associated with a paradigmatic shift in monetary and fiscal policy. While monetary policies were solely aimed at "price stability" in the neoliberal regime, fiscal policies were characterized by the objective of...

This paper presents a simple Ramsey-type model example where two infinitely-living agents have same utility function except for time preference, and shows that equilibrium is indeterminate that is to be interpreted as being non-existent. The issues regarding New Keynesian transversality...

I characterize optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a stochastic New Keynesian model when nominal interest rates may occasionally hit the zero lower bound. The benevolent policymaker controls the short-term nominal interest rate and the level of government spending. Under discretionary policy,...

In this paper, we analyse nominal exchange rate and price dynamics after risk shocks with short-term interest rates constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB). We show with a stylized theoretical model that temporary risk shocks may lead to permanent shifts of the exchange rate and the price...

We show that firms' nominal required returns to capital (i.e., their discount rates) are sticky with respect to expected inflation. Such nominally sticky discount rates imply that increases in expected inflation directly lower firms' real discount rates and thereby raise real investment. We...

This paper analyses the optimal monetary policy under incomplete exchange rate pass-through and asymmetric price rigidity. In a general equilibrium sticky price model of an open economy we find that the optimal interest rate rule is to respond to all types of shocks in an economy: real exchange...

This paper characterizes the optimal inflation buffer consistent with a zero lower bound on nominal interest rates in a New Keynesian sticky-price model. It is shown that a purely forward-looking version of the model that abstracts from inflation inertia would significantly underestimate the...

I study how the zero bound on nominal interest rates affects optimal discretionary monetary policy within the standard New Keynesian framework. I find that the non-negativity constraint implies an optimal policy which is more expansionary and more aggressive near the zero bound compared to the...