This paper makes two contributions to the literature. First, it explores the role of monetary policy in generating Pigou cycles. Second, the paper provides a partial resolution of the comovement problem associated with monetary policy shocks. The paper estimates a two sector dynamic new...

In macroeconomics, life-cycle models are typically used to address exclusively life-cycle issues. This paper shows that modeling the life-cycle may be important when addressing public policy issues, in this case the welfare costs of inflation. In the representative agent model, the optimal...

Recent monetary history has been characterized by monetary authorities that appear to shift periodically between distinct policy regimes associated with higher or lower average rates of money creation. As policy regimes are not directly observable and as the rate of monetary expansion varies for...

A chief goal of the Pigou cycle literature is to generate a boom in response to news of a future increase in productivity, and a bust if this improvement does not in fact take place. We nd that monetary policy can generate Pigou cycles in a two sector model with durables and non-durables, and...

Based on a two sector dynamic new Keynesian model with sticky prices, this paper makes two contributions to the Pigou cycle literature. First, the paper quantifies the contribution of `news shocks' -- signals of future productivity changes. Maximum likelihood estimates indicate that nondurable...

Capturing the boom phase of Pigou cycles and resolving the comovement problem requires positive sectoral comovement. This paper addresses these observations using a two sector New Keynesian model. Price rigidities dampen movements in the relative price of durables following a monetary policy...

In a neoclassical growth model with life-cycle households in which money is held to satisfy a cash-in-advance constraint, the optimal steady state inflation rate is not the Friedman rule -- it is in excess of $20\%$. Lump-sum, age-independent money injections twist and flatten the lifetime...