Many central banks target an inflation rate near two percent. This essay argues that policymakers would do better to target four percent inflation. A four percent target would ease the constraints on monetary policy arising from the zero bound on interest rates, with the result that economic...

Unconventional monetary policy is often assumed to benefit banks. However, we find little supporting evidence. Rather, we find some evidence for heightened medium-term risks. First, in an event study using a novel instrument for monetary policy surprises, we do not detect clear effects of...

The recent global financial crisis illustrates that financial frictions are a significant source of volatility in the economy. This paper investigates monetary policy stabilization in an environment where financial frictions are a relevant source of macroeconomic fluctuation. We derive a measure...

This paper discusses Iceland’s Fourth Post-Program Monitoring Discussions. Iceland’s economy has grown strongly on the back of booming tourism. Real GDP grew 3.3 percent in 2013, despite a drop in investment spending. Net exports were the primary driver. High frequency indicators suggest...

We develop a simple approach to identify economic news and monetary shocks at a high frequency. The approach is used to examine financial market developments in the United States following the Federal Reserve’s May 22, 2013 taper talk suggesting that it would begin winding down its...

This paper develops an open-economy DSGE model with an optimizing banking sector to assess the role of capital flows, macro-financial linkages, and macroprudential policies in emerging Asia. The key result is that macro-prudential measures can usefully complement monetary policy. Countercyclical...

Indian food and fuel inflation has remained high for several years, and second-round effects on core inflation are estimated to be large. This paper estimates the size of second-round effects using an estimated reduced-form general equilibrium model of the Indian economy, which incorporates...

We study whether clarity of central bank inflation reports affects return volatility in financial markets. We measure clarity of reports by the Czech National Bank, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and Sveriges Riksbank using the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, a standard readability...

This paper examines the transmission mechanism through which unconventional monetary policy affects long-term interest rates. I construct a real-time measure summarizing market projections of the magnitude and duration of the Federal Reserve's Large Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP) program, and...

In this paper we examine the channels through which innovations to policy variables- policy rates or monetary aggregates-affect such macroeconomic variables as output and inflation in Sri Lanka. The effectiveness of monetary policy instruments is judged through the prism of conventional policy...