A classic question in international economics is whether it is better to use the exchange rate or the money growth rate as the instrument of monetary policy. A common argument is that the exchange rate has a natural advantage since exchange rates provide signals of policymakers? actions that are...

We present a pricing kernel that summarizes well the main features of the dynamics of interest rates and risk in postwar U.S. data and use it to uncover how the pricing kernel has moved with the short rate. Our findings imply that standard monetary models miss an essential link between the...

In standard approaches to monetary policy, interest rate rules often lead to indeterminacy. Sophisticated policies, which depend on the history of private actions and can differ on and off the equilibrium path, can eliminate indeterminacy and uniquely implement any desired competitive...

Monetary policy instruments differ in tightness - how closely they are linked to inflation - and transparency - how easily they can be monitored. Tightness is always desirable in a monetary policy instrument; when is transparency? When a government cannot commit to follow a given policy. We...

How much discretion is it optimal to give the monetary authority in setting its policy? We analyze this mechanism design question in an economy with an agreed-upon social welfare function that depends on the randomly fluctuating state of the economy. The monetary authority has private...

The rate of time preference (RTP) and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) are two important factors shaping intertemporal consumption decisions. Models in which the RTP and/or the IES differ systematically between rich and poor households have different empirical and policy...

We examine the impact of monetary injections in the Grossman-Weiss-Rotemberg Model and show that monetary shocks can lead to nominal exchange rates that are more volatile than inflation, money growth or interest rate differentials. Moreover, movements in real exchange rates following monetary...

The Ramsey approach to policy analysis finds the best competitive equilibrium given a set of available instruments. This approach is silent about unique implementation, namely designing policies so that the associated competitive equilibrium is unique. This silence is particularly problematic in...