A commonly held view is that the life of a monetary policy maker forced to operate under discretion can be improved by the authorities delegating monetary policy objectives that are different from the social welfare function (including interest rate smoothing, price-level targeting and...

Active interest rate policy is frequently recommended based on its merits in reducing macroeconomic volatility and being a simple and transparent policy device. In a standard New Keynesian model,we show that an even simpler policy, namely an interest rate peg, can be welfare enhancing: The...

Non-coordinated monetary policy is analyzed in a stochastic two-country general equilibrium model. Non-coordinated equilibria are compared in two cases: one where policy is set in terms of state-contingent money supply rules, and one where policy is set in terms of state-contingent nominal...

This paper uses a New-Keynesian model with multiple monetary assets to show that if the choice of instrument is based solely on its propensity to predict macroeconomic targets, a central bank may choose an inferior policy instrument. We compare a standard interest rate rule to a k-percent rule...

The recent global financial crisis, the Great Recession and the subsequent implementation of a variety of unconventional policy measures have raised the issue of how to correctly measure the stance of monetary policy when policy interest rates reach the zero lower bound (ZLB). In this paper, we...