This paper analyzes how the formation of expectations constrains monetary and fiscal policy design. Economic agents have imperfect knowledge about the economic environment and the policy regime in place. Households and firms learn about the policy regime using historical data. Regime uncertainty...

This paper addresses the problem of multiple equilibria in a model of time-consistent monetary policy. The author suggests that the problem originates in the assumption that agents have rational expectations and proposes several alternative restrictions on expectations that allow the monetary...

Motivated by recent developments in the bounded rationality and strategic complementarity literatures, we examine an intentionally simple and stylized aggregative economic model when the assumptions of fully rational expectations and no strategic interactions are relaxed. We show that small...

This paper develops algorithms that solve for optimal discretionary and optimal pre-commitment policies in rational-expectations models. The techniques developed are simpler to apply than existing methods; they do not require identifying and separating predetermined variables from jump...

Ball (1997) shows using a small closed economy model that nominal GDP targeting can lead to instability. This paper extends Ball's model to uncover the role inflation expectations play in generating this instability. By changing the process by which inflation expectations are formed in the...

One of the more puzzling results in the expectations hypothesis (EH) testing literature is the Campbell-Shiller paradox. In an influential paper, Campbell and Shiller (1991) found that “the slope of the term structure almost always gives a forecast in the wrong direction for the short-term...

Traditionally, monetary policy has been conducted under a veil of secrecy. In its landmark Freedom of Information Act case, the Federal Reserve argued that it needed to delay the disclosure of its policy decision, claiming that immediate disclosure would cause the market to overreact or react in...

A comparison of the performance of forecasts by economists (the Livingston survey), households (the Michigan Survey of Consumer Finances), and a time series model (ARIMA).