The author shows that the short-term nominal interest rate can anchor private-sector expectations into low inflation more precisely, into the best equilibrium reputation can sustain. He introduces nominal asset markets in an infinite horizon version of the Barro-Gordon model. The author then...

Remarks at the New College of Florida 44th Annual Commencement, Sarasota, Florida.

This paper studies household beliefs during the recent US housing boom. To characterize the heterogeneity in households’ views about housing and the economy, we perform a cluster analysis on survey responses at different stages of the boom. The estimation always finds a small cluster of...

We study a simple, microfounded macroeconomic system in which the monetary authority employs a Taylor-type policy rule. We analyze situations in which the self-confirming equilibrium is unique and learnable according to Bullard and Mitra (2002). We explore the prospects for the use of ‘large...

Inflation magnifies the distorting effects of taxation when the tax treatment of interest income and expense is not fully indexed to inflation. The distortion involves a real interest tax wedge which is the difference between the real before tax interest rate that influences fully taxed...

Among the many unusual aspects of life in a very-low-inflation economy that might have been discussed, attention here has focussed on the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. That was a wise choice, I think, for the conduct of monetary policy at or near zero nominal interest rates raises...

Operating monetary policy in a low-inflation environment is probably easier, and is certainly more constructive for the economy, than operating it in a high inflation environment.