In his 1999 monograph The Conquest of American Inflation Tom Sargent describes how a policymaker, who applies a constant-gain algorithm in estimating the Phillips curve, can fall into the grip of an induction problem: concluding on the basis of reduced-form evidence that the trade-off between...

This paper derives and presents mean leads and lags as well as patterns of relative importance weights implied by the PAC (polynomial-adjustment-cost) error-correction equations which form the core of the FRB/US model at the Federal Reserve Board. Relative importance weights measure the...

This paper explores Knightian model uncertainty as a possible explanation of the considerable difference between estimated interest rate rules and optimal feedback descriptions of monetary policy. We focus on two types of uncertainty: (i) unstructured model uncertainty reflected in additive...

The costs of disinflation are explored using the Board's new sticky-price rational expectations macroeconometric model of the U.S. economy, FRB/US. The model nests both model consistent and `restricted-information rational' expectations. Monetary policy is governed by interest-rate reaction...

The monetary policy rules that are widely discussed--notably the Taylor rule--are remarkable for their simplicity. One reason for the apparent preference for simple ad hoc rules over optimal rules might be the assumption of full information maintained in the computation of an optimal rule....