The timelessly optimal monetary policy proposed by Woodford (2003) may be dominated by alternative timeless policies. We provide a formal justification for these alternative policies. We demonstrate why discount rates do not matter and establish that optimizing over the unconditional expectation...

We discuss the issue of time consistency of monetary policy. We develop a simple and intuitive procedure to derive analytically the unconditionally optimal (UO) policy in a general linear-quadratic set-up, a perspective stressed by Taylor (1979) and Whiteman (1986). We compare the UO perspective...

Collateral constraints widely used in models of financial crises feature a pecuniary externality: Agents do not internalize how borrowing decisions taken in "good times" affect collateral prices during a crisis. We show that agents in a competitive equilibrium borrow more than a financial...

Collateral constraints widely used in models of financial crises feature a pecuniary externality: Agents do not internalize how borrowing decisions taken in "good times" affect collateral prices during a crisis. We show that agents in a competitive equilibrium borrow more than a financial...

This paper explores the effect of time varying velocity in a transition to price stability. Nonstationary velocity, expressed as function of consumption, is made endogenous in Ireland's (1997) model. We find that the disinflationary booms found by Ball (1994) may or may not disappear; and also...

We analyze business cycle implications of oil price uncertainty in an oil-importing small open economy, where oil is used for both consumption and production. In our framework, higher volatility in oil prices works through two main channels. On the one hand, it makes the marginal product of...

This paper explores the effect of time varying velocity in a transition to price stability. Nonstationary velocity, expressed as function of consumption, is made endogenous in Ireland's (1997) model. We find that the disinflationary booms found by Ball (1994) may or may not disappear; and also...

In this paper we study and quantify the e¤ects of a disinflationary policy on output and welfare. Our focus is the policy question of the optimal response to low inflation.The analysis takes place in the context of a DSGE model with sticky prices, time varying velocity and imperfect...

The unconditional expectation of social welfare is often used to assess alternative macroeconomic policy rules in applied quantative research. It is shown that it is generally possible to derive a linear-quadratic problem that approximates the exact non-linear porblem where the unconditional...

This paper establishes that one can generally obtain a purely quadratic approximation to the unconditional expectation of social welfare when the steady-state is distorted. A specific example is provided employing a canonical New Keynesian model. Unlike in the non-distorted steady state case,...