This paper develops a small forward-looking macroeconomic model where the Federal Reserve estimates the level of potential output in real time by running a regression on past output data. The Fed's perceived output gap is used as an input to the monetary policy rule while the true output gap...

This paper derives a closed-form solution for the optimal discretionary monetary policy in a small macroeconomic model that allows for varying degrees of forward-looking behavior. We show that a more forward-looking aggregate demand equation serves to attenuate the response to inflation and the...

Presented at the 2012 Economic Forecast Breakfast and Annual Meeting of the Main Line Chamber of Commerce and the Main Line Chamber Foundation, Gladwyne, PA, February 1, 2012

Economic Prospects and Monetary Policy for the New Year> 33rd Annual Economic Seminar, January 11, 2012, Rochester, New York

Presented at the Economic Forecast, The University of Delaware Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship, Newark, Delaware, February 14, 2012

The author surveys some problems in measuring inflation and examines the likely costs of anticipated and unanticipated inflation as well as the short-run costs of reducing inflation. He looks at the possibility that an inflationary bias may be implicit in the political economy aspects of the...

In this article, I discuss the broad influence of Diamond and Dybvig (1983) in the field of money and banking. My review is centered on two aspects of their sharp concept of liquidity when doing mechanism design in a simple economy with a single resource constraint. It calls into question an old...

This special issue of the Economic Quarterly is dedicated to the 1983 model of bank runs developed by Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig. Their model has been a workhorse of banking research over the last 25 years and during the recent financial crisis it has been one that researchers and...

Despite the cogent criticism that "bailing out" insolvent firms creates moral hazard, bailouts often occur in the aftermath of bank runs and other financial crises. In an environment where it is economically efficient to make illiquid investments, and where investors have private information...

This article uses a class of models of money and the payments system to inform an analysis of "mobile banking" in the context of the rapid expansion of M-PESA, a new technology in Kenya that allows payments via mobile phones (even without any access to a bank account), and currently reaches...