The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to give rise to aggregate fluctuations due to self-fulfilling expectations. In response to this...

A growing empirical and theoretical literature argues in favor of specifying monetary policy in the form of Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules. That is, rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as an increasing function of inflation with a slope greater than one around an intended...

This paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policy.

This paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policy under sticky product prices. The theoretical framework is a stochastic production economy without capital. The government finances an exogenous stream of purchases by levying distortionary income taxes, printing money, and issuing one-period...

This paper compares the welfare costs of business cycles in a dollarized economy to those arising in economies with different monetary arrangements. The alternative monetary policy regimes studied belong to three broad families: devaluation rate rules, inflation targeting, and money growth rate...

The small open economy model with incomplete asset markets features a steady state that depends on initial conditions. In addition, equilibrium dynamics posses a random walk component. A number of modifications to the standard model have been proposed to induce stationarity. This paper presents...

As the millennium draws to an end, the threat posed by the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem is inducing vast private and public spending on its remediation. In this paper, we model the Y2K problem as an anticipated, permanent loss in output whose magnitude can be lessened by investing resources in...

This paper analyzes the implications of a balanced-budget fiscal policy rule for price-level determination in a cash-in-advance economy under three alternative monetary policy regimes. It shows that the price level is indeterminate under a nominal interest rate peg and determinate under a money...

Since John Taylor's (1993) seminal paper, a large literature has argued that active interest rate feedback rules, that is, rules that respond to increases in inflation with a more than one-for-one increase in the nominal interest rate, are stabilizing. In this paper, we argue that once the zero...

A key result of a recent literature that focuses on the global consequences of Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules is that such rules in combination with the zero bound on nominal interest rates can lead to unintended liquidity traps. An immediate question posed by this result is whether...