This paper asks the following two questions: First, can a model with nominal rigidities in wage and price setting account for the average welfare costs of business cycle fluctuations identified in Gali, Gertler, and Lopez- Salido (2003)? Second, do we need to agree on a particular scheme for...

This paper studies optimal monetary policy with the nominal interest rate as the single policy instrument in an economy, where firms set prices in a staggered way without indexation and real money balances contribute separately to households' utility. The optimal deterministic steady state under...

This paper addresses the positive and normative implications of indexing risky debt to observable aggregate conditions. These issues are pursued within the context of the celebrated financial accelerator model of Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist (1999). The principal conclusions are that the...