Every U.S. recession since 1971 has been preceded by two things: an oil price shock and an increase in the federal funds rate. Bernanke, Gertler, and Watson (1997, 2004) investigated how much oil price shocks have contributed to output growth by asking the following counterfactual question:...

We trace the consequences of an energy shock on the economy under two different monetary policy rules: a standard Taylor rule where the Fed responds to inflation and the output gap; and a Taylor rule with inertia where the Fed moves slowly to the rate predicted by the standard rule. We show that...

We document increased central bank independence within the set of industrialized nations. This increased independence can account for nearly two thirds of the improved inflation performance of these nations over the last two decades

This paper studies macro credit policies within the celebrated financial accelerator model of Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999). The focus is on borrower-based restrictions on lending such as loan-to-value (LTV) ratios. We find that the efficacy of cyclical taxes on LTV ratios depends upon...

A traditional function of the central bank is to control the price level. The fiscal theory of the price level challenges this assumption, arguing instead that the fiscal authority's budgetary policy is the primary determinant of the price level. The authors provide a critical review of the...