Recent monetary policy experience suggests a simple diagnostic for models of monetary non-neutrality. Suppose the central bank pegs the nominal interest rate below steady state for a reasonably short period of time. Familiar intuition suggests that this should be modestly inflationary, and a...

This paper revisits the size of the fiscal multiplier. The experiment is a fiscal expansion under the assumption of a pegged nominal rate of interest. We demonstrate that a quantitatively important issue is the articulation of the exit from the policy experiment. If the monetary-fiscal expansion...

"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 past two decades. "("JEL "E42, E58) Copyright (c) 2008 Western Economic...

It is well known that hyperinflationary equilibria typically exist in an infinite-horizon monetary model with an exogenous money growth rule. This note demonstrates the effect of money demand timing on the nature of these equilibria.

This paper develops a computable general equilibrium model in which endogenous agency costs can potentially alter business-cycle dynamics. A principal conclusion is that the agency-cost model replicates the empirical fact that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons....

There is growing evidence that the empirical Phillips curve within the US has changed significantly since the early 1980’s. In particular, inflation persistence has declined sharply. The paper demonstrates that this decline is consistent with a standard Dynamic New Keynesian (DNK) model in...

This paper addresses the positive 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 include: (1) the estimated...

This paper argues that variations of extant general-equilibrium monetary models are capable of generating real-time economic forecasts comparable in accuracy to those generated under the standard Federal Reserve Board staff methodology. Specifically, the authors argue that, over the period from...