his paper considers the properties of an optimal monetary policy when households are subject to counter-cyclical uninsured income shocks. We develop a tractable incomplete-markets model with Calvo price setting. In our model the welfare cost of business cycles is large when the variance of...

This paper quantifies the role of alternative shocks in accounting for the recent declines in Japanese saving rates and interest rates and provides some projections about their future course. We consider three distinct sources of variation in saving rates and real interest rates: changes in...