Using stochastic simulations and stability analysis, the paper compares how different monetary policy rules perform in a moderately nonlinear model with a time-varying NAIRU. Rules that perform well in linear models but implicitly embody backward-looking measures of real interest rates (such as...

This paper was prepared as part of a euro area macroeconomic model comparisons project. Four standard macroeconomic experiments are considered to illustrate the differences in dynamic adjustment properties of two versions of MULTIMOD, the IMF's multicountry macroeconomic model. One version of...

Real interest rates appear to have risen in virtually all industrialized countries relative to levels that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s. There is increasing concern that this may reflect higher public debt, which is crowding out private sector activity. Over the last two decades, there has...

Evans (1991) has demonstrated that Blanchard’s (1985) finite-horizon model obeys approximate Ricardian equivalence. We show that this result is determined largely by an unrealistic assumption that labor income grows monotonically over a consumer’s entire lifetime. Introducing more realistic...

Researchers in policymaking institutions have expended significant effort to develop a new generation of macro models with more rigorous microfoundations. This paper provides a summary of the applications of two of these models. The Global Economy Model is a quarterly model that features a large...

This paper presents a basic plan for developing a Forecast and Policy Analysis System designed to support an inflation-forecast targeting regime at a central bank. It includes discussion of the development of data management and reporting processes; the creation of a forecast team and the...

This paper examines the macroeconomic implications of life-cycle and dynastic saving behavior for closed and small, open economies. Using an extended version of Blanchard’s overlapping agents model, the analytical framework nests these two competing views, treating agents as either dynastic...

This paper develops a small model of the output-inflation process in the United States in order to examine the implications of alternative monetary policy rules. In particular, two types of policy rules are considered; a myopic rule where interest rates respond contemporaneously to output and...

This paper examines how endogenizing technological progress in a multicountry macroeconometric model affects the analysis of fiscal policies. It uses an expanded version of the IMF's multicountry model, MULTIMOD, in which total factor productivity (TFP) is endogenized as a function of domestic...

This paper develops a DSGE model for the United States that features rational inflation inertia and persistence. The model is estimated with Bayesian-estimation techniques and time-varying inflation objectives to account for movements between regimes. After showing that the model produces...