A simple open economy asset pricing model can account for the house price and current account dynamics in the G7 over the years 2001-2008. The model features rational households, but assumes that households entertain subjective beliefs about price behavior and update these using Bayes' rule. The...

We reconsider the role of an inflation conservative central banker in a setting with distortionary taxation. To do so, we assume monetary and fiscal policy are decided by independent authorities that do not abide to past commitments. If the two authorities make policy decisions simultaneously,...

We present a unified and quantitatively credible explanation for the joint behavior of stock prices and business cycles. We consider a frictionless production economy with time-separable consumption preferences and perfectly áexible labor supply. Investors extrapolate past stock price gains but...

Sticky price models featuring heterogeneous firms and systematic firm-level productivity trends deliver radically different predictions for the optimal inflation rate than their popular homogenous-firm counterparts: (i) the optimal steady-state inflation rate generically differs from zero and...

Many central banks worldwide announce numerical inflation targets, typically ranging from zero to two percent in advanced economies and higher in developing countries. Historically, a significant gap existed between the inflation targets pursued by central banks and those recommended by academic...

Using micro price data underlying the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices in France, Germany and Italy, we estimate relative price trends over the product life cycle and show that minimizing price and mark-up distortions in the presence of these trends requires targeting a significantly positive...

Using micro price data underlying the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices in France, Germany and Italy, we estimate relative price trends over the product life cycle and show that minimizing price and mark-up distortions in the presence of these trends requires targeting a significantly positive...