This paper examines the optimal monetary policy under discretion using a small macroeconomic model that allows for varying degrees of forward-looking behavior. We quantify how forward-looking behavior affects the optimal response to inflation and the output gap in the central bank's interest...

We analyze the effects of social learning in a widely-studied monetary policy context. Social learning might be viewed as more descriptive of actual learning behavior in complex market economies. Ideas about how best to forecast the economy's state vector are initially heterogeneous. Agents can...

This paper makes changes in monetary policy rules (or regimes) endogenous. Changes are triggered when certain endogenous variables cross specified thresholds. Rational expectations equilibria are examined in three models of threshold switching to illustrate that (i) expectations formation...

This paper makes changes in monetary policy rules (or regimes) endogenous. Changes are triggered when certain endogenous variables cross specified thresholds. Rational expectations equilibria are examined in three models of threshold switching to illustrate that (i) expectations formation...

We discuss the Taylor rule near low inflation and interest rates. Using an additional option like term in the loss function, our approach extends the simple Taylor rule to one with an asymmetric response near very low inflation rates. Once calibrated, this payoff profile gives an exact, and...

This paper estimates a DSGE model with learning to reexamine the evidence on time variation in post-war U.S. monetary policy. Several papers document a regime switch, by showing that policy changed from 'passive' and destabilizing in the pre-1979 period to 'active' and stabilizing in the...

In a small open economy model with traded and non-traded goods this paper characterizes conditions under which interest rate rules induce aggregate instability by generating multiple equilibria. These conditions depend not only on how aggressively the rule responds to inflation, but also on the...

The design of monetary policy depends on the targeting strategy adopted by the central bank. This strategy describes a set of policy preferences, which are actually the structural parameters to analyse monetary policy making. Accordingly, we develop a calibration method to estimate a central...

When base velocity is a stable function of the Federal funds rate (FFR), the money base-nominal GDP targeting rule (McCallum rule) can be re-parameterised and presented in terms of FFR as the policy instrument. Comparison of this McCallum modified policy rule with the popular Taylor rule...

Many researchers have found that the lagged interest rate enters estimated monetary policy rules with overwhelming significance. However, a recent paper by Rudebusch (2002) argues that the lagged interest rate is not a fundamental component of the U.S. policy rule, and that its significance...