Empirical evidence suggests consumers rely on their shopping experiences to form beliefs about inflation. In other words, they "learn by shopping". I introduce this empirical observation as an informational friction in the New Keynesian model and use it to study its consequences for the...

We show that price level stabilization is not optimal in an economy where agents have incomplete knowledge about the policy implemented and try to learn it. A systematically more accommodative policy than what agents expect generates short term gains without triggering an abrupt loss of...

The main advantage of price level stabilization compared with inflation stabilization rests on the central bank's ability to shape expectations. We show that stabilizing prices is no longer optimal when the central bank can shape expectations of agents with incomplete knowledge, who have to...

We show that price level stabilization is not optimal in an economy where agents have incomplete knowledge about the policy implemented and try to learn it. A systematically more accommodative policy than what agents expect generates short term gains without triggering an abrupt loss of...

We show that price level stabilization is not optimal in an economy where agents have incomplete knowledge about the policy implemented and try to learn it. A systematically more accommodative policy than what agents expect generates short term gains without triggering an abrupt loss of...

A fundamentals based monetary policy rule, which would be the optimal monetary policy without commitment when private agents have perfectly rational expectations, is unstable if in fact these agents follow standard adaptive learning rules. This problem can be overcome if private expectations are...

We study zero interest-rate policy in response to a large negative demand shock when long-run expectations can fall over time. Because falling expectations make monetary policy less effective by raising real interest rates, the optimal forward guidance policy makes large front-loaded promises to...

This paper considers the implications of an important source of model misspecification for the design of monetary policy rules: the assumed manner of expectations formation. Following a considerable literature on learning, it is assumed that private agents seek to maximize their objectives...

In this paper we examine the optimal level of central bank activism in a standard model of monetary policy with uncertainty, learning and strategic interactions. We calibrate the model using G7 data and find that the presence of strategic interactions between the central bank and private agents...

This study examines the expectational stability of the rational expectations equilibria (REE) under alternative Taylor rules when trend inflation is non-zero. We find that when trend inflation is high, the REE is likely to be expectationally unstable. This result holds true regardless of the...