Search Results
Working Paper
On the use of market-based probabilities for policy decisions
This paper seeks to delimit conditions so that market-based probabilities provide all the information the policymaker needs to arrive at the best possible decision. Although there are practical considerations regarding how to derive market-based probabilities from financial prices, the author confines the discussion to a theoretical analysis that assumes no impediment to obtaining the market-based probabilities.
Journal Article
Output gaps: uses and limitation
The concept of resource slack is central to understanding the dynamics between employment, output, and inflation. But what amount of slack is consistent with price stability? To answer this question, economists define baseline values for unemployment and output known as the natural rate of unemployment and potential output. The concepts of output and employment gaps can be useful to economists in several ways. First, they often guide the inflation forecasts of Federal Reserve staff and other researchers and market participants. Second, some economists argue that employment gaps are a useful ...
Report
Endogenous productivity and development accounting
Cross-country data reveal that the per capita incomes of the richest countries exceed those of the poorest countries by a factor of thirty-five. We formalize a model with embodied technical change in which newer, more productive vintages of capital coexist with older, less productive vintages. A reduction in the cost of investment raises both the quantity and productivity of capital simultaneously. The model induces a simple relationship between the relative price of investment goods and per capita income. Using cross-country data on the prices of investment goods, we find that the model does ...
Working Paper
The perils of nominal targets
A monetary authority can be committed to pursuing an inflation, price-level, or nominal output target yet systematically fail to achieve the specified goals. Constrained by the zero lower bound on the policy rate, the monetary authority is unable to implement its objectives when private-sector expectations stray away from the target in the first place. Low-inflation expectations become self-fulfilling, leading to multiple Markov equilibria. Private-sector expectations are anchored on a unique Markov equilibrium if the monetary authority is given a strong stabilization goal for the policy ...
Working Paper
A TRACTABLE MODEL OF THE DEMAND FOR RESERVES UNDER NONLINEAR REMUNERATION SCHEMES
We propose a tractable model of the demand for reserves under nonlinear remuneration schemes that can encompass quota systems and voluntary reserve target frameworks, among other possibilities. We show how such remuneration schemes have several favorable properties regarding interest-rate control by the central bank. In particular, wider tolerance bands can reduce rate volatility due to variations in the supply of reserves, both large and small, although they may curtail trading in the interbank market.
Report
Can U.S. monetary policy fall (again) into an expectation trap?
We provide a tractable model to study monetary policy under discretion. We restrict our analysis to Markov equilibria. We find that for all parametrizations with an equilibrium inflation rate of about 2 percent, there is a second equilibrium with an inflation rate just above 10 percent. Thus, the model can simultaneously account for the low and high inflation episodes in the United States. We carefully characterize the set of Markov equilibria along the parameter space and find our results to be robust, suggesting that expectation traps are more than just a theoretical curiosity.
Working Paper
Of nutters and doves
We argue that there are conditions such that any inflation targeting regime is preferable to full policy discretion, even if long-run inflation rates are identical across regimes. The key observation is that strict inflation targeting outperforms the discretionary policy response to sufficiently persistent shocks. Under full policy discretion, inflation expectations over the medium term respond to the shock and thereby amplify its impact on output. As a result, little output stabilization is achieved at the cost of large and persistent inflation fluctuations.
Working Paper
The Perils of Nominal Targets
A monetary authority can be committed to pursuing an inflation, price-level, or nominal-GDP target yet systematically fail to achieve the prescribed goal. Con- strained by the zero lower bound on the policy rate, the monetary authority is unable to implement its objectives when private-sector expectations stray far enough from the target. Low-inflation expectations become self-fulfilling, resulting in an additional Markov equilibrium in which the monetary authority falls short of the nominal target, average output is below its efficient level, and the policy rate is typically low. Introducing ...
Working Paper
Geometric Methods for Finite Rational Inattention
We present a geometric approach to the finite Rational Inattention (RI) model, recasting it as a convex optimization problem with reduced dimensionality that is well-suited to numerical methods. We provide an algorithm that outperforms existing RI computation techniques in terms of both speed and accuracy. We also introduce methods to quantify the impact of numerical inaccuracy on the behavioral predictions and to produce robust predictions regarding the most frequently implemented actions.
Report
A model of the federal funds market: yesterday, today, and tomorrow
The landscape of the federal funds market changed drastically in the wake of the Great Recession as large-scale asset purchase programs left depository institutions awash with reserves and new regulations made it more costly for these institutions to lend. As traditional levers for implementing monetary policy became less effective, the Federal Reserve introduced new tools to implement the target range for the federal funds rate, changing this landscape even more. In this paper, we develop a model that is capable of reproducing the main features of the federal funds market, as observed before ...