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Working Paper
Comment on Eggertsson, \"What fiscal policy is effective at zero interest rates?\"
Gauti B. Eggertsson's paper (published in NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2010) represents an important contribution to the analysis of fiscal policy in the New Keynesian model when the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate is binding. The paper accomplishes a great deal. It analyzes two types of taxes on capital and labor, the investment tax credit, a sales tax, and two types of government spending. It deserves to be an important reference on fiscal policy in a binding zero lower bound. In my discussion, I focus on the subset of Eggertsson's results that initially surprised me and that I ...
Working Paper
Introducing financial frictions and unemployment into a small open economy model
The current financial crisis has made it abundantly clear that business cycle modeling can no longer abstract from financial factors. It is also clear that the current standard approach of modeling labor markets without explicit unemployment has its limitations. We extend what is becoming the standard new Keynesian model in three dimensions. First, we incorporate financial frictions in the accumulation and management of capital. Second, we model the labor market using a search and matching framework. Third, we extend the model into a small open economy setting. Finally, we estimate the model ...
Working Paper
When is the government spending multiplier large?
We argue that the government spending multiplier can be very large when the nominal interest rate is constant. We focus on a natural case in which the interest rate is constant, which is when the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates binds. For the economies that we consider it is optimal to increase government spending in response to shocks that make the zero bound binding.
Working Paper
Involuntary unemployment and the business cycle
We propose a monetary model in which the unemployed satisfy the official U.S. definition of unemployment: people without jobs who are (1) currently making concrete efforts to find work and (2) willing and able to work. In addition, our model has the property that people searching for jobs are better off if they find a job than if they do not (that is, unemployment is involuntary). We integrate our model of involuntary unemployment into the simple new Keynesian framework with no capital and use the resulting model to discuss the concept of the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment. We ...
Working Paper
DSGE models for monetary policy analysis
Monetary DSGE models are widely used because they fit the data well and can be used to address important monetary policy questions. We provide a selective review of these developments. Policy analysis with DSGE models requires using data to assign numerical values to model parameters. The paper describes and implements Bayesian moment matching and impulse response matching procedures for this purpose.
Working Paper
Monetary policy and stock market booms
Historical data and model simulations support the following conclusion: Inflation is low during stock market booms, so an interest rate rule that is too narrowly focused on inflation destabilizes asset markets and the broader economy. Adjustments to the interest rate rule can remove this source of welfare-reducing instability. For example, allowing an independent role for credit growth (beyond its role in constructing the inflation forecast) would reduce the volatility of output and asset prices.
Journal Article
Price stability: is a tough central bank enough?
What is the best way to achieve price stability? Conventional wisdom says that a tough, independent central bank is all that is necessary. However, a new view?the fiscal theory of the price level?argues that an appropriate fiscal policy is also required, no matter how tough the central bank may be. The choice of the fiscal theory versus the conventional view has significant implications for the way central banks do business.
Journal Article
Understanding the fiscal theory of the price level
Price stability is an important goal of public policy. To reach this goal, two key questions must be addressed: How can price stability be achieved? And, how much price stability is desirable? The authors review the fiscal theory of the price level, with special emphasis on its implications for the feasibility and desirability of price stability.
Conference Paper
Inside money, outside money and short-term interest rates
Conference Paper
Optimal fiscal and monetary policy: some recent results