Search Results
Working Paper
Household Debt and the Heterogeneous Effects of Forward Guidance
We develop an incomplete-markets heterogeneous agent New-Keynesian (HANK) model in which households are allowed to lend and borrow, subject to a borrowing constraint. We show that, in this framework, forward guidance, that is the promise by the central bank to lower future interest rates, can be a powerful policy tool, especially when the economy is in a liquidity trap. In our model, the power of forward guidance is amplified by three redistributive channels, absent in a representative agent new- Keynesian model (RANK) or in a HANK model without private debt. First, expected lower rates imply ...
Discussion Paper
On the Distributional Consequences of Responding Aggressively to Inflation
This post discusses the distributional consequences of an aggressive policy response to inflation using a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model. We find that, when facing demand shocks, stabilizing inflation and real activity go hand in hand, with very large benefits for households at the bottom of the wealth distribution. The converse is true however when facing supply shocks: stabilizing inflation makes real outcomes more volatile, especially for poorer households. We conclude that distributional considerations make it much more important for policy to take into account the ...
Working Paper
Labor Market Shocks and Monetary Policy
We study the positive and normative implications for inflation of employer-to-employer (EE) worker transitions by developing a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model featuring a frictional labor market with on-the-job search. We find that EE dynamics played an important role in shaping the differential inflation dynamics observed during the Great Recession and COVID-19 recoveries. Despite both recoveries sharing similar unemployment dynamics, the recovery from the Great Recession exhibited subdued EE transitions and inflation dynamics. In our model, the optimal monetary policy involves a ...
Report
Estimating HANK for Central Banks
We provide a toolkit for efficient online estimation of heterogeneous agent (HA) New Keynesian (NK) models based on Sequential Monte Carlo methods. We use this toolkit to compare the out-of-sample forecasting accuracy of a prominent HANK model, Bayer et al. (2022), to that of the representative agent (RA) NK model of Smets and Wouters (2007, SW). We find that HANK’s accuracy for real activity variables is notably inferior to that of SW. The results for consumption in particular are disappointing since the main difference between RANK and HANK is the replacement of the RA Euler equation with ...
Discussion Paper
On the Distributional Effects of Inflation and Inflation Stabilization
This post and the next discuss the distributional effects of inflation and inflation stabilization through the lenses of a theoretical model—a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model. This model combines the features of New Keynesian models that have been the workhorse for monetary policy analysis since the work of Woodford (2003) with inequality in wealth and income at the household level following the seminal contribution of Kaplan, Moll, and Violante (2018). We find that while inflation hurts everyone, it hurts the poor in particular. When the source of inflation is a supply ...