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Working Paper
Monetary policy response to oil price shocks
How should monetary authorities react to an oil price shock? This paper argues that a meaningful trade-off between stabilizing inflation and the welfare relevant output gap arises in a distorted economy once one recognizes (1) that oil (energy) cannot be easily substituted by other factors, (2) that monopolistic competition implies that production is suboptimally low in the steady state, and (3) that increases in oil prices also directly affect consumption by raising the price of fuel, heating oil, and other energy sources. While the first two conditions are necessary to introduce a ...
Working Paper
Should central banks lean against changes in asset prices?
How should monetary policy be conducted in the presence of endogenous feedback loops between asset prices, firms? financial health, and economic activity? We reconsider this question in the context of the financial accelerator model and show that, when the level of natural output is inefficient, the optimal monetary policy under commitment leans considerably against movements in asset prices and risk premia. We demonstrate that an endogenous feedback loop is crucial for this result and that price stability is otherwise quasi-optimal absent this feature. We also show that the optimal policy ...