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Working Paper
Optimal Unemployment Insurance and International Risk Sharing
We discuss how cross-country unemployment insurance can be used to improve international risk sharing. We use a two-country business cycle model with incomplete financial markets and frictional labor markets where the unemployment insurance scheme operates across both countries. Cross-country insurance through the unemployment insurance system can be achieved without affecting unemployment outcomes. The Ramsey-optimal policy however prescribes a more countercyclical replacement rate when international risk sharing concerns enter the unemployment insurance trade-off. We calibrate our model to ...
Working Paper
Asset Price Learning and Optimal Monetary Policy
We characterize optimal monetary policy when agents are learning about endogenous asset prices. Boundedly rational expectations induce inefficient equilibrium asset price fluctuations which translate into inefficient aggregate demand fluctuations. We find that the optimal policy raises interest rates when expected capital gains, and the level of current asset prices, is high. The optimal policy does not eliminate deviations of asset prices from their fundamental value. When monetary policymakers are information-constrained, optimal policy can be reasonably approximated by simple interest rate ...
Working Paper
A Comprehensive Empirical Evaluation of Biases in Expectation Formation
We revisit predictability of forecast errors in macroeconomic survey data, which is often taken as evidence of behavioral biases at odds with rational expectations. We argue that to reject rational expectations, one must be able to predict forecast errors out of sample. However, the regressions used in the literature often perform poorly out of sample. The models seem unstable and could not have helped to improve forecasts with access only to available information. We do find some notable exceptions to this finding, in particular mean bias in interest rate forecasts, that survive our ...
Working Paper
How Robust Are Makeup Strategies to Key Alternative Assumptions?
We analyze the robustness of makeup strategies—policies that aim to offset, at least in part, past misses of inflation from its objective—to alternative modeling assumptions, with an emphasis on the role of inflation expectations. We survey empirical evidence on the behavior of shorter-run and long-run inflation expectations. Using simulations from the FRB/US macroeconomic model, we find that makeup strategies can moderately offset the real effects of adverse economic shocks, even when much of the public is uninformed about the monetary strategy. We also discuss the robustness of makeup ...
Working Paper
A Comprehensive Empirical Evaluation of Biases in Expectation Formation
We revisit predictability of forecast errors in macroeconomic survey data, which is often taken as evidence of behavioral biases at odds with rational expectations. We argue that to reject rational expectations, one must be able to predict forecast errors out of sample. However, the regressions used in the literature often perform poorly out of sample. The models seem unstable and could not have helped to improve forecasts with access only to available information. We do find some notable exceptions to this finding, in particular mean bias in interest rate forecasts, that survive our ...
Working Paper
The Natural Rate of Interest Through a Hall of Mirrors
Prevailing explanations of persistently low interest rates appeal to a secular decline in the natural interest rate, or r-star, due to factors outside monetary policy's control. We propose informational feedback via learning as an alternative explanation for persistently low rates, where monetary policy plays a crucial role. We extend the canonical New Keynesian model to an incomplete information setting where the central bank and the private sector learn about r-star and infer each other's information from observed macroeconomic outcomes. An informational feedback loop emerges when each side ...
Working Paper
The Factor Structure of Disagreement
We estimate a Bayesian three-dimensional dynamic factor model on the individual forecasts in the Survey of Professional Forecasters. The factors extract the most important dimensions along which disagreement comoves across variables. We interpret our results through a general semi-structural dispersed information model. The two most important factors in the data describe disagreement about aggregate supply and demand, respectively. Up until the Great Moderation, supply disagreement was dominant, while in recent decades and particularly during the Great Recession, demand disagreement was most ...
Working Paper
Impulse-Based Computation of Policy Counterfactuals
We propose an efficient procedure to solve for policy counterfactuals in linear models with occasionally binding constraints. The procedure does not require knowledge of the structural or reduced-form equations of the model, its state variables, or its shock processes. Forecasts of the variables entering the policy problem, and impulse response functions of these variables to anticipated policy shocks under an arbitrary policy, constitute sufficient information to construct valid counterfactuals. We show how to compute solutions for instrument rules and optimal discretionary and commitment ...
Working Paper
The Role of Learning for Asset Prices and Business Cycles
I examine the implications of learning-based asset pricing in a model in which firms face credit constraints that depend partly on their market value. Agents learn about stock prices, but have conditionally model-consistent expectations otherwise. The model jointly matches key asset price and business cycle statistics, while the combination of financial frictions and learning produces powerful feedback between asset prices and real activity, adding substantial amplification. The model reproduces many patterns of forecast error predictability in survey data that are inconsistent with rational ...
Working Paper
A Comprehensive Empirical Evaluation of Biases in Expectation Formation
We revisit predictability of forecast errors in macroeconomic survey data, which is often taken as evidence of behavioral biases at odds with rational expectations. We argue that to reject rational expectations, one must be able to predict forecast errors out of sample. However, the regressions used in the literature often perform poorly out of sample. The models seem unstable and could not have helped to improve forecasts with access only to available information. We do find some notable exceptions to this finding, in particular mean bias in interest rate forecasts, that survive our ...