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Working Paper
Opportunistic and deliberate disinflation under imperfect credibility
On strategy for disinflation prescribes a deliberate path towards low inflation. A contrasting opportunistic approach eschews deliberate action and instead waits for unforeseen shocks to reduce inflation. This paper compares the ability of these two approaches to achieve disinflation-and at what cost. We analyze these issues using the Federal Reserve's FRB/US model, which allows alternative assumptions to be made about expectations held by agents in the economy; hence, the credibility of the central bank can be considered in assessing the cost of deliberate and opportunistic disinflation.
Working Paper
Do noisy data exacerbate cyclical volatility?
How does the additional uncertainty associated with noisy economic data affect business cycle fluctuations? I use a simple variant of the neoclassical growth model to show that the answer depends crucially on the assumed expectation-formation capabilities of agents. Under efficient signal extracting, noisy economic indicators dampen cyclical volatility. The opposite occurs when agents follow a simple bounded rational strategy.
Working Paper
Measuring equilibrium real interest rates: what can we learn from yields on indexed bonds?
What does the level of the real interest rates tell us about where the economy, or one's portfolio, is headed? The answer to this question depends on one's estimate of the ``equilibrium'' value of real interest rates, a measure that is unfortunately not directly observed in the market place. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of some of the existing approaches to defining and measuring equilibrium real rates and introduce a novel method based on yields on the U.S. Treasury's inflation-indexed securities (TIIS). I discuss a simple framework for analyzing TIIS yields and illustrate how ...
Working Paper
Expectations, learning and the costs of disinflation: experiments using the FRB/US model
The costs of disinflation are explored using the Board's new sticky-price rational expectations macroeconometric model of the U.S. economy, FRB/US. The model nests both model consistent and `restricted-information rational' expectations. Monetary policy is governed by interest-rate reaction functions of which two are considered: the well-known Taylor rule and another rule that is more aggressive and richer in its specification, estimated using data for the last 15 years. Agents are required to learn of shifts of the inflation target using linear updating rules. The simulated costs of ...
Working Paper
Understanding credit derivatives and their potential to synthesize riskless assets
The credit derivatives market is emerging as a potentially important new development that may help shape the overall financial markets in the years to come. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the credit derivatives market and assess its future potential in the creation of private-sector instruments that are virtually free of default risk, and, thus, may be appealing to investors who currently favor the safety of U.S. Treasury securities.
Working Paper
Making news: financial market effects of Federal Reserve disclosure practices
As recently as early 1994, market participants had to infer the stance of U.S. monetary policy according to the type and size of the open market operations conducted by the Federal Reserve's Trading Desk. Thus, investors were exposed to uncertainty about both the timing and the motivation for monetary policy actions. Since then, changes in disclosure practices regarding monetary policy decisions have potentially mitigated both types of uncertainty. We examine the effects of the greater openness and transparency of these new practices on the way a wide array of financial market instruments ...
Working Paper
Interest rates as options: assessing the markets' view of the liquidity trap
Nominal short term interest rates have been low in the United States, so low that some have wondered whether the federal funds rate is likely to hit its lower bound at 0 percent. Such a scenario, which some economists have called the liquidity trap, would imply that the Federal Reserve could no longer lower short-term interest rates to counter any deflationary tendencies in the economy. In this paper, I use an affine term structure model to infer what interest rates tell us about the probability, as assessed by financial market participants, of such an event taking place. I also examine ...
Working Paper
Heterogeneous forecasts and aggregate dynamics
Motivated by issues raised in both the finance and economics literatures, I construct a dynamic general equilibrium model where agents use differing degrees of sophistication when forecasting future economic conditions. All agents solve standard dynamic optimization problems and face strategic complementarity in production, but some solve their inference problems based on simple forecasting rules of thumb. Assuming a hierarchical information structure similar to the one in Townsend's (1983) model of informationally dispersed markets, I show that even a minority of rule-of-thumb forecasters ...
Working Paper
Opportunistic and deliberate disinflation under imperfect credibility
One strategy for disinflation prescribes a deliberate path towards low inflation. A contrasting opportunistic approach eschews deliberate action and instead waits for unforeseen shocks to reduce inflation. This paper compares the ability of these two approaches to achieve disinflation---and at what cost. We analyze these issues using the Federal Reserve's FRB/US model, which allows alternative assumptions to be made about expectations held by agents in the economy; hence, the credibility of the central bank can be considered in assessing the cost of deliberate and opportunistic disinflations.