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Working Paper
Monetary policy, endogenous inattention, and the volatility trade-off
This paper addresses the output-price volatility puzzle by studying the interaction of optimal monetary policy and agents' beliefs. We assume that agents choose their information acquisition rate by minimizing a loss function that depends on expected forecast errors and information costs. Endogenous inattention is a Nash equilibrium in the information processing rate. Although a decline of policy activism directly increases output volatility, it indirectly anchors expectations, which decreases output volatility. If the indirect effect dominates then the usual trade-off between output and ...
Working Paper
Expectational stability in regime-switching rational expectations models
Regime-switching rational expectations models, in which the parameters of the model evolve according to a finite state Markov process, have properties that differentiate them from linear models. Issues that are well understood in linear contexts, such as equilibrium determinacy and stability under adaptive learning, re-emerge in this new context. This paper outlines these issues and defines two classes of equilibria that emerge from regime-switching models. The distinguishing feature between the two classes is whether the conditional density of the endogenous state variables depends on past ...
Working Paper
Adaptive learning, endogenous inattention, and changes in monetary policy
This paper develops an adaptive learning formulation of an extension to the Ball, Mankiw, and Reis (2005) sticky information model that incorporates endogenous inattention. We show that, following an exogenous increase in the policymaker?s preferences for price vs. output stability, the learning process can converge to a new equilibrium in which both output and price volatility are lower.
Working Paper
Financial Frictions, the Housing Market, and Unemployment
We develop a two-sector search-matching model of the labor market with imperfect mobility of workers, augmented to incorporate a housing market and a frictional goods market. Homeowners use home equity as collateral to finance idiosyncratic consumption opportunities. A financial innovation that raises the acceptability of homes as collateral raises house prices and reduces unemployment. It also triggers a reallocation of workers, with the direction of the change depending on firms? market power in the goods market. A calibrated version of the model under adaptive learning can account for ...