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Working Paper
On the implementation of Markov-Perfect interest rate and money supply rules : global and local uniqueness
Currently there is a growing literature exploring the features of optimal monetary policy in New Keynesian models under both commitment and discretion. This literature usually solves for the optimal allocations that are consistent with a rational expectations market equiibrium, but it does not study how the policy can be implemented given the available policy instruments. Recently, however, King and Wolman (2004) have shown that a time-consistent policy cannot be implemented through the control of nominal money balances. In particular, they find that equilibria are not unique under a money ...
Working Paper
Home production and Social Security reform
This paper incorporates home production into a dynamic general equilibrium model of overlapping generations with endogenous retirement to study Social Security reforms. As such, the model differentiates both consumption goods and labor effort according to their respective roles in home production and market activities. Using a calibrated model, we find that eliminating the current pay-as-you-go Social Security system has important implications for both labor supply and consumption decisions and that these decisions are influenced by the presence of a home production technology. Comparing our ...
Working Paper
How important is the currency denomination of exports in open-economy models?
The authors show that standard alternative assumptions about the currency in which firms price export goods are virtually inconsequential for the properties of aggregate variables, other than the terms of trade, in a quantitative open-economy model. This result is in contrast to a large literature that emphasizes the importance of the currency denomination of exports for the properties of open-economy models.
Working Paper
Structure from shocks
Arguments in favor of Keynesian models as opposed to real business cycle models are often made on the grounds that the correlations and impulse response patterns found in the latter are inconsistent with the data. A recent and prominent example of this reasoning is Gali (1999). But certain conclusions involve a certain joint hypothesis that implicitly assumes a certain characterization of monetary policy. This paper shows just how crucial the systematic portion of monetary policy is for interpreting many of the correlations and impulse response functions emphasized in the literature. ...
Working Paper
The effects of fiscal policy in a neoclassical growth model
This paper studies the effects of fiscal policies--depicted as stochastic changes in government spending and distortionary tax rates--when the government is constrained from using lump sum taxes for achieving intertemporal budget balance. The ratio of debt to gnp, therefore, has consequences for the future choices of government spending and distortionary taxation and hence affects real economic activity. Further modeling fiscal policy in this way generates results that differ substantially from those in standard stochastic models where lump sum taxes are used for budget balance. The modeling ...
Journal Article
A review of inflation targeting in developed countries
In ?A Review of Inflation Targeting in Developed Countries,? Mike Dotsey examines five countries that have been targeting inflation for at least 10 years and whose inflation rates, though fairly well contained before inflation targeting, were nonetheless considered too high by policymakers. For purposes of comparison, he also looks at the economic performance of six noninflation-targeting countries
Working Paper
Inflation uncertainty and growth in a simple monetary model
This paper analyzes the effects of inflation variability on economic growth in a model where money is introduced via a cash-in-advance constraint. In this setting, we find that inflation adversely affects long-run growth, even when the cash-in-advance constraint applies only to consumption. At the same time, we find that inflation and growth are positively related in the short-run. In addition, variability tends to increase average growth through a precautionary savings motive. Since inflation and inflation variability tend to be highly correlated, this latter effect attenuates the negative ...
Working Paper
Consumption and time use over the life cycle
The authors incorporate home production in a dynamic general equilibrium model of consumption and saving with illiquid housing and a collateralized borrowing constraint. They show that the model is capable of explaining life-cycle patterns of households' time use and consumption of different categories. Specifically, households' market hours and home hours are fairly stable early in the life cycle. Market hours start to decline sharply at age 50, while home hours begin to increase at age 55. Households' consumption of the market good, home input, and housing services all exhibit hump shapes ...
Working Paper
Informational implications of interest rate rules
Returning to a topic first systematically treated by Poole (1970) in a textbook Keynesian model, this paper compares interest rate and money supply rules. Our analysis, by contrast, is conducted within a rational expectations macro model that incorporates flexible prices and informational frictions. With differential information, interest rate targets can affect the information content of market prices and real activity, but these real consequences can always be replicated by an appropriately chosen money stock rule with feedback to economic activity. However, when the policy authority has ...