Search Results
Conference Paper
The optimum quantity of money: theory and evidence
Working Paper
Algorithms for solving dynamic models with occasionally binding constraints
A description and comparison of several algorithms for approximating the solution to a model in which inequality constraints occasionally bind. Their performance is evaluated using various parameterizations of the one-sector growth model with irreversible investment.
Journal Article
The Macroeconomic Effects of the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act
The 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act raised government spending caps by $300 billion for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. While spending does not increase immediately, private sector investment and consumption may respond ahead of an anticipated fiscal stimulus. This Economic Perspectives article assesses the strength of this mechanism based on the private sector?s expectations.
Journal Article
How does an increase in government purchases affect economy?
This article studies the impact on aggregate economic activity of increases in defense purchases which are unrelated to other developments in the economy. The authors use empirical evidence to evaluate the predictions of several prominent models.
Journal Article
When can we forecast inflation?
This article reassesses recent work that has challenged the usefulness of inflation forecasts. The authors find that inflation forecasts were informative in 1977-84 and 1993-2000, but less informative in 1985-92. They also find that standard forecasting models, while generally poor at forecasting the magnitude of inflation, are good at forecasting the direction of change of inflation.
Journal Article
Understanding aggregate job flows
The authors describe how evidence on aggregate job flows challenges standard business cycle theory and discuss recent developments in business cycle theory aimed at accounting for the evidence.
Journal Article
The great turn-of-the-century housing boom
This article explains the recent high levels of residential investment and rates of homeownership.
Journal Article
Testing the Calvo model of sticky prices
This article discusses the empirical performance of a widely used model of nominal rigidities: the Calvo model of sticky good prices. The authors argue that there is overwhelming evidence against this model. But this evidence is generated under three key assumptions: one, there is no lag between the time firms reoptimize their price plans and the time they implement those plans; two, there is no measurement error in inflation; and three, monetary policy is the same in the pre-1979 and post-1982 periods. The authors discuss the impact of relaxing each of these assumptions.
Journal Article
In search of a robust inflation forecast
It is difficult to consistently improve upon forecasts of inflation based solely on the most recent data on inflation. In this article, we show how to do so. Our main finding is that the most robust forecasts combine information from several different forecasting models, each of which incorporates the information in the available inflation indicators in different ways.
Journal Article
The new view of growth and business cycles
Evidence on the cost of business equipment investment supports a new way of understanding growth and business cycles. The equipment price has been falling for most of the last 40 years and it tends to fall more the faster economy is growing. This suggests that technological change embodied in new capital equipment has a substantial effect on growth and business cycles.