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Working Paper
Inflation expectations and the transmission of monetary policy
New Keynesian models with sticky prices and rational expectations have a difficult time explaining why reducing inflation usually requires a recession. An explanation for the costliness of reducing inflation is that inflation expectations are less than perfectly rational. To explore this possibility, I estimate the degree of nonrationality implicit in two survey measures of inflation expectations. I find that the surveys reflect an intermediate degree of rationality: Expectations are nether perfectly rational nor as unsophisticated as simple autoregressive models would suggest. I also find ...
Discussion Paper
November 2014 Update of the FRB/US Model
This FEDS Note is a companion to the most recent release of the FRB/US model of the U.S. economy available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/frbus/us-models-about.htm. The purpose of this note is twofold. First, it briefly outlines and describes the changes to the structure of the public version of FRB/US since its introduction in the spring of 2014. In addition, it compares the dynamics of the current version to that of the original version in response to key shocks.
Working Paper
Economic performance under price stability
Working Paper
Monetary policy and inflation dynamics
Since the early 1980s, the United States economy has changed in some important ways: Inflation now rises considerably less when unemployment falls and the volatility of output and inflation have fallen sharply. This paper examines whether changes in monetary policy can account for these phenomena. The results suggest that changes in the parameters and shock volatility of monetary policy reaction functions can account for most or all of the change in the inflation-unemployment relationship. As in other work, monetary-policy changes can explain only a small portion of the output growth ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy in a Low Interest Rate World
Nominal interest rates may remain substantially below the averages of the last half-century, as central bank?s inflation objectives lie below the average level of inflation and estimates of the real interest rate likely to prevail over the long run fall notably short of the average real interest rate experienced over this period. Persistently low nominal interest rates may lead to more frequent and costly episodes at the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. We revisit the frequency and potential costs of such episodes in a low-interest-rate world in a ...
Working Paper
Expectations formation and the effectiveness of strategies for limiting the consequences of the zero bound on interest rates
We use simulations of the Federal Reserve's FRB/US model to examine the efficacy of a number of proposals for reducing the consequences of the zero bound on nominal interest rates. Among the proposals are: a more aggressive monetary policy; promises to make up any shortfall in monetary ease during the zero-bound period by keeping interest rates lower in the future; and the adoption of a price-level target. We consider two assumptions about expectations formation. One assumption is fully model-consistent expectations (MCE)--a reasonable assumption when a policy has been in place for some time, ...
Discussion Paper
An Estimate of the Long-Term Neutral Rate of Interest
This note proposes a new measure of the high-frequency equilibrium interest rate, one that falls naturally out of a common textbook notion of the economy's equilibrium interest rate--and which is rooted in one particularly simple and well-known model.