Search Results
Working Paper
Optimal policy projections
We outline a method to provide advice on optimal monetary policy while taking policymakers' judgment into account. The method constructs optimal policy projections (OPPs) by extracting the judgment terms that allow a model, such as the Federal Reserve Board staff economic model, FRB/US, to reproduce a forecast, such as the Greenbook forecast. Given an intertemporal loss function that represents monetary policy objectives, OPPs are the projections---of target variables, instruments, and other variables of interest---that minimize that loss function for given judgment terms. The method is ...
Working Paper
Transparency and credibility: monetary policy with unobservable goals
We define and study transparency, credibility, and reputation in a model where the central bank's characteristics are unobservable to the private sector and are inferred from the policy outcome. A low-credibility bank optimally conducts a more inflationary policy than a high-credibility bank, in the sense that it induces higher inflation, but a less expansionary policy in the sense that it induces lower inflation and employment than expected. Increased transparency makes the bank's reputation and credibility more sensitive to its actions. This has a moderating influence on the bank's policy. ...
Conference Paper
Indicator variables for optimal policy
The optimal weights on indicators in models with partial information about the state of the economy and forward-looking variables are derived and interpreted, both for equilibria under discretion and under commitment. An example of optimal monetary policy with a partially observable potential output and a forward-looking indicator is examined. The optimal response to the optimal estimate of potential output displays certainty-equivalence, whereas the optimal response to the imperfect observation of output depends on the noise in this observation.
Conference Paper
Monetary policy after the crisis
Working Paper
Expected and predicted realignments: the FF/DM exchange rate during the EMS
An empirical model of time-varying realignment risk in an exchange rate target zone is developed. Expected rates of devaluation are estimated as the difference between interest rate differentials and estimated expected rates of depreciation within the exchange rate band, using French Franc/Deutsche Mark data during the European Monetary System. The behavior of estimated expected rates of depreciation accord well with the theoretical model of Bertola-Svensson (1990). We are also able to predict actual realignments with some success.
Journal Article
Targeting versus instrument rules for monetary policy: what is wrong with McCallum and Nelson?
In their paper "Targeting versus Instrument Rules for Monetary Policy," McCallum and Nelson critique targeting rules for the analysis of monetary policy. Their arguments are rebutted here. First, McCallum and Nelson's preference to study the robustness of simple monetary policy rules is no reason at all to limit attention to simple instrument rules; simple targeting rules may have more desirable properties. Second, optimal targeting rules are a compact, robust, and structural description of goal-directed monetary policy, analogous to the compact, robust, and structural consumption Euler ...
Working Paper
Policy rules for inflation targeting
Policy rules that are consistent with inflation targeting are examined in a small macroeconometric model of the US economy. We compare the properties and outcomes of explicit "instrument rules" as well as "targeting rules." The latter, which imply implicit instrument rules, may be closer to actual operating procedures of inflation-targeting central banks. We find that inflation forecasts are central for good policy rules under inflation targeting. Some simple instrumental and targeting rules do remarkably well relative to the optimal rule; others, including some that are often used as ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy and learning
A new strand of macroeconomic literature examines the relationship between learning and monetary policy-how monetary policymakers learn about the economy as they try to achieve their goals, how the public learns about policymakers' objectives, and how the public's learning, in turn, changes the way monetary policy works. An Atlanta Fed conference in March 2003 brought together some of the main contributors to this emerging literature. ; In the conference keynote address, reprinted here, Lars Svensson focused on what constitutes good monetary policy and how it is related to central-bank ...