Search Results
Discussion Paper
New tools to monitor inflation in real time
From 1995 through February 2020 – a period when inflation was relatively low and stable – the rate of monthly total Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation was tightly related to a measure of asymmetry in the distribution of price changes of its subcomponents. We document that relationship and use it to construct an "inflation Filter" to distinguish inflation that is broad-based from that which is idiosyncratic (explained by price changes in a small share of subcomponents). Our "Inflation Filter" can be viewed as a standard diffusion index in which the threshold each month is ...
Working Paper
Monetary discretion, pricing complementarity and dynamic multiple equilibria
In a plain-vanilla New Keynesian model with two-period staggered price-setting, discretionary monetary policy leads to multiple equilibria. Complementarity between the pricing decisions of forward-looking firms underlies the multiplicity, which is intrinsically dynamic in nature. At each point in time, the discretionary monetary authority optimally accommodates the level of predetermined prices when setting the money supply because it is concerned solely about real activity. Hence, if other firms set a high price in the current period, an individual firm will optimally choose a high price ...
Working Paper
Regional inflation in a currency union: fiscal policy vs. fundamentals
We develop a general equilibrium model of a two-region currency union. There are two types of goods: non-trade goods, and traded goods for which markets are segmented. Monetary policy is set by a central monetary authority and is non-neutral due to nominal price rigidities. Fiscal policy is determined at the regional level by each region's government. We find that productivity shocks alone generate significant variation in inflation across the two countries. Government spending shocks, in contrast, do not account for a significant portion of inflation variation. Varying relative country size, ...
Working Paper
Discretionary monetary policy in the Calvo model
We study discretionary equilibrium in the Calvo pricing model for a monetary authority that chooses the money supply. The steady-state inflation rate is above eight percent for a baseline calibration, and it varies non-monotonically with the degree of price stickiness. If the initial condition involves inflation higher than steady state, discretionary policy generates an immediate drop in inflation followed by a gradual increase to the steady state. Unlike the two-period Taylor model, discretionary policy in the Calvo model does not accommodate predetermined prices in a way that inevitably ...
Conference Paper
Inflation targeting in a St. Louis model of the 21st century
Journal Article
Inflation Targeting in a St. Louis Model of the 21st Century
Journal Article
Inflation targeting in a St. Louis model of the 21st century
Working Paper
Optimal monetary policy
Optimal monetary policy maximizes welfare, given frictions in the economic environment. Constructing a model with two sets of frictions ? the Keynesian friction of costly price adjustment by imperfectly competitive firms and the Monetarist friction of costly exchange of wealth for goods ? the authors find optimal monetary policy is governed by two familiar principles. ; First, the average level of the nominal interest rate should be sufficiently low, as suggested by Milton Friedman, that there should be deflation on average. Yet, the Keynesian frictions imply that the optimal nominal interest ...
Working Paper
Inflation and real activity with firm-level productivity shocks
In the last ten years there has been an explosion of empirical work examining price setting behavior at the micro level. The work has in turn challenged existing macro models that attempt to explain monetary nonneutrality, because these models are generally at odds with much of the micro price data. In response, economists have developed a second generation of sticky-price models that are state dependent and that include both fixed costs of price adjustment and idiosyncratic shocks. Nonetheless, some ambiguity remains about the extent of monetary nonneutrality that can be attributed to costly ...