Search Results
Journal Article
Bond price premiums
Working Paper
Optimal monetary policy
Optimal monetary policy maximizes the welfare of a representative agent, given frictions in the economic environment. Constructing a model with two broad sets of frictions ? costly price adjustment by imperfectly competitive firms and costly exchange of wealth for goods ? we find optimal monetary policy is governed by two familar 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 rate is positive. ; ...
Journal Article
Inflation targeting in a St. Louis model of the 21st century
Working Paper
The optimal rate of inflation with trending relative prices
The relative prices of different categories of consumption goods have been trending over time. Assuming they are exogenous with respect to monetary policy, these trends imply that monetary policy cannot stabilize the prices of all consumption categories. If prices are sticky, monetary policy then must trade off relative price distortions within different categories of consumption. Optimally, more weight should be placed on stabilizing goods and services prices that are less flexible. Calibrating a simple sticky price model to U.S. data, we find that slight deflation is optimal, even absent ...
Briefing
Detecting Inflation Instability
In a stable monetary policy regime, the share of relative price increases helps to explain monthly inflation fluctuations. We illustrate this regularity with U.S. data from January 1995 through February 2020, then we use it to evaluate whether the regime has remained stable during the pandemic period. From March 2021 to February 2022, the behavior of inflation and the share of relative price increases was inconsistent with the pre-pandemic regime. Recent data show some signs of a return to that regime.
Working Paper
Real implications of the zero bound on nominal interest rates
If monetary policy succeeds in keeping average inflation very low, nominal interest rates may occasionally be constrained by the zero lower bound. The degree to which this constraint has real implications depends on the monetary policy feedback rule and the structure of price-setting. Policy rules that make the price level stationary lead to small real distortions from the zero bound. If policy imparts persistence into the inflation rate, the real implications of the zero bound are large in the presence of backward looking price-setting, and small if prices are set to maximize profits.
Briefing
Anticipated FOMC Policy, Inflation and Credibility
Following through on its September 2020 plan, the FOMC waited to raise interest rates until March 2022, when inflation was high and unemployment was below its perceived long-run level. However, by early fall 2021, markets were predicting a rate increase, and policymakers were signaling an increase in their Summary of Economic Projections. In contrast to the 1980s and 1990s, when the Fed fought inflation scares even as actual inflation trended down, long-term inflation expectations have been relatively stable even as actual inflation has risen far above target. This stability has likely been ...
Journal Article
Consumer Payment Choice in the Fifth District: Learning from a Retail Chain
This paper studies payment variation across locations and time using five years of transactions data from a large discount retail chain with hundreds of stores across the Fifth District. The results show that the median transaction size, demographics, education levels, and state fixed effects are the top factors in explaining cross-location payment variation in the sample. We also identify interesting time patterns of payment variation, particularly the longer-term decline in the cash share of transactions largely replaced by debit.
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 ...