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Working Paper
Optimal fiscal policy when public capital is productive: a business cycle perspective
A presentation of a dynamic general-equilibrium model with productive public capital to help account for differences in the business cycle characteristics of public- versus private- sector expenditures in postwar U.S. data.
Working Paper
Anchored Inflation Expectations and the Flatter Phillips Curve
Conventional versions of the Phillips curve cannot account for inflation dynamics during and after the U.S. Great Recession, leading many to conclude that the Phillips curve relationship has weakened or even disappeared. We show that if agents solve a signal extraction problem to disentangle temporary versus permanent shocks to inflation, then agents? inflation expectations should have become more ?anchored? over the Great Moderation period. An estimated New Keynesian Phillips curve that accounts for the increased anchoring of expected inflation exhibits a stable slope coefficient over the ...
Working Paper
Explaining Exchange Rate Anomalies in a Model with Taylor-Rule Fundamentals and Consistent Expectations
We introduce a form of boundedly-rational expectations into a standard asset-pricing model of the exchange rate, where cross-country interest rate differentials are governed by Taylor-type rules. We postulate that agents augment a lagged-information random walk forecast with a term that relates to news about Taylor-rule fundamentals. We solve for a ?consistent expectations equilibrium,? in which the coefficient on fundamental news in the agent?s forecast rule is pinned down using the moments of observable data. The forecast errors observed by the agent are close to white noise, making it di ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy and asset prices
In light of the severe economic fallout from recent bubble episodes, this Economic Letter examines the potential role of monetary policy in responding to asset prices.
Working Paper
Forward-looking behavior and optimal discretionary monetary policy
This paper derives a closed-form solution for the optimal discretionary monetary policy in a small macroeconomic model that allows for varying degrees of forward-looking behavior. We show that a more forward-looking aggregate demand equation serves to attenuate the response to inflation and the output gap in the optimal interest rate rule. In contrast, a more forward-looking real interest rate equation serves to magnify the response to both variables. A more forward-looking Phillips curve serves to attenuate the response to inflation but magnifies the response to the output gap. ; Original ...
Journal Article
What’s different about the latest housing boom?
After peaking in 2006, the median U.S. house price fell about 30%, finally hitting bottom in late 2011. Since then, house prices have rebounded strongly and are nearly back to the pre-recession peak. However, conditions in the latest boom appear far less precarious than those in the previous episode. The current run-up exhibits a less-pronounced increase in the house price-to-rent ratio and an outright decline in the household mortgage debt-to-income ratio?a pattern that is not suggestive of a credit-fueled bubble.
Journal Article
Rates of return from Social Security
Journal Article
Uncertainties in projecting federal budget surpluses
Working Paper
Optimal fiscal policy, public capital, and the productivity slowdown
A presentation of a quantitative-theoretical model that can account for much of the behavior of the stock of public capital in the U.S. economy over the last 70 years, with an application to examining some possible causes of the slowdown in the growth of U.S. labor productivity.
Working Paper
Endogenous Regime Switching Near the Zero Lower Bound
This paper develops a New Keynesian model with a time-varying natural rate of inter-est (r-star) and a zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rate. The representative agent contemplates the possibility of an occasionally binding ZLB that is driven by switching between two local rational expectations equilibria, labeled the "targeted" and "deflation" solutions, respectively. Sustained periods when the real interest rate remains below the central bank's estimate of r-star can induce the agent to place a substantially higher weight on the deflation equilibrium, causing it to ...