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Working Paper
Monitoring Money for Price Stability
In this paper, we use a simple model of money demand to characterize the behavior of monetary aggregates in the United States from 1960 to 2016. We argue that the demand for the currency component of the monetary base has been remarkably stable during this period. We use the model to make projections of the nominal quantity of cash in circulation under alternative future paths for the federal funds rate. Our calculations suggest that if the federal funds rate is lifted up as suggested by the survey of economic projections made by the members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the ...
Report
The Monetary and Fiscal History of Argentina, 1960-2017
In this chapter, we review the monetary and fiscal history of Argentina for the period 1960?2017, a time during which the country suffered several balance of payments crises, three periods of hyperinflation, two defaults on government debt, and three banking crises. All told, between 1969 and 1991, after several monetary reforms, thirteen zeros had been removed from its currency. We argue that all these events are the symptom of a recurrent problem: Argentina?s unsuccessful attempts to tame the fiscal deficit. An implication of our analysis is that the future economic evolution of Argentina ...
Working Paper
Optimal devaluations
We analyze optimal policy in a simple small open economy model with price setting frictions. In particular, we study the optimal response of the nominal exchange rate following a terms of trade shock. We depart from the New Keynesian literature in that we explicitly model interna-tionally traded commodities as intermediate inputs in the production of local final goods and assume that the small open economy takes this price as given. This modification not only is in line with the long-standing tradition of small open economy models, but also changes the optimal movements in the exchange rate. ...
Working Paper
Is There a Stable Relationship between Unemployment and Future Inflation? Evidence from U.S. Cities
This paper makes two straightforward points that we argue are central to understanding the literature and debate surrounding the stability of the Phillips curve. First, the endogeneity of monetary policy implies that aggregate data are largely uninformative as to the existence of a stable relationship between unemployment and future inflation. Second, if the NAIRU model is assumed to be true, regional data can be used to identify the structural relationship between unemployment and future inflation. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with a ...
Discussion Paper
Macroeconomic Policy during a Credit Crunch
Most economic models used by central banks prior to the recent financial crisis omitted two fundamental elements: financial markets and liquidity measures. Those models therefore failed to foresee the crisis or understand the policy reaction that followed. In contrast to more orthodox models, we develop a theory in which credit markets and measures of liquidity are central. Our model emphasizes the role of collateral constraints on credit lines and the role of money in transactions, and it can be used to study the effects of alternative monetary policies during and after a financial crisis. ...
Report
Optimal Cooperative Taxation in the Global Economy
We use the Ramsey and Mirrlees approaches to study how fiscal and trade policy should be set cooperatively when governments must raise revenues with distorting taxes. Free trade and unrestricted capital mobility are optimal. Efficient outcomes can be implemented with taxes only on final consumption goods and labor income. We study alternative tax systems, showing that uniform taxation of household asset returns, and not taxing corporate income yields efficient outcomes. Border adjustments exempting exports from and including imports in the tax base are desirable. Destination and residence ...
Working Paper
Real Exchange Rates and Primary Commodity Prices
In this paper, we show that a substantial fraction of the volatility of real exchange rates between developed economies such as Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom against the US dollar can be accounted for by shocks that affect the prices of primary commodities such as oil, aluminum, maize, or copper. Our analysis implies that existing models used to analyze real exchange rates between large economies that mostly focus on trade between differentiated ?nal goods could benefit, in terms of matching the behavior of real exchange rates, by also considering trade in primary commodities.
Discussion Paper
Self-fulfilling Prophecies in Sovereign Debt Markets
In this paper, we discuss conditions under which adverse expectations can trigger abrupt and large changes in the interest rate at which a sovereign country can borrow in international financial markets. We argue that such changes are caused by self-fulfilling expectations outcomes, in which interest rates are high because the perceptions of future defaults are high, but those perceptions are high precisely because the interest rates are high. {{p}} A model based on these elements successfully simulates the near-default experience of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, among other countries. ...
Report
Real Exchange Rates and Primary Commodity Prices
In this paper, we show that there is substantial comovement between prices of primary commodities such as oil, aluminum, maize, or copper and real exchange rates between developed economies such as Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom against the US dollar. We therefore explicitly consider the production of commodities in a two-country model of trade with productivity shocks and shocks to the supplies of commodities. We calibrate the model so as to reproduce the volatility and persistence of primary commodity prices and show that it delivers equilibrium real exchange rates that are as ...
Working Paper
Money and prices in models of bounded rationality
In this paper the authors explore the ability of simple monetary models with bounded rationality to account for the joint distribution of money and prices. They impose restrictions on the size of the mistakes agents can make in equilibrium and argue that countries with high inflation are likely to satisfy these restrictions. Their computations show that the model with bounded rationality does neither improve nor deteriorate the ability of the model to match the data.