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Working Paper
Evaluating Macroeconomic Outcomes Under Asymmetries: Expectations Matter
Asymmetries play an important role in many macroeconomic models. We show that assumptions on household and firm expectations play a key role in determining the effects of these asymmetries on macroeconomic outcomes. If households and firms have perfect foresight and hence do not account for the possibility of future shocks, then the implied longer-run averages and distributions for unemployment and inflation can differ significantly from their rational expectations counterparts. We first derive this result analytically under either an asymmetric monetary policy rule or a nonlinear Phillips ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Central Bank Credibility on Forward Guidance in an Estimated New Keynesian Model
This paper examines the effectiveness of forward guidance in an estimated New Keynesian model with imperfect central bank credibility. We estimate credibility for the U.S. Federal Reserve with Bayesian methods exploiting survey data on interest rate expectations from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). The results provide important takeaways: (1) The estimate of Federal Reserve credibility in terms of forward guidance announcements is relatively high, which indicates a degree of forward guidance effectiveness, but still one that is below the fully credible case. Hence, anticipation ...
Working Paper
Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations: Theory and Evidence
Based on indirect utility theory, we introduce a novel methodology of measuring inflation expectations indirectly. This methodology starts at the individual level, asking consumers about the change in income required to buy the same amounts of goods and services one year ahead. Analytically, our methodology possesses smaller ex-post aggregate inflation forecast errors relative to forecasts based on conventional survey questions. We ask this question in a large-scale, high-frequency survey of consumers in the US and 14 countries, and we show that indirect consumer inflation expectations ...
Working Paper
The Economic Effects of Firm-Level Uncertainty: Evidence Using Subjective Expectations
This paper uses over two decades of Italian survey data on business managers' expectations to measure subjective firm-level uncertainty and quantify its economic effects. We document that firm-level uncertainty persists for a few years and varies across firms' demographic characteristics. Uncertainty induces long-lasting economic effects over a broad array of real and financial variables. The source of uncertainty matters with firms responding only to downside uncertainty, that is, uncertainty about future adverse outcomes. Economy-wide uncertainty, constructed aggregating firm-level ...
Working Paper
Lock-in of Extrapolative Expectations in an Asset Pricing Model
This paper examines an agent’s choice of forecast method within a standard asset pricing model. To make a conditional forecast, a representative agent may choose one of the following: (1) a rational (or fundamentals-based) forecast that employs knowledge of the stochastic process governing dividends, (2) a constant forecast based on a simple long-run average of the forecast variable, or (3) a time-varying forecast that extrapolates from the last observation of the forecast variable. I show that a representative agent who is concerned about minimizing forecast errors may inadvertently become ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Central Bank Credibility on Forward Guidance in an Estimated New Keynesian Model
This paper examines the effectiveness of forward guidance in an estimated New Keynesian model with imperfect central bank credibility. We estimate credibility for the U.S. Federal Reserve with Bayesian methods exploiting survey data on interest rate expectations from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). The results provide important takeaways: (1) The estimate of Federal Reserve credibility in terms of forward guidance announcements is relatively high, which indicates muted forward guidance effectiveness relative to the fully credible case. Hence, anticipation effects are attenuated ...
Working Paper
How Robust Are Makeup Strategies to Key Alternative Assumptions?
We analyze the robustness of makeup strategies—policies that aim to offset, at least in part, past misses of inflation from its objective—to alternative modeling assumptions, with an emphasis on the role of inflation expectations. We survey empirical evidence on the behavior of shorter-run and long-run inflation expectations. Using simulations from the FRB/US macroeconomic model, we find that makeup strategies can moderately offset the real effects of adverse economic shocks, even when much of the public is uninformed about the monetary strategy. We also discuss the robustness of makeup ...
Working Paper
Uncovered interest rate, overshooting, and predictability reversal puzzles in an emerging economy
By using realized and survey-based expected exchange rate data, the paper presents five key findings regarding the Uncovered Interest rate Parity (UIP) and related puzzles in an Emerging Market (EM). First, Fama regressions, when not accounting for shifts in the UIP relationship, yield slopes that are statistically identical to one, irrespective of whether survey-based expected exchange rates or realized exchange rates are used. Second, caution is necessary however, as our analysis identifies three distinct sub-periods within each exchange rate measure, each exhibiting varying levels of ...