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Working Paper
Optimal Monetary Policy with Uncertain Private Sector Foresight
Central banks operate in a world in which there is substantial uncertainty regarding the transmission of its actions to the economy because of uncertainty regarding the formation of private-sector expectations. We model private sector expectations using a finite horizon planning framework: Households and firms have limited foresight when deciding spending, saving, and pricing decisions. In this setting, contrary to standard New Keynesian (NK) models, we show that "an inflation scares problem" for the central bank can arise where agents' longer-run inflation expectations deviate persistently ...
Working Paper
Inflation Expectations with Finite Horizon Planning
Under finite horizon planning, households and firms evaluate a full set of state-contingent paths along which the economy might evolve out to a finite horizon but have limited ability to process events beyond that horizon. We show--analytically and empirically--that such a model accounts for an initial underreaction and subsequent overreaction of inflation forecasts. A planning horizon of four quarters can account for the evidence on the predictability of inflation forecast errors and macroeconomic data. Our identification and estimation strategies combine full-information methods based ...