Search Results
Working Paper
Finite-Order VAR Representation of Linear Rational Expectations Models: With Some Lessons for Monetary Policy
This paper considers the characterization via finite-order VARs of the solution of a large class of linear rational expectations (LRE) models. I propose a unified approach that uses a companion Sylvester equation to check the existence and uniqueness of a solution to the canonical (first-order) LRE model in finite-order VAR form and a quadratic matrix equation to characterize it decoupling the backward- and forward-looking aspects of the model. I also investigate the fundamentalness of the shocks recovered. Solving LRE models by this procedure is straightforward to implement, general in its ...
Report
How to escape a liquidity trap with interest rate rules
I study how central banks should communicate monetary policy in liquidity trap scenarios in which the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is binding. Using a standard New Keynesian model, I argue that the key to anchoring expectations and preventing self-fulfilling deflationary spirals is to promise to keep nominal interest rates pegged at zero for a length of time that depends on the state of the economy. I derive necessary and sufficient conditions for this type of state-contingent forward guidance to implement the welfare-maximizing equilibrium as a globally determinate (that is, ...
Working Paper
Equilibrium Yield Curves and the Interest Rate Lower Bound
We study the term structure of default-free interest rates in a sticky-price model with an occasionally binding effective lower bound (ELB) constraint on interest rates and recursive preferences. The ELB constraint induces state-dependency in the dynamics of term premiums by affecting macroeconomic uncertainty and interest-rate sensitivity to economic activities. In a model calibrated to match key features of the aggregate economy and term structure dynamics in the U.S. above and at the ELB, we find that the ELB constraint typically lowers the absolute size of term premiums at the ELB and ...
Working Paper
Measured Inflation and the New-Keynesian Model
Researchers typically compare inflation in the new Keynesian (NK) model to published inflation measures constructed from indices like the CPI. Inflation in the standard NK model without price indexation is bounded above. The model analogue of fixed-weight inflation measures, like the CPI, is not. When inflation is in the range of values observed after 2021, there is a substantial difference between model-based and fixed-weight measures of inflation. This finding poses a challenge to using linear approximations to the NK model in environments with moderately high inflation and implies that ...
Report
The macroeconomics of trend inflation
Most macroeconomic models for monetary policy analysis are approximated around a zero inflation steady state, but most central banks target an inflation rate of about 2 percent. Many economists have recently proposed even higher inflation targets to reduce the incidence of the zero lower bound constraint on monetary policy. In this survey, we show that the conduct of monetary policy should be analyzed by appropriately accounting for the positive trend inflation targeted by policymakers. We first review empirical research on the evolution and dynamics of U.S. trend inflation and some proposed ...
Working Paper
Behavioral Economics and Macroeconomic Models
Over the past 20 years, macroeconomists have incorporated more and more results from behavioral economics into their models. We argue that doing so has helped fixed deficiencies with standard approaches to modeling the economy--for example, the counterfactual absence of inertia in the standard New Keynesian model of economic fluctuations. We survey efforts to use behavioral economics to improve some of the underpinnings of the New Keynesian model--specifically, consumption, the formation of expectations and determination of wages and employment that underlie aggregate supply, and the ...
Working Paper
Short-term Planning, Monetary Policy, and Macroeconomic Persistence
This paper uses aggregate data to estimate and evaluate a behavioral New Keynesian (NK) model in which households and firms plan over a finite horizon. The finite-horizon (FH) model outperforms rational expectations versions of the NK model commonly used in empirical applications as well as other behavioral NK models. The better fit of the FH model reflects that it can induce slow-moving trends in key endogenous variables which deliver substantial persistence in output and inflation dynamics. In the FH model, households and firms are forward-looking in thinking about events over their ...
Working Paper
Fiscal Implications of Interest Rate Normalization in the United States
This paper studies the fiscal implications of interest rate normalization from the zero lower bound (ZLB) in the United States. At the ZLB, the decline in tax revenues and the real bond price drives up government debt. During normalization, interest payments continue to rise higher than they would have had rates not reached the ZLB, potentially increasing government debt even as output and tax revenues recover. We find that against the yardstick of ability to pay, interest rate normalization is unlikely to pose an immediate threat to debt sustainability at the current net federal debt level ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy Interactions: The Policy Rate, Asset Purchases and Optimal Policy with an Interest Rate Peg
We study monetary policy in a New Keynesian model with a variable credit spread and scope for central bank asset purchases to matter. A novel financial and labor market interaction generates an endogenous cost-push channel in the Phillips curve and a credit wedge in the IS curve. These channels arise due to a liquidity premium to long-term debt present in our model. The “divine coincidence” holds with the nominal short rate and central bank balance sheet available as policy tools—dual-instrument policy. Targeting the liquidity premium using balance sheet policy provides a determinate ...
Working Paper
On the Structural Interpretation of the Smets-Wouters “Risk Premium” Shock
This article shows that the "risk premium" shock in Smets and Wouters (2007) can be interpreted as a structural shock to the demand for safe and liquid assets such as short-term US Treasury securities. Several implications of this interpretation are discussed.