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Working Paper
Welfare Implications of Asset Pricing Facts: Should Central Banks Fill Gaps or Remove Volatility?
I find that removing consumption volatility is a priority over filling the gap between consumption and its flexible-price counterpart, or inflation targeting, in a model that matches empirical measures of the welfare costs of consumption fluctuations. Nearly 30 years of financial market data suggest sizable welfare costs of fluctuations that can be decomposed into a term structure that is downward-sloping on average, especially during downturns. This evidence offers guidance in selecting a model to study the benefits of macroeconomic stabilization from a structural perspective. The addition ...
Working Paper
Welfare Implications of Asset Pricing Facts: Should Central Banks Fill Gaps or Remove Volatility?
More than 20 years of financial market data suggest a term structure of the welfare cost of economic uncertainty that is downward-sloping on average, especially during downturns. This evidence offers guidance in selecting a model to study the benefits of macroeconomic stabilization from a structural perspective. The addition of nonlinear external habit formation to a textbook monetary model can rationalize the evidence. The model is observationally equivalent in its quantity implications to a standard New Keynesian model with CRRA utility, but the optimal policy prescription is overturned. In ...