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Working Paper
Asymmetric expectation effects of regime shifts in monetary policy
This paper addresses two substantive issues: (1) Does the magnitude of the expectation effect of regime switching in monetary policy depend on a particular policy regime? (2) Under which regime is the expectation effect quantitatively important? Using two canonical DSGE models, we show that there exists asymmetry in the expectation effect across regimes. The expectation effect under the dovish policy regime is quantitatively more important than that under the hawkish regime. These results suggest that the possibility of regime shifts in monetary policy can have important effects on rational ...
Working Paper
Markov-switching structural vector autoregressions: theory and application
This paper develops a new and easily implementable necessary and sufficient condition for the exact identification of a Markov-switching structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. The theorem applies to models with both linear and some nonlinear restrictions on the structural parameters. We also derive efficient MCMC algorithms to implement sign and long-run restrictions in Markov-switching SVARs. Using our methods, four well-known identification schemes are used to study whether monetary policy has changed in the euro area since the introduction of the European Monetary Union. We find ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy and racial unemployment rates
When the Federal Open Market Committee began raising interest rates in June 1999 to forestall inflationary pressures, concern mounted that monetary policy moves might slow the pace of economic growth, undoing the employment gains minorities and other disadvantaged groups made during the 1990s. Implicit in such concern is the idea that these groups will be disproportionately affected by an economic slowdown. ; To explore this issue, this article analyzes the effect of exogenous movements in monetary policy and other macroeconomic variables on the overall and black unemployment rates. These ...
Journal Article
Assessing simple policy rules: A view from a complete macroeconomic model
Monetary policy analysts looking for a model on which to base decisions may consider two popular approaches-the New Keynesian (NK) and the identified vector autoregression (VAR) approaches. Choosing between the two can be difficult: NK models are stylized and have simple rules while structural VAR models have complex dynamics and loose behavioral interpretations. ; The simpler NK models often produce stark conclusions. For example, NK analyses consistently find that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy has improved markedly in the past two decades compared with the 1960s and 1970s. In ...
Working Paper
Normalization, probability distribution, and impulse responses
When impulse responses in dynamic multivariate models such as identified VARs are given economic interpretations, it is important that reliable statistical inferences be provided. Before probability assessments are provided, however, the model must be normalized. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this paper argues that normalization, a rule of reversing signs of coefficients in equations in a particular way, could considerably affect the shape of the likelihood and thus probability bands for impulse responses. A new concept called ML distance normalization is introduced to avoid distorting ...
Working Paper
Conditional forecasts in dynamic multivariate models
In the existing literature, conditional forecasts in the vector autoregressive (VAR) framework have not been commonly presented with probability distributions or error bands. This paper develops Bayesian methods for computing such distributions or bands. It broadens the class of conditional forecasts to which the methods can be applied. The methods work for both structural and reduced-form VAR models and, in contrast to common practices, account for the parameter uncertainty in small samples. Empirical examples under the flat prior and under the reference prior of Sims and Zha (1998) are ...
Working Paper
Modest policy interventions
The authors present a theoretical and empirical framework for computing and evaluating linear projections conditional on hypothetical paths of monetary policy. A modest policy intervention does not significantly shift agents' beliefs about policy regime and does not induce the changes in behavior that Lucas (1976) emphasizes. Applied to an econometric model of U.S. monetary policy, the authors find that a rich class of interventions routinely considered by the Federal Reserve is modest and their impacts can be reliably forecast by an identified linear model. Modest interventions can shift ...
Working Paper
Asymmetric expectation effects of regime shifts and the Great Moderation
The possibility of regime shifts in monetary policy can have important effects on rational agents' expectation formation and equilibrium dynamics. In a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where the monetary policy rule switches between a dovish regime that accommodates inflation and a hawkish regime that stabilizes inflation, the expectation effect is asymmetric across regimes. Such an asymmetric effect makes it difficult but still possible to generate substantial reductions in the volatilities of inflation and output as the monetary policy switches from the dovish regime to the ...
Working Paper
Bankruptcy law, capital allocation, and aggregate effects: a dynamic heterogeneous agent model with incomplete markets
Under the assumption that asset markets are incomplete, this paper introduces bankruptcy in an intertemporal heterogeneous agent model with capital accumulation and heterogeneous agents. It explores the role of regulatory intervention and argues that intervention in the form of a level of bankruptcy exemption can enhance not only social welfare but also distributive equity. The bankruptcy law is carefully specified in the model. The model generates distributional changes in consumption, capital, and bankruptcy risk in response to an adjustment in the exemption level and accentuates the ...
Report
Behavior and the Transmission of COVID-19
We show that a simple model of COVID-19 that incorporates feedback from disease prevalence to disease transmission through an endogenous response of human behavior does a remarkable job fitting the main features of the data on the growth rates of daily deaths observed across a large number countries and states of the United States from March to November of 2020. This finding, however, suggests a new empirical puzzle. Using an accounting procedure akin to that used for Business Cycle Accounting as in Chari et al. (2007), we show that when the parameters of the behavioral response of ...