persistent government spending and fiscal multipliers the investment channel this paper inspects the mechanism shaping government spending multipliers in various smallscale dsge setups with endogenous labor supply and capital accumulation we analytically characterize the short run investment multiplier which in equilibrium can be either positive or negative the investment multiplier increases with the persistence of the exogenous government spending process the response of investment to government spending shocks strongly affects short run multipliers on output and consumption

real and monetary determinants of real exchange rate behavior theory and evidence from developing countries abstract this paper develops a dynamic model of real exchange rate rer behavior in developing countries a three goods economy exportables importables and non tradables is considered residents of this country hold domestic and foreign assets and there is a dual exchange rate regime there is a government that consumes importables and non tradables a distinction is made between equilibrium and disequilibrium movements of the rer the determinants of real exchange rate misalignment are studied with emphasis placed on the role of devaluations and balance of payments crises the implications of the model are tested using data for 12 developing countries the results obtained are generally favorable for the model the issue of rer stationarity is also analyzed

the impact of alternative forms of state regulation of at t on direct dial long distance telephone rates federal and state regulatory agencies have traditionally used rate of return regulation to set profit and rate levels for utilities a price cap framework in which the regulatory agency sets a maximum rate below which the regulated utility has pricing flexibility is possibly a more efficient alternative to rate of return regulation this article presents an econometric analysis that compares at t s prices of intrastate long distance telephone service in states that allow at t pricing flexibility with those in states that do not the results of this analysis suggest that at t s daytime evening nighttime and weekend rates are significantly lower in states that allow pricing flexibility than in states that use rate of return regulation

real exchange rate and openness in emerging economies argentina in the long run argentina s economic policies since the beginning of the century give an interesting background to the study of real exchange rate rer management in emerging countries in this article four types of rer overvaluation are identified in the 1920s argentina provides a short example of overvaluation in a context of a fixed exchange rate policy moreover the estimations show that import substitution regimes can lead to a misalignment of rer argentina illustrates also the difficult management of rer in a volatile environment the results allow in addition to better understand the failure of the trade liberalization attempts of the country and remind that successfully integrating the world economy asks for an appropriate rer policy

uncertain policy promises abstract we develop a general method for analyzing the effects of macroeconomic policy promises about which the private sector is uncertain we illustrate the method in two applications to a central bank s forward guidance about the path for its policy rate we demonstrate that uncertainty about forward guidance resulting from its potential to be imperfectly credible makes it much less powerful than in textbook models in an application to the fomc s threshold based guidance we show that increasing the precision of the conditions under which the policy rate lifts off from the zero bound requires a lower unemployment threshold to deliver a given amount of stimulus

some unpleasant properties of loglinearized solutions when the nominal rate is zero does fiscal policy have large and qualitatively different effects on the economy when the nominal interest rate is zero an emerging consensus in the new keynesian nk literature is that the answer to this question is yes evidence presented here suggests that the nk model s implications for fiscal policy at the zero bound may not be all that different from its implications for policy away from it for a range of empirically relevant parameterizations employment increases when the labor tax rate is cut and the government purchase multiplier is less than 1 05

optimal regulation under uncertainty this paper is concerned with the problem of price regulation when demand is uncertain uncertainty gives rise to substantial difficulties in determining both the return a firm s owners should be provided and a set of prices capable of producing that return we argue that conventional approaches to price regulation are incapable of attaining the economically desirable objectives of efficiency and an equitable return to investors the deficiencies in current practices are attributable to the separation of the risk measurement return determination and price setting activities in the conventional approach we present a model of the regulated firm that synthesizes contemporary financial market theory and the theory of the firm under uncertainty in our approach the income stream produced by the firm is valued ex ante in the financial market according to investors perceptions and preferences over risk return characteristics we portray the firm as producing risk and return by choosing among available production technologies to maximize its market value given the prices set by regulators within this framework it is shown that regulators can choose the lowest prices consistent with an equitable return to investors we also show that prices so chosen induce the choice of the optimal technology by the firm in the traditional regulatory framework as thoroughly described and explained by bonbright 3 the goal of regulators is to set rates in such a way that all costs are covered including a return on invested capital commensurate with the risk of equity investment determination of the latter is difficult at best it is generally agreed that 1 the fair return depends on risk 2 the return required by investors as compensation for risk bearing is most accurately measured by observing the returns to competitive firms in otherwise similar circumstances and 3 estimation of required returns by observation of other regulated firms is generally inappropriate since the risk and regulation effects are confounded more recently myers 13 has argued for the application of finance theory to rate determination within the traditional regulatory framework in particular he argues that the capital asset pricing model capm developed by sharpe 14 lintner 9 and mossin 12 is especially well suited for this purpose since a single quantitative measure of risk is relevant in that model further since the capm offers an explicit equilibrium risk return relationship information about the risks and returns of all firms can be directly employed in determining the fair return to a regulated firm

estimating dsge models with zero interest rate policy we propose estimating dsge models in which the central bank fixes the policy rate for an extended period of time and apply our approach to estimate expected durations of the federal reserve s zero interest rate policy since 2009 we find a large increase in expected duration in 2011 with the move to calendar based guidance and a decrease in 2013 with the taper tantrum these changes are identified by the influence of expected duration on output inflation and interest rates at longer maturities the structural model measures the severity of the zero lower bound constraint and the effects of unconventional policy

mean reversion in long horizon real exchange rates evidence from latin america abstract this paper examines mean reversion in real effective exchange rates in six leading latin american economies during the xxth century using a new data set a unit root approach is complemented by an error correction model including key fundamentals such as terms of trade trade openness and relative productivities unit root testing shows a very slow process of reversion if any to a constant mean in the original series rejecting the strict ppp hypothesis however mean reversion is found after allowing for trends and structural breaks with a half life average of 1 years for the six countries we also found reversion to a conditional mean defined by the co integrating relationship with an average half life of 2 years our estimates although lower than the 3 5 year range that motivated the rogoff s puzzle still indicate the presence of important obstacles to the adjustment process that need further investigation

some fiscal calculus what is the impact of fiscal policy on the econ omy how large are the multipliers of govern ment spending and tax cuts this old question has recently received considerable attention in par ticular in the context of the american recovery and reinvestment act arra of 2009 i contribute to answering that question by calculating fiscal multipliers in a baseline neo classical growth model with endogenous labor supply and fiscal policy allowing for govern ment spending transfers government debt and distortionary taxes on labor and capital income the policy experiments are conducted holding transfers consumption taxes and capital income taxes fixed i e changes in taxation require changes in the distortionary labor tax the model is simple and fairly standard as an additional contribution i provide the model in an elegant and tractable form starting from a fairly general formulation and pointing out the key functional form properties for characterizing the dynamics the formulation of the model here or versions

dealing with a liquidity trap when government debt matters optimal time consistent monetary and fiscal policy how does the need to preserve government debt sustainability affect the optimal monetary and fiscal policy response to a liquidity trap to provide an answer we employ a small stochastic new keynesian model with a zero bound on nominal interest rates and characterize optimal time consistent stabilization policies we focus on two policy tools the short term nominal interest rate and debt financed government spending the optimal policy response to a liquidity trap critically depends on the prevailing debt burden while the optimal amount of government spending is decreasing in the level of outstanding government debt future monetary policy is becoming more accommodative triggering a change in private sector expectations that helps to dampen the fall in output and inflation at the outset of the liquidity trap

imperfect credibility and the zero lower bound as the nominal interest rate cannot fall below zero a central bank with imperfect credibility faces a significant challenge to stabilize the economy in a new keynesian model during a large recession we characterize the optimal monetary policy at the zero lower bound for the nominal interest rate if credibility is imperfect confronting monetary policy communication of the u s federal reserve and the swedish riksbank with such a framework the credibility of both institutions is shown to have been low in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis

the perils of taylor rules abstract since john taylor s 1993 carnegie rochester conf ser publ policy39 195 214 seminal paper a large literature has argued that active interest rate feedback rules that is rules that respond to increases in inflation with a more than one for one increase in the nominal interest rate are stabilizing in this paper we argue that once the zero bound on nominal interest rates is taken into account active interest rate feedback rules can easily lead to unexpected consequences specifically we show that even if the steady state at which monetary policy is active is locally the unique equilibrium typically there exist an infinite number of equilibrium trajectories originating arbitrarily close to that steady state that converge to a liquidity trap that is a steady state in which the nominal interest rate is near zero and inflation is possibly negative journal of economic literature classification numbers e52 e31 e63

forward guidance and the state of the economy this paper analyzes forward guidance in a nonlinear model with a zero lower bound zlb on the nominal interest rate forward guidance is modeled with news shocks to the monetary policy rule which capture innovations in expectations from central bank communication about future policy rates whereas most studies use quasi linear models that disregard the expectational effects of hitting the zlb we show how the effectiveness of forward guidance nonlinearly depends on the state of the economy the speed of the recovery the degree of uncertainty the policy shock size and the forward guidance horizon when households account for the zlb jel e43 e58 e61

the determination of fair profits for the property liability insurance firm although the property liability insurance industry has been subject to price regulation for many years surprisingly little research has been directed at producing valuation models of a property liability insurance firm although property liability price regulation has historically involved setting minimum prices to reduce the risk of insolvency some commissions have begun to move toward setting prices more in the spirit of public utility regulation 1 if in an effort to promote efficiency the working objective of such regulation requires the determination of prices that would prevail under competition then regulation must be founded on some model of the costs of regulated firms under competition with free entry prices just cover all economic costs including the opportunity costs of investment by suppliers of capital and a valuation model is required to explain how the market value of the firm and therefore the cost of capital reacts to changes in the prices it charges our objective in this chapter is to provide such a framework

optimal debt management in a liquidity trap we study optimal debt management in the face of shocks that can drive the economy into a liquidity trap and call for an increase in public spending in order to mitigate the resulting recession our approach follows the literature of macroeconomic models of debt management which we extend to the case where the zero lower bound on the short term interest rate may bind we wish to identify the conditions under which removing long maturity government debt from the secondary market can be an optimal policy outcome we show that the optimal debt management strategy is to issue short term debt if the government faces a sizable exogenous increase in public spending and if its initial liability is not very large in this case our results run against the standard prescription of the debt management literature in contrast if the initial debt level is high then issuing long term government bonds is optimal finally we find a role for revisions in the debt management strategy during lt episodes whereby the government actively manages the maturity structure in some cases removing long bonds from the secondary market

optimal monetary policy at the zero interest rate bound what should a central bank do when faced with a weak aggregate demand even after reducing the short term nominal interest rate to zero to address this question we solve a central bank s intertemporal loss minimization problem in which the non negativity constraint on nominal interest rates is explicitly considered we find that the optimal path is characterized by policy inertia in the sense that a zero interest rate policy should be continued for a while even after the natural rate of interest returns to a positive level by making such a commitment the central bank is able to achieve higher expected inflation lower long term nominal interest rates and a weaker domestic currency in the adverse periods when the natural rate of interest significantly deviates from a steady state level

optimal fiscal policy in a world liquidity trap we construct a model of the international transmission of liquidity trap shocks and examine the case for international coordination of scal policy to respond to the liquidity trap integrated nancial markets tend to propagate liquidity traps in a global environment scal policy may be eective in raising gdp when the economy is stuck in a liquidity trap but it does so in a beggar thy neighbor fashion when one economy is in a liquidity trap the cross country spillover eect of scal policy is negative we examine the welfare optimizing policy response to a liquidity trap when countries coordinate on scal policy fiscal policy may be an eective tool in responding to a liquidity trap although it is never optimal to use scal expansion su ciently to fully eliminate a downturn moreover there is little case for coordinated global scal expansion for the most part the country worst hit by a liquidity trap shock should use its own policies to respond without much help from foreign policies

optimal monetary policy and determinacy under active passive regimes abstract should one expect inflation to be stable when monetary policy is passive according to the workhorse model for monetary policy analysis the answer should be no if the passive spell is too long in this paper i develop a new keynesian model in which monetary policy is optimal subject to a loose commitment constraint i show that there is a threshold degree of commitment such that the equilibrium is locally unique when monetary policy switches between active and passive stances regardless of the length of the passive spell this result also holds for a version of the model where the passive spell is endogenous and due to a demand shock driving the economy to the zero lower bound

is there a fiscal free lunch in a liquidity trap this paper uses a dsge model to examine the eects of an expansion in government spending in a liquidity trap the spending multiplier can be much larger than in the normal situation if the liquidity trap is very persistent and scal stimulus can be rapidly implemented moreover the budgetary costs may be minimal as the large response of output boosts tax revenues allowing for something close to a scal free lunch however we caution that the multiplier may be much smaller under plausible implementation lags for many types of public spending and or if the liquidity trap lasts less than two years in addition because the marginal impact of scal expansion decreases in the scale of the outlay it is crucial to distinguish between average and marginal multipliers

the state of new keynesian economics a partial assessment i have benefited from the financial support of the generalitat de catalunya agaur grant 2017sgr1393 and the ministerio de economia industria y competitividad grant eco2017 87827

new keynesian versus old keynesian government spending multipliers renewed interest in fiscal policy has increased the use of quantitative models to evaluate policy because of modelling uncertainty it is essential that policy evaluations be robust to alternative assumptions we find that models currently being used in practice to evaluate fiscal policy stimulus proposals are not robust government spending multipliers in an alternative empirically estimated and widely cited new keynesian model are much smaller than in these old keynesian models the estimated stimulus is extremely small with gdp and employment effects only one sixth as large and with private sector employment impacts likely to be even smaller we investigate the sensitivity of our findings with regard to the response of monetary policy the zero bound on nominal interest rates and the inclusion of an empirically relevant degree of rule of thumb behaviour in the new keynesian model in addition we relate our findings using estimated structural macroeconomic models to the recent literature using reduced form regression techniques

global liquidity trap abstract how should monetary policy respond to a global liquidity trap where the two countries may fall into a liquidity trap simultaneously using a two country new open economy macroeconomics model we first characterize optimal monetary policy and show that the optimal rate of inflation in one country is affected by whether or not the other country is in a liquidity trap we next examine how well the optimal monetary policy is approximated by relatively simple monetary policy rules the interest rate rule targeting the producer price index performs well in this respect

the expected inflation channel of government spending in the postwar u s abstract there exist sticky price models in which the output response to a government spending change can be large if the central bank is nonresponsive to inflation according to this expected inflation channel government spending drives up expected inflation which in turn reduces the real interest rate and leads to an increase in private consumption this paper examines whether the channel was important in the post wwii u s with particular attention to the 2009 recovery act period first we show that a model calibrated to have a large output multiplier requires a large response of expected inflation to a government spending shock next we show that this large response is inconsistent with structural vector autoregression evidence from the federal reserve s passive policy period 1959 1979 then we study expected inflation measures during the recovery act period in conjunction with a panel of professional forecaster surveys a cross country comparison of bond yields and fiscal policy news announcements we show that the expected inflation response was too small to engender a large output multiplier

the ir relevance of real wage rigidity in the new keynesian model with search frictions we explore the role of real wage dynamics in a new keynesian business cycle model with search and matching frictions in the labor market both job creation and destruction are endogenous we show that the model generates counterfactual inflation and labor market dynamics in particular it fails to generate a beveridge curve vacancies and unemployment are positively correlated introducing real wage rigidity leads to a negative correlation and increases the magnitude of labor market flows to more realistic values however inflation dynamics are only weakly affected by real wage rigidity this is because of the presence of labor market frictions which generate long run employment relationships the measure of real marginal cost that is relevant for inflation dynamics via the phillips curve contains a dynamic component that does not necessarily move with real wages

sophisticated monetary policies in standard monetary policy approaches interest rate rules often produce indeterminacy a sophisticated policy approach does not sophisticated policies depend on the history of private actions government policies and exogenous events and can differ on and off the equilibrium path they can uniquely implement any desired competitive equilibrium when interest rates are used along the equilibrium path implementation requires regime switching these results are robust to imperfect information our results imply that the taylor principle is neither necessary nor sufficient for unique implementation they also provide a direction for empirical work on monetary policy rules and determinacy

theoretical analysis regarding a zero lower bound on nominal interest rates this paper explores several issues concerning a possible zero lower bound zlb including its theoretical rationale the magnitude of effects of low sustained inflation on real interest rates the validity of analyzing monetary policy in models with no monetary variables and the dynamic stabilizing properties of taylor rules in a zlb context the most important argument however is that if the short nominal rate is immobilized at zero there nevertheless exists a route for monetary stabilization policy to be effective via the foreign exchange market its quantitative importance is examined in a calibrated optimizing open economy model

the argentine stabilization plan of december 20th abstract in this paper an analytical model is developed to incorporate the essential characteristics of the stabilization plan implemented in argentina in january 1979 the model is based upon a set of simplifying assumptions that only approximate the complexity of the real world it is assumed that the expectations of inflation and the degree of excess demand or supply in the non traded goods market are the main intermediate determinants of the rate of inflation in that market the rate of change of prices of traded goods being determined by the external inflation together with the rate of devaluation treating thus the external rate of inflation as exogenous the only instrument available for influencing the rate of inflation in the long run is the rate of devaluation since the model assumes a fixed exchange rate regime the money supply is endogenous and hence unsuitable as an instrument of economic policy

attenuating the forward guidance puzzle implications for optimal monetary policy abstract we examine the implications of less powerful forward guidance for optimal policy using a sticky price model with an effective lower bound elb on nominal interest rates as well as a discounted euler equation and a discounted phillips curve when the private sector agents discount future economic conditions more in making their decisions today a future rate cut becomes less effective in stimulating current economic activity under a wide range of plausible degrees of discounting it is optimal for the central bank to compensate for the reduced effect of a future rate cut by keeping the policy rate at the elb for longer

comment on forward guidance communication commitment or both by marco bassetto forward guidance can be cheap talk in an infinitely repeated game with the public asymmetric information is necessary for cheap talk to be useful the central bank can build credibility over time to make cheap talk credible when to use forward guidance instead of general transparency remains unclear adding a lower bound on interest rates does not change the main conclusions

fiscal activism and the zero nominal interest rate bound in an economy where the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is an occasionally binding constraint and the government lacks a commitment technology it may be desirable for society to appoint a policymaker who cares less about government spending stabilization relative to inflation and output gap stabilization than the private sector does a policymaker of this type uses government spending more elastically to stabilize the economy at the zero lower bound the anticipation of aggressive fiscal expansions in future liquidity trap situations increases inflation expectations and lowers real interest rates thereby mitigating the decline in output and inflation

monetary policy and the lost decade lessons from japan i investigate how monetary policy can avoid a deflationary slump when policy rates are near zero by studying interest rate policy during japan s lost decade estimation results suggest that the bank of japan s interest rate policy fits a conventional reaction function with an inflation target near 1 the disapointing economic performance thus seems primarily due to adverse economic shocks rather than extraordinary policy errors also counterfactual policy simulations suggest that simply raising the inflation target would not have substantially improved performance however price level targeting or combining a higher inflation target with an aggressive output response would have achieved superior stabilization results

the heterogeneous responses of consumption between poor and rich to government spending shocks government spending shocks have substantially different effects on consumers across the income distribution consumption increases for the poor whereas it decreases for the rich in response to a rise in government expenditure i shed light on this issue by incorporating a progressive tax scheme and productive public expenditure into a heterogeneous agent model economy with indivisible labor the model economy is able to successfully match aggregate and disaggregate effects of government spending shocks on consumption when the government increases its spending and accompanies it by a rise in tax progressivity the poor are employed and increase their consumption since after tax wage rates increase while the rich decrease their consumption because of a fall in after tax wage rates

monetary and fiscal policy in a liquidity trap with inflation persistence abstract this paper relies on the new keynesian model with structural inflation persistence to characterize the optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a liquidity trap it shows that with a phillips curve that is both forward and backward looking the monetary policy that is implemented during a liquidity trap episode can be sufficient to avoid a depression the central bank does not need to commit beyond the end of the crisis to get some traction on economic activity regarding fiscal policy inflation persistence justifies some front loading of government expenditures to get inflation started such as to reduce the real interest rate the magnitude of the optimal fiscal stimulus is decreasing in the degree of inflation persistence finally if inflation persistence is due to adaptive expectations rather than to price indexation then monetary policy is ineffective while the optimal fiscal stimulus is large and heavily front loaded

the formation of consumer inflation expectations new evidence from japan s deflation experience using a new data set we investigate the relationship between the inflation experience and expectations of households in japan focusing on the post 1995 deflationary era our first finding is that inflation expectations increase with age second we find that measured inflation rates also increase with age although age and inflation expectations continue to exhibit a positive correlation even after controlling for the household level inflation rate analysis suggests that the correlation between age and inflation expectations is driven largely by the correlation between cohort and inflation expectations which we interpret to represent the effect of historical inflation experience on inflation expectations

changes in the federal reserve s inflation target causes and consequences this paper estimates a new keynesian model to draw inferences about the behavior of the federal reserve s unobserved inflation target the results indicate that the target rose from 1 1 4 percent in 1959 to over 8 percent in the mid to late 1970s before falling back below 2 1 2 percent in 2004 the results also provide some support for the hypothesis that over the entire postwar period federal reserve policy has systematically translated short run price pressures set off by supply side shocks into more persistent movements in inflation itself although considerable uncertainty remains about the true source of shifts in the inflation target jel e31 e32 e52

fiscal policy in an expectations driven liquidity trap we study the effects of fiscal policy interventions in a liquidity trap in a model with nominal rigidities and an interest rate rule in a liquidity trap caused by a self fulfilling state of low confidence higher government spending has deflationary effects that reduce the spending multiplier when the zero lower bound is binding instead cuts in marginal labor tax rates are inflationary and become more expansionary when the zero lower bound is binding these findings contradict popular views about the effects of fiscal policy in a liquidity trap

the effects of foreign shocks when interest rates are at zero in a two country dsge model the effects of foreign demand shocks on the home country are greatly amplified if the home economy is constrained by the zero lower bound on policy interest rates this result applies even to countries that are relatively closed to trade such as the united states departing from many of the existing closed economy models the duration of the liquidity trap is determined endogenously adverse foreign shocks can extend the duration of the trap implying more contractionary effects for the home country the home economy is more vulnerable to adverse foreign shocks if the neutral rate is low consistent with secular stagnation and trade openness is high

a monetary analysis of balance sheet policies we augment a standard macroeconomic model to analyse the effects and limitations of balance sheet policies we show that the central bank can stimulate real activity by changing the size or the composition of its balance sheet when interest rate policy is ineffective specifically the central bank can stabilise the economy by increasing money supply against eligible assets even when the policy rate is at the zero lower bound by changing the composition of its balance sheet it can affect interest rates and for example neutralise increases in firms borrowing costs which is not possible under a single instrument regime we further analyse the limitations of balance sheet policies and show that they are particularly useful under liquidity demand shocks

has u s monetary policy tracked the efficient interest rate abstract interest rate decisions by central banks are universally discussed in terms of taylor rules which describe policy rates as responding to inflation and some measure of the output gap we show that an alternative specification of monetary policy in which the interest rate tracks the wicksellian efficient rate of return as the primary indicator of real activity fits the u s data better than otherwise identical taylor rules this result holds for a variety of specifications of the other ingredients of the policy rule including the output gap and of private agents behavior

links between trust in the ecb and its interest rate policy we analyse determinants of trust in the european central bank ecb our main finding is that when households have pessimistic expectations aggressive cuts in interest rates have an adverse effect on their trust in central bank this result is in accordance with the lack of confidence shock hypothesis developed by schmitt grohe and uribe 2012 and in contrast with the fundamental shock hypothesis which implies positive effects of aggressive cuts for trust in the ecb the result is robust to various changes in the modelling approach

capital controls global liquidity traps and the international policy trilemma the zero bound on interest rates introduces a new dimension to the trilemma in international policy the openness of the international financial market might render monetary policy ineffective even within a system of fully flexible exchange rates because shocks that lead to a liquidity trap in one country are propagated through financial markets to other countries however the effectiveness of monetary policy can be restored by the imposition of capital controls we derive the optimal response of monetary policy to a global liquidity trap in the presence of capital controls we show that even though capital controls might facilitate effective monetary policy capital controls are not generally desirable in terms of welfare

optimal fiscal and monetary policy with occasionally binding zero bound constraints abstract this paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policy when the nominal interest rate is subject to the zero lower bound zlb constraint in a stochastic new keynesian economy in the baseline model calibrated to match key features of the u s economy it is optimal for the government to increase its spending when at the zlb in the stochastic environment by about 60 percent more than it would in the deterministic environment the presence of uncertainty creates a unique time consistency problem if the steady state is inefficient although access to government spending policy increases welfare in the face of a large deflationary shock it decreases welfare during normal times as the government reduces the nominal interest rate less aggressively before reaching the zlb

monetary policy when interest rates are bounded at zero this paper assesses the importance of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates for the interest rate channel of monetary policy we simulate several interest rate setting policy rules with ei

the composition of government spending and the multiplier at the zero lower bound we investigate the size of the multiplier at the zlb in a new keynesian model it ranges from around 0 25 to 1 5 depending on the extent to which the government spending is productive substitutable or not for private consumption

occbin a toolkit for solving dynamic models with occasionally binding constraints easily abstract the toolkit adapts a first order perturbation approach and applies it in a piecewise fashion to solve dynamic models with occasionally binding constraints our examples include a real business cycle model with a constraint on the level of investment and a new keynesian model subject to the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates compared with a high quality numerical solution the piecewise linear perturbation method can adequately capture key properties of the models we consider a key advantage of the piecewise linear perturbation method is its applicability to models with a large number of state variables

optimal discretionary monetary policy in a micro founded model with a zero lower bound on nominal interest rate abstract this paper investigates optimal discretionary monetary policy under the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate zlb in the case of a distorted steady state due to monopoly and taxation solving a fully nonlinear micro founded fnl model using a global method i find that the central bank in a more distorted economy would cut the interest rate less aggressively under a particularly adverse demand shock this occurs because inflation and nominal interest rates are higher on average making the zlb less likely to bind and causing the economy to escape from the zlb sooner however the social planner would choose the optimal inflation rate of approximately zero the result emerges because the unconditional benefit of avoiding the zlb is not big enough to offset the cost of higher relative price dispersion when inflation is significantly positive in addition i show that the conventional linear quadratic lq method is inaccurate in the case of a sufficiently distorted steady state

optimal monetary and fiscal policy with a zero bound on nominal interest rates i characterize optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a stochastic new keynesian model when nominal interest rates may occasionally hit the zero lower bound the benevolent policymaker controls the short term nominal interest rate and the level of government spending under discretionary policy accounting for fiscal stabilization policy eliminates to a large extent the welfare losses associated with the presence of the zero bound under commitment the gains associated with the use of the fiscal policy tool remain modest even though fiscal stabilization policy is part of the optimal policy mix

good bye financial repression hello financial crash some unintended consequences of financial liberalization in latin america are analyzed in this paper intrinsic imperfectious in financial markets and the policy dilemmas they pose are reviewed first the stylized facts of southern cone experiments in financial liberization are then presented alternative ways of organlzing domestic capital markets under latin american conditions are discussed and an eclectic reform mongering program is proposed

optimal monetary policy under commitment with a zero bound on nominal interest rates we determine optimal monetary policy under commitment in a forwardlooking new keynesian model when nominal interest rates are bounded below by zero the lower bound represents an occasionally binding constraint that causes the model and optimal policy to be nonlinear a calibration to the u s economy suggests that policy should reduce nominal interest rates more aggressively than suggested by a model without lower bound rational agents anticipate the possibility of reaching the lower bound in the future and this amplifies the effects of adverse shocks well before the bound is reached while the empirical magnitude of u s mark up shocks seems too small to entail zero nominal interest rates shocks affecting the natural real interest rate plausibly lead to a binding lower bound under optimal policy however this occurs quite infrequently and does not imply positive average inflation rates in equilibrium interestingly the presence of binding real rate shocks alters the policy response to non binding markup shocks

rate of return regulation with price flexibility rate of return regulation is the standard technique used to try to correct for the allocative inefficiencies arising from granting monopolies to firms in industries exhibiting economies of scale the idea behind current practice is that regulators should set an output price such that the firm s profits will provide investors with a fair expected rate of return on invested capital while there has been considerable debate on the appropriate rate of return the modern view as originally expressed by myers 1972 is that the fair rate should be equal to that expected by investors in other firms with equivalent risk this paper considers a change in rate of return regulation that will dominate standard price setting rather than fixing the price that the regulated firm must charge the regulator should grant the firm the option to charge any price less than or equal to a ceiling price hereafter called the price flexibility option if the regulated firm has this flexibility both the consumers and the firm are at least as well off this option to raise and lower prices within a range specified by the regulator will increase the ex ante value of the this paper considers a change in rate of return regulation that will dominate standard price setting rather than fixing the price that the regulated firm must charge the regulator should allow the firm to charge any price less than or equal to a ceiling price we demonstrate the advantages of our proposal and develop a methodology for determining fair regulatory ceilings the methodology explicitly takes account of the effect of regulation on financial risk and we develop a technique for measuring the importance of this effect finally an example is introduced to demonstrate our techniques and to show the potential quantitative importance of the analysis the authors thank alan marcus michael salinger anjan thakor and two anonymous referees for helpful comments it is with great sadness that we report that beth hayes was killed while riding her bicycle shortly after the completion of this paper 1 for a discussion of this debate see brennan and schwartz 1982 p 508

liquidity traps capital flows abstract motivated by debates surrounding international capital flows during the great recession we conduct a positive and normative analysis of capital flows when a region of the global economy experiences a liquidity trap capital flows reduce inefficient output fluctuations in this region by inducing exchange rate movements that reallocate expenditure towards the goods it produces restricting capital mobility hampers such an adjustment from a global perspective constrained efficiency entails subsidizing capital flows to address an aggregate demand externality associated with exchange rate movements absent cooperation however dynamic terms of trade manipulation motives drive countries to inefficiently restrict capital flows impeding aggregate demand stabilization

the taylor principle and monetary policy approaching a zero bound on nominal rates quantile regression results for the united states and japan this paper offers a new approach that estimates the response of interest rates to inflation and the output gap at various points quantiles on the conditional distribution of interest rates this offers an improvement on empirical estimates conducted only at the mean and also allows us to test the propositions that policy shows greater aggression to inflation in the reaction function in terms of a greater response coefficient as interest rates reach low levels and increasing aggression as the lower bound is approached we find support for the taylor principle a more aggressive response to inflation than under a taylor rule but no detectable evidence of increasing aggression as the zero lower bound is approached in the us and japan

the optimal monetary policy rule under the non negativity constraint on nominal interest rates abstract we identify a monetary policy rule that remains optimal even in the presence of the non negativity constraint on nominal interest rates this rule also compensates for any past shortfalls in monetary easing during the zero interest rate period

the government spending multiplier in a mis managed liquidity trap i study the impact of a government spending shock in a new keynesian model when monetary policy is set optimally in this framework the economy is at the zero lower bound but expectations are well managed by the central bank as such the multiplier effect of government spending increases on expected inflation is small while the one on output can be larger than one this is consistent with recent empirical evidence on the effects of the 2009 arra

uncovered interest parity forward guidance and the exchange rate under uncovered interest parity uip the size of the effect on the real exchange rate of an anticipated change in real interest rate differentials is invariant to the horizon at which the change is expected empirical evidence using us euro area and uk data points to a substantial deviation from that invariance prediction expectations of interest rate differentials in the near distant future are shown to have much larger smaller effects on the real exchange rate than is implied by uip some possible explanations are discussed

exchange rate flexibility under the zero lower bound an independent monetary policy and a flexible exchange rate generally help a country in adjusting to macroeconomic shocks but recently in many countries interest rates have been pushed down close to the lower bound limiting the ability of policy makers to accommodate shocks even with flexible exchange rates this paper argues that when the zero bound constraint on nominal interest rates is binding and policy lacks an effective forward guidance mechanism a flexible exchange rate system may be inferior to a single currency area with monetary policy constrained by the zero bound a flexible exchange rate exacerbates the impact of shocks remarkably this may hold true even if only a subset of countries are constrained by the zero bound and other countries optimally adjust their interest rate targets for a regime of multiple currencies to dominate a single currency in a zero bound environment it is necessary to have effective forward guidance in monetary policy

was the new deal contractionary can government policies that increase the monopoly power of firms and the militancy of unions increase output this paper shows that the answer is yes under certain emergency conditions these emergency conditions zero interest rates and deflation were satisfied during the great depression in the united states the new deal which facilitated monopolies and union militancy was therefore expansionary in the model presented this conclusion is contrary to a large previous literature the main reason for this divergence is that this paper incorporates rigid prices and the zero bound on the short term interest rate jel e23 e32 e52 e62 j51 n12 n42

nonseparable preferences frisch labor supply and the consumption multiplier of government spending one solution to a fiscal policy puzzle this paper proposes a theoretical explanation of the positive consumption multipliers of government spending often found in the data the explanation requires two ingredients first labor demand expands e g prices are sticky second general nonseparable preferences over consumption and leisure should be such that the two goods are substitutes that is frisch labor supply elasticity is lower than the constant consumption elasticity this implies that constant consumption labor supply shifts left existing empirical evidence on the relative magnitudes of the two elasticities supports this hypothesis the parametric conditions under which the result occurs are consistent with restrictions of concavity and noninferiority of consumption and leisure

the beveridge nelson decomposition of economic time series a quick computational method this note describes a much simpler computational method for carrying out the beveridge and nelson decomposition of economic time series into permanent and cyclical components

the zero lower bound the dual mandate and unconventional dynamics abstract this paper examines monetary policy when it is constrained by the zero lower bound zlb on the nominal interest rate our analysis uses a nonlinear new keynesian model with technology and discount factor shocks specifically we investigate why technology shocks may have unconventional effects at the zlb what factors affect the likelihood of hitting the zlb and the implications of alternative monetary policy rules we initially focus on a new keynesian model without capital model 1 and then study that model with capital model 2 the advantage of including capital is that it introduces another mechanism for intertemporal substitution that strengthens the expectational effects of the zlb four main findings emerge 1 in model 1 the choice of output target in the taylor rule may reverse the effects of technology shocks when the zlb binds 2 when the central bank targets steady state output in model 2 a positive technology shock at the zlb leads to more pronounced unconventional dynamics than in model 1 3 the presence of capital changes the qualitative effects of demand shocks and alters the impact of a monetary policy rule that emphasizes output stability and 4 in model 1 the constrained linear solution is a decent approximation of the nonlinear solution but meaningful differences exist between the solutions in model 2

do central banks respond to exchange rate movements a structural investigation abstract we estimate a small scale structural general equilibrium model of a small open economy using bayesian methods our main focus is the conduct of monetary policy in australia canada new zealand and the uk we consider generic taylor type rules where the monetary authority reacts in response to output inflation and exchange rate movements we perform posterior odds tests to investigate the hypothesis whether central banks do target exchange rates the main result of this paper is that the central banks of australia and new zealand do not whereas the bank of canada and the bank of england do include the nominal exchange rate in its policy rule this result is robust for various specification of the policy rule we also find that terms of trade movements do not contribute significantly to domestic business cycles

the optimal composition of public spending in a deep recession abstract we study optimal fiscal policy in an economy plunged into a deep recession characterized by a liquidity trap and in which the government can allocate spending both to consumption and investment goods public investment increases the stock of public capital subject to a time to build constraint the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate binds as a result of a large shock that increases households desire to save in the risk free asset pushing the natural rate of interest below zero under nominal rigidities and sub optimal monetary policy the shock leads to a large decline in private consumption and investment we show that the optimal response to such a shock is to temporarily raise public spending above the level that would be dictated by classical principles and to tilt its composition towards public investment this compositional shift lasts well after the natural rate has ceased to be negative our results suggest that the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009 was insufficiently oriented towards public investment

a welfare based analysis of international monetary policy spillovers at the zero lower bound we study the welfare effects of international monetary policy spillovers at the zero lower bound focusing on the effects of forward guidance in a large economy foreign on its smaller trading partner home in scenarios motivated by the global financial crisis we find that foreign forward guidance has an overall prosper thy neighbor effect on the home economy as long as it increases foreign welfare this finding holds under alternative assumptions about exchange rate pass through or the degree of international financial integration however foreign forward guidance may worsen the trade off between the stabilization objectives of home monetary policy

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

discretionary monetary policy and the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates abstract ignoring the existence of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates one considerably understates the value of monetary commitment in new keynesian models a stochastic forward looking model with an occasionally binding lower bound calibrated to the u s economy suggests that low values for the natural rate of interest lead to sizeable output losses and deflation under discretionary monetary policy the fall in output and deflation are much larger than in the case with policy commitment and do not show up at all if the model abstracts from the existence of the lower bound the welfare losses of discretionary policy increase even further when inflation is partly determined by lagged inflation in the phillips curve these results emerge because private sector expectations and the discretionary policy response to these expectations reinforce each other and cause the lower bound to be reached much earlier than under commitment

the fiscal multiplier and spillover in a global liquidity trap we consider the fiscal multiplier and spillover in an environment in which two countries are caught simultaneously in a liquidity trap using an optimizing two country sticky price model we show that the fiscal multiplier and spillover are contrary to those predicted in textbook economics for the country with government expenditure the fiscal multiplier exceeds one the currency depreciates and the terms of trade worsen the fiscal spillover is negative if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution in consumption is less than one and positive if the parameter is greater than one incomplete stabilization of marginal costs due to the existence of the zero lower bound is a crucial factor in understanding the effects of fiscal policy in open economies

incomplete credit markets and monetary policy abstract we study monetary policy when private credit markets are incomplete the macroeconomy we study has a large private credit market in which participant households use non state contingent nominal contracts nscnc a second small group of households only uses cash supplied by the monetary authority and cannot participate in the credit market there is an aggregate shock we find that despite the substantial heterogeneity the monetary authority can provide for optimal risk sharing in the private credit market and thus overcome the nscnc friction via a counter cyclical price level rule the counter cyclical price level rule is not unique to pin down a unique monetary policy rule we consider two secondary goals for the monetary authority i expected inflation targeting and ii nominal gdp targeting we examine the impact of each of these approaches on the price level rule and other nominal variables in the economy

stabilization dynamics and backward looking contracts abstract exchange rate based stabilizations often result in an initial output expansion one explanation for this phenomenon has been that in the presence of inflation inertia a reduction in the nominal interest rate causes the domestic real interest rate to fall thus increasing aggregate demand this paper reexamines this issue in the context of an intertemporal optimizing model in contrast to previous results the analysis shows that if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is smaller than the elasticity of substitution between traded and home goods a permanent reduction in the rate of devaluation leads to a fall in aggregate demand

money financed fiscal stimulus the effects of implementation lag abstract previous studies argue that based on the new keynesian framework a fiscal stimulus financed by money creation has a strong positive effect on output under a reasonable degree of nominal price rigidities this paper investigates the effects of an implementation lag in a money financed fiscal stimulus on output we show that if a money financed government purchase has a time lag between the decision and the implementation 1 it may cause a recession rather than a boom when the economy is in normal times 2 it may deepen a recession when the economy is in a liquidity trap 3 the longer the implementation lag the deeper the recession and 4 the depth of the recession depends on the interest semi elasticity of money demand our results imply that if money demand is unstable the money financed fiscal stimulus with an implementation lag may have unstable effects on output in contrast to the debt financed fiscal stimulus

new keynesian dynamics in a low interest rate environment recent research has found that the dynamic properties of the new keynesian model are unorthodox when the nominal interest rate is zero improvements in technology and reductions in the labor tax rate lower economic activity and the size of the government purchase output multiplier is very large this paper provides evidence that these results are not empirically relevant we show that a prototypical new keynesian model fit to japanese data exhibits orthodox dynamics during japan s episode with zero interest rates we then demonstrate that this specification is more consistent with outcomes in japan than alternative specifications that have unorthodox properties

the effects of a money financed fiscal stimulus abstract i analyze the effects of a money financed fiscal stimulus and compare them with those resulting from a conventional debt financed stimulus i study the effects of both a tax cut and an increase in government purchases with and without a binding zero lower bound zlb on the nominal interest rate when the zlb is not binding a money financed fiscal stimulus is shown to have much larger multipliers than a debt financed fiscal stimulus that difference in effectiveness persists but is much smaller under a binding zlb nominal rigidities are shown to play a major role in shaping those effects

an optimizing is lm specification for monetary policy and business cycle analysis we ask whether relations of the is lm type can sensibly be used for the aggregate demand portion of a dynamic optimizing general equilibrium model intended for analysis of issues regarding monetary policy and cyclical fluctuations the main result is that only one change the addition of a term regarding expected future income is needed to make the is function match a fully optimizing model whereas no changes are needed for the lm function this modification leads to a dynamic forward looking model of aggregate demand that is tractable and usable with a wide variety of aggregate supply specifications theoretical applications concerning price level determinacy and gradual price adjustment are included

eliminating a deflationary trap through superinertial interest rate rules abstract this paper demonstrates that even in the presence of a zero lower bound on nominal interest rates central banks can eliminate a deflationary trap by the conduct of interest rate rules that have superinertia

the perils of nominal targets a monetary authority can be committed to pursuing an inflation price level or nominal gdp target yet systematically fail to achieve the prescribed goal constrained by the zero lower bound on the policy rate the monetary authority is unable to implement its objectives when private sector expectations stray far enough from the target low inflation expectations become self fulfilling resulting in an additional markov equilibrium in which the monetary authority falls short of the nominal target average output is below its efficient level and the policy rate is typically low introducing a stabilization goal for long term nominal rates can implement a unique markov equilibrium without fully compromising stabilization policy

the natural rate of interest and its usefulness for monetary policy we estimate a state of the art dsge model to study the natural rate of interest in the united states over the last 20 years the natural rate is highly procyclical and fell substantially below zero in each of the last three recessions although the drop was of comparable magnitude across the three recessions the decline was considerably more persistent in the great recession we discuss the usefulness and limitations particularly due to the zero lower bound of the natural rate for the conduct of monetary policy

exchange rate policy and trade balance a cointegration analysis of the argentine experience since 1962 using multivariate cointegration tests for nonstationary data and vector error correction models this article examines the determinants of trade balance tb for argentina over the last forty to fifty years taking into account that the short run impacts of currency depreciation on the tb behaviour may differ from the long run effects our investigation confirms the existence of long run relationships among tb real exchange rate rer and foreign and domestic incomes for argentina during different rer management policies based on the estimations the marshall lerner condition is checked and by means of impulse response functions we trace the effect of a one time shock to the rer on the tb not finding support for a j curve pattern in the short run