Download or read book Rational Expectations Rigid Wages and the Real Effects of Monetary Policy written by Thorvaldur Gylfason and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Macroeconomic Policy written by Martin Weale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This analysis of macroeconomic policy, originally published in 1989, argues that key government objectives, such as reduced inflation, decreased unemployment and an adequate level of national saving can be achieved only by employing both monetary and fiscal policies, in conjunction with supply-side policies expressly designed to improve the workings of the labour market. Part 1 is a comparative analysis showing the effects of monetary and fiscal policy on the economy. Real-wage rigidity in the labour market is shown to have important consequences for the working of both types of policy, because it conditions the economy’s response to tax changes. Part 2 presents an econometric model which combines consistent stock-flow accounts with a full range of expectational effects. Part 3 presents an innovative technique for solving rational expectations models with the need for arbitary terminal conditions.

Download or read book Essays on Nominal Rigidities Bounded Rationality and Macroeconomic Policy written by Mikel Petri Castro and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis consists of three chapters about macroeconomic policy. In the first chapter, I study the empirical relationship between nominal rigidities and the real effects of monetary policy. Nominal rigidities lie at the core of macroeconomics. The empirical evidence suggests that prices and wages adjust sluggishly to aggregate shocks, while theoretical models justify why and to what extent these rigidities imply monetary non-neutrality. However, direct evidence on nominal rigidities being the actual channel for the transmission of these shocks is relatively scarce. I construct a highly disaggregated measure of regional price stickiness for the U.S. and use it to provide evidence of this channel. My results are in line with sticky price models, indicating that employment in more rigid industries and commuting zones tend to have stronger reactions to monetary policy shocks. In the second chapter, joint with Emmanuel Farhi and Iván Werning, we document the extreme sensitivity of New Keynesian models to fiscal policy announcements during a liquidity trap--a phenomenon we call the “fiscal multiplier puzzle”. The response of current output to government spending grows exponentially in the horizon of the stimulus. Surprisingly, the introduction of rule-of-thumb hand-to-mouth agents, combined with deficit-financed stimulus, can easily generate negative multipliers that are equally explosive. This intuition translates to incomplete markets heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian models, leading to large negative multipliers when taxes are backloaded. We construct a belief-augmented New Keynesian framework to understand the role played by expectations in shaping the fiscal multiplier puzzle. The key element behind this result is the extreme coordination of the demand and supply blocks under rational expectations. Common knowledge between these two blocks induces an inflation-spending feedback loop. Government spending boosts aggregate demand and drives up inflation, which in turn leads to lower real rates and higher spending by households, increasing aggregate demand again. We break this strategic complementarity by introducing bounded rationality in the form of level-k thinking. In contrast to rational expectations, level-k multipliers are bounded and tend to zero over infinite horizons for all finite k. Moreover, level-k interacts strongly with incomplete markets in two different ways. First, the attenuation of the multipliers increases for any level of k on the degree of market incompleteness, especially in the future. Second, in contrast to complete markets, incomplete markets increase the magnitude of the multipliers for low levels of k when taxes are backloaded, making deficits more effective at stimulating the economy. In the third chapter, I explore the implications of downward nominal wage rigidities for fiscal policy and inflation in a liquidity trap. The standard Phillips Curve predicts big declines in economic activity should be accompanied by big deflation episodes. I study whether downward nominal wage rigidity can explain the missing deflation during the Great Recession. To do so, I introduce wage rigidity in a standard cash-in-advance liquidity trap model. My results show that nominal wage rigidities are consistent with mild deflationary episodes only when the trap is expected to be very short-lived. Away from this case, the model predicts large deflations and drops in output as in standard New Keynesian models. I also study the impact of fiscal policy in my setup, finding large multipliers that increase with the degree of wage rigidity. The main reason behind the effectiveness of government spending is its persistent effects on economic activity. Wage rigidity generates unemployment persistence due to pent-up wage deflation. Fiscal spending boosts aggregate demand and decreases deflationary pressures today. This increases output today and in the future by relaxing the downward wage rigidity constraint in all subsequent periods. Keywords: nominal rigidities, price stickiness, monetary policy, regional, bounded rationality, incomplete markets, level-k, fiscal policy, downward nominal wage rigidity. JEL Classification: E52, E62, E7.

Download or read book Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality written by Jonathan Benchimol and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2019-08-02 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The form of bounded rationality characterizing the representative agent is key in the choice of the optimal monetary policy regime. While inflation targeting prevails for myopia that distorts agents' inflation expectations, price level targeting emerges as the optimal policy under myopia regarding the output gap, revenue, or interest rate. To the extent that bygones are not bygones under price level targeting, rational inflation expectations is a minimal condition for optimality in a behavioral world. Instrument rules implementation of this optimal policy is shown to be infeasible, questioning the ability of simple rules à la Taylor (1993) to assist the conduct of monetary policy. Bounded rationality is not necessarily associated with welfare losses.

Download or read book Monetary Policy Rules written by John B. Taylor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.

Download or read book Learning Monetary Policy and Asset Prices written by Mr.Marco Airaudo and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-01-23 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We explore the stability properties of interest rate rules granting an explicit response to stock prices in a New-Keynesian DSGE model populated by Blanchard-Yaari non-Ricardian households. The constant turnover between long-time stock holders and asset-poor newcomers generates a financial wealth channel where the wedge between current and expected future aggregate consumption is affected by the market value of financial wealth, making stock prices non-redundant for the business cycle. We find that if the financial wealth channel is sufficiently strong, responding to stock prices enlarges the policy space for which the rational expectations equilibrium is both determinate and learnable (in the E-stability sense of Evans and Honkapohja, 2001). In particular, the Taylor principle ceases to be necessary and also mildly passive policy responses to inflation lead to determinacy and E-stability. Our results appear to be more prominent in economies characterized by a lower elasticity of substitution across differentiated products and/or more rigid labor markets.

Download or read book Employment and Real Wages in Rational Expectations Equilibrium written by George Alogoskoufis and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hysteresis and Business Cycles written by Ms.Valerie Cerra and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-05-29 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.

Download or read book The ir relevance of Real Wage Rigidity for Optimal Monetary Policy written by Britta Kohlbrecher and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Real wage rigidity is known to create a substantial trade-off between inflation and employment stabilization for monetary policy in New Keynesian models with search frictions on the labor market. This paper shows that, quantitatively, this finding hinges very much on the assumption of constant returns to scale in production. With decreasing returns to scale, monetary policy with a single focus on inflation stabilization is close to optimal. The reason is twofold: Firms cushion the impact of rigid real wages on marginal costs by adjusting the marginal product of labor over the cycle. In addition, given employment fluctuations have a smaller effect on consumption volatility. Decreasing returns to scale thus remove the need for active monetary policy even if wages are rigid. Importantly, this contrasts with the implications of combining real wage rigidity and decreasing returns to scale for other policy instruments.

Download or read book Asset Prices and Monetary Policy written by John Y. Campbell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic growth, low inflation, and financial stability are among the most important goals of policy makers, and central banks such as the Federal Reserve are key institutions for achieving these goals. In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, leading scholars and practitioners probe the interaction of central banks, asset markets, and the general economy to forge a new understanding of the challenges facing policy makers as they manage an increasingly complex economic system. The contributors examine how central bankers determine their policy prescriptions with reference to the fluctuating housing market, the balance of debt and credit, changing beliefs of investors, the level of commodity prices, and other factors. At a time when the public has never been more involved in stocks, retirement funds, and real estate investment, this insightful book will be useful to all those concerned with the current state of the economy.

Download or read book Nominal Rigidity and Monetary Uncertainty written by Neil Rankin and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Temporary Equilibrium written by Jean-Michel Grandmont and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collection of journal articles reproduced in this volume provides a synthesis of the progress made in the last 15 years in the theory of temporary equilibrium. Key Features * Decision making * Competitive assets markets * Models of money * Deterministic dynamics * Stochastic processes * Quantity rationing

Download or read book The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money written by John Maynard Keynes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was originally published by Macmillan in 1936. It was voted the top Academic Book that Shaped Modern Britain by Academic Book Week (UK) in 2017, and in 2011 was placed on Time Magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923. Reissued with a fresh Introduction by the Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman and a new Afterword by Keynes’ biographer Robert Skidelsky, this important work is made available to a new generation. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes’ argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned. Highly provocative at its time of publication, this book and Keynes’ theories continue to remain the subject of much support and praise, criticism and debate. Economists at any stage in their career will enjoy revisiting this treatise and observing the relevance of Keynes’ work in today’s contemporary climate.

Download or read book Monetary Policy Strategy written by Frederic S. Mishkin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-08-21 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading academic authority and policymaker discusses monetary policy strategy from the perspectives of both scholar and practitioner, offering theory, econometric evidence, and extensive case studies. This book by a leading authority on monetary policy offers a unique view of the subject from the perspectives of both scholar and practitioner. Frederic Mishkin is not only an academic expert in the field but also a high-level policymaker. He is especially well positioned to discuss the changes in the conduct of monetary policy in recent years, in particular the turn to inflation targeting. Monetary Policy Strategy describes his work over the last ten years, offering published papers, new introductory material, and a summing up, “Everything You Wanted to Know about Monetary Policy Strategy, But Were Afraid to Ask,” which reflects on what we have learned about monetary policy over the last thirty years. Mishkin blends theory, econometric evidence, and extensive case studies of monetary policy in advanced and emerging market and transition economies. Throughout, his focus is on these key areas: the importance of price stability and a nominal anchor; fiscal and financial preconditions for achieving price stability; central bank independence as an additional precondition; central bank accountability; the rationale for inflation targeting; the optimal inflation target; central bank transparency and communication; and the role of asset prices in monetary policy.

Download or read book Interest and Prices written by Michael Woodford and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-12 with total page 805 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, any pretense of a connection of the world's currencies to any real commodity has been abandoned. Yet since the 1980s, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure "fiat" currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account? Interest and Prices seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing. Michael Woodford reexamines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate. The book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime--one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the "New Classical" critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.

Download or read book Inflation Expectations written by Peter J. N. Sinclair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Download or read book Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks written by Davide Debortoli and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yes, it makes a lot of sense. This paper studies how to design simple loss functions for central banks, as parsimonious approximations to social welfare. We show, both analytically and quantitatively, that simple loss functions should feature a high weight on measures of economic activity, sometimes even larger than the weight on inflation. Two main factors drive our result. First, stabilizing economic activity also stabilizes other welfare relevant variables. Second, the estimated model features mitigated inflation distortions due to a low elasticity of substitution between monopolistic goods and a low interest rate sensitivity of demand. The result holds up in the presence of measurement errors, with large shocks that generate a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and resource utilization, and also when ensuring a low probability of hitting the zero lower bound on interest rates.