Simple Monetary Rules under Fiscal Dominance

This paper asks whether interest rate rules that respond aggressively to inflation, following the Taylor principle, are feasible in countries that suffer from fiscal dominance. We find that if interest rates are allowed to also respond to government debt, they can produce unique equilibria. But such equilibria are associated with extremely volatile inflation. The resulting frequent violations of the zero lower bound make such rules infeasible. Even within the set of feasible rules the welfare optimizing response to inflation is highly negative. The welfare gain from responding to government debt is minimal compared to the gain from eliminating fiscal dominance.     

Optimal Fiscal Policy Rules in a Monetary Union

This paper investigates the importance of fiscal policy in providing macroeconomic stabilization in a monetary union. We use a microfounded New Keynesian model of a monetary union, which incorporates persistence in inflation and non-Ricardian consumers, and derive optimal simple rules for fiscal authorities. We find that fiscal policy can play an important role in reacting to inflation, output, and the terms of trade, but that not much is lost if national fiscal policy is restricted to react, on the one hand, to national differences in inflation and, on the other hand, to either national differences in output or changes in the terms of trade. However, welfare is reduced if national fiscal policy responds only to output, ignoring inflation.     

Monetary Policy with Heterogeneous and Misspecified Expectations

In the recent literature on monetary policy and learning, it has been suggested that private sector's expectations should play a role in the policy rule implemented by the central bank, as they could improve the ability of the policymaker to stabilize the economy. Private sector's expectations, in these studies, are often taken to be homogeneous and rational, at least in the limit of a learning process. In this paper, instead, we consider the case in which private agents are heterogeneous in their expectations formation mechanisms and hold heterogeneous expectations in equilibrium. We investigate the impact of this heterogeneity in expectations on central bank's policy implementation and on the ensuing economic outcomes, and the general result that emerges is that the central bank should disregard inaccurate private sector expectations and solely base its policy on the accurate ones.     

Optimal Simple Monetary and Fiscal Rules under Limited Asset Market Participation

The combination of limited asset market participation and consumption habits generates indeterminacy for empirically plausible calibrations of a business cycle model characterized by price and nominal wage rigidities. Equilibrium determinacy is restored by demand management policies based on simple fiscal rules. In this regard, fiscal control of nominal income growth is particularly effective. In addition the complementarity between the Taylor rule and the fiscal feedback on nominal income growth produces relatively large welfare gains, limiting both aggregate and intragroup volatilities.     

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.     

Fiscal and Monetary Policy Coordination,Macroeconomic Stability,and Sovereign Risk Premia

In standard macroeconomic models, equilibrium stability and uniqueness require monetary policy to actively target inflation and fiscal policy to ensure long‐run debt sustainability. We show analytically that these requirements change, and depend on the cyclicality of fiscal policy, when government debt is risky. In that case, budget deficits raise interest rates and crowd out consumption. Consequently, countercyclical fiscal policies reduce the parameter space supporting stable and unique equilibria and are feasible only if complemented with more aggressive debt consolidation and/or active monetary policy. Stability is more easily achieved, however, under procyclical fiscal policies.     

Monetary and Fiscal Policy Switching

A growing body of evidence finds that policy reaction functions vary substantially over different periods in the United States. This paper explores how moving to an environment in which monetary and fiscal regimes evolve according to a Markov process can change the impacts of policy shocks. In one regime monetary policy follows the Taylor principle and taxes rise strongly with debt; in another regime the Taylor principle fails to hold and taxes are exogenous. An example shows that a unique bounded non-Ricardian equilibrium exists in this environment. A computational model illustrates that because agents' decision rules embed the probability that policies will change in the future, monetary and tax shocks always produce wealth effects. When it is possible that fiscal policy will be unresponsive to debt at times, active monetary policy (like a Taylor rule) in one regime is not sufficient to insulate the economy against tax shocks in that regime and it can have the unintended consequence of amplifying and propagating the aggregate demand effects of tax shocks. The paper also considers the implications of policy switching for two empirical issues.     

Quantitative Goals for Monetary Policy

We study empirically the macroeconomic effects of an explicit de jure quantitative goal for monetary policy. Quantitative goals take three forms: exchange rates, money growth rates, and inflation targets. We analyze the effects on inflation of both having a quantitative target and hitting a declared target. Our empirical work uses an annual data set covering 42 countries between 1960 and 2000, and takes account of other determinants of inflation (such as fiscal policy, the business cycle, and openness to international trade) and the endogeneity of the monetary policy regime. We find that both having and hitting quantitative targets for monetary policy is systematically and robustly associated with lower inflation. The exact form of the monetary target matters somewhat (especially for the sustainability of the monetary regime) but is less important than having some quantitative target. Successfully achieving a quantitative monetary goal is also associated with less volatile output.     

Monetary conservatism and fiscal policy

Does an inflation conservative central bank à la Rogoff (1985) remain desirable in a setting with endogenous fiscal policy? To provide an answer we study monetary and fiscal policy games without commitment in a dynamic, stochastic sticky-price economy with monopolistic distortions. Monetary policy determines nominal interest rates and fiscal policy provides public goods generating private utility. We find that lack of fiscal commitment gives rise to excessive public spending. The optimal inflation rate internalizing this distortion is positive, but lack of monetary commitment generates too much inflation. A conservative monetary authority thus remains desirable. When fiscal policy is determined before monetary policy each period, the monetary authority should focus exclusively on stabilizing inflation. Monetary conservatism then eliminates the steady state biases associated with lack of monetary and fiscal commitment and leads to stabilization policy that is close to optimal.     

Monetary Policy in a Forward-Looking Input–Output Economy

This paper examines the implications for monetary policy of sticky prices in both final and intermediate goods in a New Keynesian model. Both optimal policy under commitment and discretionary policy under simple loss functions are studied. Household utility losses under alternative loss functions are compared; additionally, the robustness of policy performance to model and shock misperceptions and parameter uncertainty is examined. Targeting inflation in both consumer and intermediate goods performs better than targeting inflation in one sector; targeting price levels of both final and intermediate goods performs significantly better. Moreover, targeting price levels in both sectors yields superior robustness properties.     

Monetary Policy Rules Work and Discretion Doesn’t: A Tale of Two Eras

This lecture examines monetary policy during the past three decades. It documents two contrasting eras: first a Rules‐Based Era from 1985 to 2003 and second an Ad Hoc Era from 2003 to the present. During the Rules‐Based Era, monetary policy, in broad terms, followed a predictable systemic approach, and economic performance was generally good. During the Ad Hoc Era, monetary policy is best described as a “discretion of authorities” approach, and economic performance was decidedly poor. By considering alternative explanations of this policy–performance correlation and examining corroborating evidence, the lecture concludes that rules‐based policies have clear advantages over discretion.     

Changing Monetary Policy Rules, Learning, and Real Exchange Rate Dynamics

When the exchange rate is priced by uncovered interest parity and central banks set nominal interest rates according to a reaction function such as the Taylor rule, the real exchange rate will be determined by expected inflation and the output gap or the unemployment gap of the home and foreign countries. This paper examines the implications of these Taylor rule fundamentals for real exchange rate determination. Because the true parameters in central bank policy rules are unknown to the public and change over time, the model is presented in the context of a least squares learning environment. This simple learning model captures the volatility and the major swings in the real deutschemark/euro–dollar exchange rate from 1976 to 2007.     

Asymmetric Preferences and the Stability Problem for Optimal Monetary Policy Rules

This paper evaluates the stability properties of optimal monetary policy rules when professionals under adaptive learning have asymmetric preferences. The asymmetric preferences require volatility estimates in real time. An expectations‐based rule can stabilize the economy, while a fundamentals‐based rule leads to instability.     

Optimal Monetary Policy with an Uncertain Cost Channel

The cost channel of monetary transmission describes a supply-side effect of interest rates on firms' costs. Previous research has found this effect to vary, both over time and across countries. Moreover, the cyclical nature of financial frictions is likely to amplify the cost channel. This paper derives optimal monetary policy in the presence of uncertainty about the true size of the cost channel. In a min–max approach, the central bank derives an optimal policy plan to be implemented by a Taylor rule. It is shown that uncertainty about the cost channel leads to an attenuated interest rate setting behavior. In this respect, the Brainard (1967) principle of cautious policy in the face of uncertainty continues to hold in both a Bayesian and a min–max framework.     

Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and House Prices: The Role of Financial Frictions

We probe the scope for reacting to house prices in simple and implementable monetary policy rules, using a New Keynesian model with a housing sector and financial frictions on the household side. We show that the social‐welfare‐maximizing monetary policy rule features a reaction to house price variations, when the latter are generated by housing demand or financial shocks. The sign and size of the reaction crucially depend on the degree of financial frictions in the economy. When the share of constrained agents is relatively small, the optimal reaction is negative, implying that the central bank must move the policy rate in the opposite direction with respect to house prices. However, when the economy is characterized by a sufficiently high average loan‐to‐value ratio, then it becomes optimal to counter house price increases by raising the policy rate.     

Managing Beliefs about Monetary Policy under Discretion

In models of monetary policy, discretionary policymaking is typically constrained in its ability to manage public beliefs. However, when a policymaker possesses private information, policy actions serve as signals to the public about unobserved economic conditions and belief management becomes an integral part of optimal discretion policies. This article derives the optimal time‐consistent policy for a general linear‐quadratic setting. The optimal policy is illustrated in a simple New Keynesian model, where analytical solutions can be derived as well. In this model, imperfect information about the policymaker's output target leads to lower policy losses.     

Optimal Monetary Policy and Transparency under Informational Frictions

This paper examines the optimal monetary policy and central bank transparency in an economy where firms set prices under informational frictions. The economy is subject to two types of shocks determining the efficient output level and firms' desired markups. To minimize the welfare‐reducing output gap and price dispersion between firms, the central bank controls firms' incentives and expectations by using a monetary instrument and disclosing information on the realized shocks. This paper shows that an optimal policy comprises the disclosure of a linear combination of the two shocks and the adjustment of monetary instruments contingent on the disclosed information.     

Collateral in Monetary Policy Operations

We present a portfolio decision model for banks that permits us to estimate the costs associated with the need to collateralise loans from the central bank. This allows us to calibrate the difference between a restrictive collateral eligibility framework for open market operations, such as that applied by the FED, with a more flexible approach such as that of Eurosystem. We also document that there could potentially appear relevant cost differences between the various collateral mobilisation procedures (pooling and earmarking) that currently coexist in the eurozone.     

Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Customer Markets

We present a model in which some goods trade in “customer markets” and advertising facilitates long‐lived relationships. We estimate the model on U.S. data and find a large congestion externality in the pricing of customer market goods. This motivates the analysis of optimal policy. Under a complete set of taxes, fiscal policy eliminates the externalities with large adjustments in tax rates on customer markets goods, while labor tax volatility remains low. Constraining the instruments to the interest rate and labor tax, the optimal labor tax displays large and procyclical fluctuations, but monetary policy is little changed compared to a model with no customer markets.     

Optimal Structure of Fiscal and Monetary Authorities

Why are monetary authorities not elected like fiscal authorities are? Advanced economies pair an elected fiscal authority with an independent monetary authority. Replicating the advanced economies' structure with authorities microfounded by a political economy model shows that this structure is the solution to a constrained mechanism design problem that overcomes time inconsistency and results in the highest possible welfare. Goal and instrument independence, singly and in combination, are insufficient to minimize time inconsistency, though their combination is necessary.