How should monetary policy respond to changes in financial conditions? In this paper we consider a simple model where firms are subject to idiosyncratic shocks which may force them to default on their debt. Firms’ assets and liabilities are denominated in nominal terms and predetermined when...

The recent macroeconomic literature stresses the importance of managing heterogeneous expectations in the formulation of monetary policy. We use a stylized macro model of Howitt (1992) to investigate inflation dynamics under alternative interest rate rules when agents have heterogeneous...

We examine the degree and sources of disagreement between the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the Federal Reserve's (Fed's) staff about the appropriate policy rate for the period 1987-2011. For that purpose, we compute a counterfactual interest rate for the Fed's staff , based on its...