This paper argues that limited asset market participation is crucial in explaining U.S. macroeconomic performance and monetary policy before the 1980s and their changes thereafter. In an otherwise conventional sticky-price model, standard aggregate demand logic is inverted at low enough asset...

Recent estimates of the output Euler equation for the United States indicate that the elasticity of aggregate demand to interest rates is not significantly different from zero. We first argue that this result may hide a structural break: the estimated elasticity is a convolution of two...

In a forward-looking business cycle model, central banks can achieve the (timeless)optimal commitment equilibrium even in the absence of a commitment technology, if they are delegated with an objective function that is different from the societal one. The paper develops a general...

Government spending at the zero lower bound (ZLB) is not necessarily welfare enhancing, even when its output multiplier is large. We illustrate this point in the context of a standard New Keynesian model. In that model, when government spending provides direct utility to the household, its...

Deviations from long-run price stability are optimal in the presence of endogenous entry and product variety in a sticky-price model in which price stability would be optimal otherwise Long-run inflation (deflation) is optimal when the benefit of variety to consumers falls short of (exceeds) the...

This paper studies the role of endogenous producer entry and product creation for monetary policy analysis and business cycle dynamics in a general equilibrium model with imperfect price adjustment. Optimal monetary policy stabilizes product prices, but lets the consumer price index vary to...