This paper studies the welfare consequences of exogenous variations in trend inflation in a New Keynesian economy. Consumption and leisure respond asymmetrically to a rise and a decline in trend inflation. As a result, an increase in the variance of shocks to the trend inflation process...

The increasing complexity of large financial firms has led to consideration of alternative regulatory structures. This has intensified recently because of the worldwide turmoil in financial markets. One important consideration has been to increase reliance on market discipline—most notably,...