We evaluate explanations for the absence of disinflation during the Great Recession and find popular explanations to be insufficient. We propose a new explanation for this puzzle within the context of a standard Phillips curve. If firms' inflation expectations track those of households, then the...

While the degree of policy inertia in central banks' reaction functions is a central ingredient in theoretical and empirical monetary economics, the source of the observed policy inertia in the United States is controversial, with tests of competing hypotheses, such as interest-smoothing and...

This paper studies the small estimated effects of monetary policy shocks from standard VARs versus the large effects from the Romer and Romer (2004) approach. The differences are driven by three factors: the different contractionary impetus, the period of reserves targeting, and lag length...