Structural reforms that increase competition in product and labor markets are often indicated as the main policy option available for peripheral Europe to regain competitiveness and boost output. We show that, in a crisis that pushes the nominal interest rate to its lower bound, these reforms do...

We consider optimal monetary stabilization policy in a New Keynesian model with explicit microfoundations, when the central bank recognizes that private-sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any...

We extend a standard New Keynesian model to allow an analysis of "unconventional" dimensions of policy alongside traditional interest-rate policy. We find that quantitative easing in the strict sense is likely to be ineffective, but that targeted asset purchases by a central bank can instead be...