Unanticipated inflation or deflation causes one party of a nominal contract to gain at the expense of the other party, an effect absent in macroeconomic models with one representative consumer or with consumers having identical consumption. In this paper's general dynamic and stochastic...

Contrary to Sargent and Wallace (1975), a central bank’s use of an interest-rate instrument does determine prices when the central bank pursues either a short-term or long-term price target. However, in order for a central bank’s pursuit of a long-term price target to be credible, the public...

The standard ad hoc monetary objective function creates a bias in favor of inflation targeting. Instead, this paper uses the Pareto criterion to assess inflation targeting (IT), price-level targeting (PLT), and nominal-income targeting (NIT). The effect that unanticipated inflation or deflation...

Woodford’s (2003) model of a cashless economy is the basis for his book Interest and Prices. Since Woodford assumes complete markets, this paper explicitly includes state-contingent securities with either temporary money or a cash-in-advance constraint to analyze Woodford’s logic. This...

A relatively simple analysis of central banks pegging interest rates applies whenever prices are determined in a price-flexible model where the central bank pursues a singular price-level or nominal-income target. Applying the model empirically in the U.S. and find that prior to 1980, the...

Using an optimisation-based model with endogenous labour supply and a proportional tax rate, we compare the stabilising properties of different fiscal policy rules. The economy is affected by shocks from both government spending and technology. The fiscal policy rule can be based on government...

The aim of this study is to identify the extent to which the GCC countries can adopt similar economic policies by the time of the formation of the GCC unified currency in 2010. Among many other convergence standards, the study suggests to examine the economic structure of the GCC countries to...

We analyze the microfoundations for Keynesian aggregate demand effects by considering the link between aggregate demand and firm production decisions under monopolistic competition. Macroeconomic equilibrium is characterized in a simple graphical framework that facilitates comparison of several...

In this paper, we present an alternative approach to inflation and inflation measurement based on Menger’s theory of inner exchange value of money and on the stochastic approach to index numbers. We briefly describe the characteristics of the sample cross-section distribution of price changes....

Recent empirical results about the US term structure are difficult to reconcile with the classical hypothesis of rational expectations even if time-varying but stationary term premia are allowed for. A hypothesis of rational learning about the conditional variance of the log pricing kernel is...