Presented at Adaptive Learning in Macroeconomics. Sponsored by the Centre for International Macroeconomics and Finance (CIMF) and the Faculty of Economics of the University of Cambridge.

This paper examines the association between inflation, monetary policy and U.S. stock market conditions during the second half of the 20th century. We use a latent-variable VAR to estimate the impact of inflation and other macroeconomic shocks on a latent index of stock market conditions. Our...

The Shadow Open Market Committee was formed in 1973 in response to rising inflation and the apparent unwillingness of U.S. policymakers to implement policies necessary to maintain price stability. This paper describes how the Committee's policy views differed from those of most Federal Reserve...

This paper extends the analysis of price level targeting to a model including the New-Keynesian Phillips Curve. We examine the inflation-output variability tradeoffs implied by optimal inflation and price level rules. In previous work with the Neoclassical Phillips Curve, we found that the...

This paper studies the Great Inflation in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Newspaper coverage and policymakers' statements are used to analyze the views on the inflation process that led to the 1970s macroeconomic policies, and the different movement in each country away from 1970s views. I...

The U.S. economy appears to have experienced a pronounced shift toward higher productivity over the last five years or so. We wish to understand the implications of such shifts for the structure of optimal monetary policy rules in simple dynamic economies. Accordingly, we begin with a standard...

Presentation to the Midwest Economic Education Conference, St. Louis - April 11, 2002

Presentation to the International Mass Retail Association (IMRA), Scottsdale, Ariz. - Jan. 21, 2002

This paper revisits the issue of what factors motivated the macroeconomic policies that led to the Great Inflation of the 1970s. A satisfactory explanation must be consistent with (1) the estimated monetary policy reaction function; (2) the timing patterns relating monetary policy developments...

We study a simple, microfounded macroeconomic system in which the monetary authority employs a Taylor-type policy rule. We analyze situations in which the self-confirming equilibrium is unique and learnable according to Bullard and Mitra (2002). We explore the prospects for the use of ‘large...