A growing empirical and theoretical literature argues in favor of specifying monetary policy in the form of Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules. That is, rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as an increasing function of inflation with a slope greater than one around an intended...

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to give rise to aggregate fluctuations due to self-fulfilling expectations. In response to this...

This paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policy under sticky product prices. The theoretical framework is a stochastic production economy without capital. The government finances an exogenous stream of purchases by levying distortionary income taxes, printing money, and issuing one-period...

This paper derives a second-order approximation to the solution of rational expectations, dynamic, general equilibrium models. To illustrate its applicability, the method is used to solve the dynamics of a simple neoclassical model. The paper closes with a brief description of a set of MATLAB...

This paper studies the role of asset-market completeness for the properties of optimal policy. A suitable framework for this purpose is the small open economy with complete international asset markets. For in this environment changes in policy represent country-specific risk diversifiable in...

This paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policy

This paper computes welfare-maximizing monetary and fiscal policy rules in a real business cycle model augmented with sticky prices, a demand for money, taxation, and stochastic government consumption. We consider simple feedback rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as a function of...

The small open economy model with incomplete asset markets features a steady state that depends on initial conditions. In addition, equilibrium dynamics posses a random walk component. A number of modifications to the standard model have been proposed to induce stationarity. This paper presents...

Since John Taylor's (1993) seminal paper, a large literature has argued that active interest rate feedback rules, that is, rules that respond to increases in inflation with a more than one-for-one increase in the nominal interest rate, are stabilizing. In this paper, we argue that once the zero...

In this paper, we characterize conditions under which interest rate feedback rules that set the nominal interest rate as an increasing function of the inflation rate induce aggregate instability by generating multiple equilibria. We show that these conditions depend not only on the...