We study optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New Keynesian model where occasional declines in agents' confidence can give rise to persistent liquidity trap episodes. Unlike in the case of fundamental-driven liquidity traps, there is no straightforward recipe for mitigating the welfare costs...

Assigning a discretionary central bank a mandate to stabilize an average in ation rate| rather than a period-by-period in ation rate|increases welfare in a New Keynesian model with an occasionally binding lower bound on nominal interest rates. Under rational expecta- tions, the...

We examine the implications of less powerful forward guidance for optimal policy using a sticky-price model with an effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates as well as a discounted Euler equation and Phillips curve. When the private-sector agents discount future economic conditions...

The zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on interest rates makes speed limit policies (SLPs) - policies aimed at stabilizing output growth - less effective. Away from the ZLB, the history dependence induced by a concern for output growth stabilization improves the inflation-output tradeoff for a...

We study how the use of judgement or add-factorsʺ in macroeconomic forecasting may disturb the set of equilibrium outcomes when agents learn using recursive methods. We isolate conditions under which new phenomena, which we call exuberance equilibria, can exist in standard macroeconomic...