We show that, when a central bank is not fully financially backed by the treasury and faces a solvency constraint, an increase in the size or a change in the composition of it's balance sheet (quantitative easing) can serve as a commitment device in a liquidity trap scenario. In particular, when...

I investigate the optimal auditing scheme for a revenue-maximizing tax-collection agency that observes not only reported profits, but also the level of employment at each firm. Each firm is owned by a single entrepreneur whose managerial ability is random. The optimal auditing scheme is...

We assemble a novel dataset on transitions in central bank leadership in several countries, and study how monetary policy is conducted around those events. We find that policy is tighter both at the last meetings of departing governors and first meetings of incoming leaders. This finding cannot...

Inflation forecasting is an important but difficult task. Here, we explore advances in machine learning (ML) methods and the availability of new datasets to forecast US inflation. Despite the skepticism in the previous literature, we show that ML models with a large number of covariates are...