Recent research has found that the dynamic properties of the New Keynesian model are unorthodox when the nominal interest rate is zero. Improvements in technology and reductions in the labor tax rate lower economic activity and the size of the government purchase output multiplier is very large....

Does fiscal policy have qualitatively different effects on the economy in a liquidity trap? We analyze a nonlinear stochastic New Keynesian model and compare the true and loglinearized equilibria. Using the loglinearized equilibrium conditions, the answer to the above question is yes. However,...

Recent research has found that the dynamic properties of the New Keynesian model can be very different when the nominal interest rate is zero. Improvements in technology and reductions in the labor tax rate lower economic activity, and the size of the government purchase output multiplier can be...

Is there asymmetry in the distribution of government bond returns in developed countries? Can asymmetries be predicted using financial and macroeconomic variables? To answer the first question, we provide evidence for asymmetry in government bond returns in particular for short maturities. This...

We measure asymmetries in the distribution of bond returns and exchange rates and test their statistical significance. Asymmetries are sizable when measured by the coefficient of skewness, a measure that is highly affected by outliers. In contrast, robustly measured asymmetries to outliers often...

This paper uses Japanese data to investigate the relationship between monetary policy and the yield curve. We find that the response of the yield curve depends in an important way on the maintained hypothesis about how monetary policy affects the economy. Under the liquidity effect maintained...

The distinguishing feature of natural-catastrophe risk is claimed to be aggregate risk. Because such risk is encompassed in the general competitive model, it seems to pose no new theoretical challenge. However, that model has markets contingent on exogenous events, while the actual economy seems...

This paper is motivated by empirical observations on the comovements of currency velocity, inflation, and the relative size of the credit services sector. We document these comovements and incorporate into a monetary growth model a credit services sector that provides services that help people...

We consider the nature of optimal cyclical monetary policy in three different stochastic models with various shocks. The first is a pure liquidity effect model, the second is a cost of changing prices model, and the third is an optimal seignorage model. In each case we solve for the optimal...