We separate changes of the federal funds rate into two components; one reflects the Fed's superior forecasts about the state of the economy and the other component reflects the Fed's reaction to the public's forecast about the state of the economy. Romer and Romer (2000) found that the Fed...

This paper models the gold standard as a state contingent commitment technology that is only feasible during peace. Monetary policy during war, when the gold convertibility rule is suspended, can still be credible, if the policymaker's plan is to resume the gold standard in the future. The DSGE...

By setting bounds on money growth, the commodity standard is a solution to the monetary authority’s time inconsistency problem, which arises from the fixed wage structure of the economy. If there is a supply shock to the backing commodity, the suspension of the commodity standard may be...

By imposing a simple adjustment cost on gold purchases the Bank of England was able to manage external drains of monetary gold while maintaining the convertibility of pound during the eighteenth century. This was a period during which constant political disturbances and external shocks on the...

This paper uses a number of identification approaches (using instrumental variables, assumptions about heteroscedasticity and panel fixed effects) to estimate the effect of inflation targeting on inflation. Generally, it finds the effect is small and insignificant.

The pre-crisis monetary policy consensus has been challenged on a number of fronts. Even the nominal target, around which the modern consensus developed, has been called into question, with a vigorous recent debate ensuing about nominal income targeting as an alternative. This paper contributes...

We examine Lars E O Svensson's prominent critique of the monetary policy of the Sveriges Riksbank (the Swedish central bank) from 1995-2012. Our main objection concerns Svensson's conclusion that the original pre-Friedman/Phelps version of the Phillips curve based on constant inflation...

Emerging economies with inflation targets (IT) face a dilemma between fulfilling the theoretical conditions of "strict IT", which imply a fully flexible exchange rate, or applying a "flexible IT", which entails a de facto managed floating exchange rate with FX interventions to moderate exchange...

The adoption of a credible monetary policy regime such as inflation targeting is known to reduce the persistence of inflation fluctuations. This conclusion, however, is derived from aggregate inflation or sectoral inflation rates, not from regional inflation data. This paper studies the regional...

Emerging economies with inflation targets (IT) face a dilemma between fulflling the theoretical conditions of "strict IT", which implies a fully flexible exchange rate, or applying a "flexible IT", which entails a de facto managed floating exchange rate with forex interventions to moderate...