In this paper we study the impact of a temporary lack of credibility in a transition to price stability. We quantify the effects of a period of disinflation on temporary output losses, and the impact of the lack of credibility on the optimal speed on disinflation. We demonstrate that the...

We develop a simple and intuitive approach for analytically deriving unconditionally optimal (UO) policies, a topic of enduring interest in optimal monetary policy analysis. The approach can be employed to both general linear-quadratic problems and to the underlying non-linear environments. We...

When the monetary authority controls the short-term interest rate we find that under a regime of permanent (and even persistent but temporary) deficits that a strict upper bound on the feasible interest rate sequence is present. More generally, the satisfaction of the fiscal authority’s...

Stabilization policy involves joint monetary and fiscal rules. We develop a model enabling us to characterize systematic simple monetary and fiscal policy over the business cycle. We principally focus on the following question: what are the key properties of the joint simple rule governing the...

This paper examines the consequences of (S,s) pricing rules in a dynamic economy with heterogeneous costs of price adjustment. We construct the stationary distributions for aggregate output and prices for our model economy. As a result of our assumption of heterogeneous costs we find that: (i)...

In this paper we review and extend some of the key lessons that seem to be emerging from the Ramsey-inspired theory of dynamic optimal monetary and fiscal policies. We construct measures of the key distortions in our economy; we label these ‘dynamic wedges’. Inflation, actual or...

The timelessly optimal monetary policy proposed by Woodford (2003) may be dominated by alternative timeless policies. We provide a formal justification for these alternative policies. We demonstrate why discount rates do not matter and establish that optimizing over the unconditional expectation...

A key argument in Caplin and Leahy (1997) states that the correlation between monetary shocks and output is falling in the variance of the money supply. We demonstrate that this conclusion depends on solving for the correlation in the non-stationary state of the model. In the stationary state,...

A stylized macroeconomic model is developed with an indebted, heterogeneous Investment Banking Sector funded by borrowing from a retail banking sector. The government guarantees retail deposits. Investment banks choose how risky their activities should be. We compared the benefits of separated...

The unconditional expectation of social welfare is often used to assess alternative macroeconomic policy rules in applied quantitative research. This paper provides a detailed analysis of such policies. It sets out the unconditionally optimal (UO) policy problem and derives an LQ version of that...