This paper considers whether 'liquidity trap' issues have important bearing on the desirability of inflation targeting as a strategy for monetary policy. From a theoretical perspective, it has been suggested that 'expectation trap' and 'indeterminacy' dangers are created by variants of inflation...

The new open-economy macroeconomics' seeks to provide an improved basis for monetary and exchange-rate policy through the construction of open-economy models that feature rational expectations, optimizing agents, and slowly adjusting prices of goods. This paper promotes an alternative approach...

The following arguments are developed: (i) models without monetary aggregates do not imply that inflation is a non-monetary phenomenon and are not necessarily non-monetary models; (ii) theoretical considerations suggest that such models are misspecified, but the quantitative significance of this...

To consider the prospects, looking 20-30 years into the future, for monetary policymaking in accordance with policy rules, one must evaluate their present importance. That requires some definition of what constitutes rule-based monetary policy in practice, since no actual central bank will ever...

This paper reviews the distinction between the timeless perspective and discretionary modes of monetary policymaking, the former representing rule-based policy as recently formalized by Woodford (1999b). In models with forward-looking expectations, this distinction is greater than in the models...

This paper explores several issues concerning a possible zero lower bound (ZLB) including its theoretical rationale; the magnitude of effects of low sustained inflation on real interest rates; the validity of analyzing monetary policy in models with no monetary variables; and the dynamic...

This paper argues that, in studying the monetary policy transmission process, more emphasis should be given to the systematic portion of policy behavior and correspondingly less to random shocks basically because shocks account for a very small fraction of policy-instrument variability. Analysis...

This paper reports results of simulation exercises that explore several questions relating to the design of rules for monetary policy. Emphasis is given to issues raised by the concept of rule operationality, i.e., reliance on feasible instrument variables and information sets. Many of the...

An elementary exposition is presented of a convenient and practical solution procedure for a broad class of linear rational expectations models. The undetermined-coefficient approach utilized keeps the mathematics very simple and permits consideration of alternative solution criteria