Strategic deviations in optimal monetary policy

1 Optimal Monetary Policy

We re-examine optimal monetary policy when lump-sum taxes are unavailable. Under commitment, we show that, with alternative utility functions to that considered in Nicolini’s related analysis, the direction of the incentive to cheat may depend on the initial level of government debt, with low debt creating an incentive towards surprise deflation, but high debt the reverse. Under discretion, we ...

Optimal Monetary Stabilization Policy∗

Optimal Monetary Policy

This article studies optimal monetary policy when decision-makers in firms choose how much attention they devote to aggregate conditions. When the amount of attention that decision-makers in firms devote to aggregate conditions is exogenous, complete price stabilization is optimal only in response to shocks that cause efficient fluctuations under perfect information. When decision-makers in fir...

Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy

We study optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an environment where explicit frictions give rise to valued money, making money essential in the sense that it expands the set of feasible trades. Our main results are in stark contrast to the prescriptions of earlier flexible-price Ramsey models. The two most important findings that emerge from our work are that the Friedman Rule is typically not ...

Optimal Monetary Policy Regime Switches∗

Given structural shifts in the economy, optimal simple monetary policy rules may respond with switches in their policy parameters. When the growth rate, inter-temporal preferences, or volatilities switch, the monetary authority chooses regime-dependent policy parameters to maximize welfare. These optimized policy parameters may differ across regimes and from the optimal choice of parameters for...