This paper investigates how monetary policy can help to avoid the liquidity trap by studying the experience of Japan. First, I analyze how the Bank of Japan conducted interest rate policy over the 1990s as the economy entered a deflationary slump. I use a new method of estimating the policy rule with a time-varying inflation target and a time-varying natural rate of interest. The estimation str...

A segmented markets model of monetary policy is constructed, in which a novel feature is goods market segmentation, and its relationship to conventional asset market segmentation. The implications of the model for the response of prices, interest rates, consumption, labor supply, and output to monetary policy are determined. As well, optimal monetary policy is studied, as are the costs of infla...

In this paper the optimal choice of a monetary target is investigated for a small open economy that is subject to foreign monetary policy shocks. In contrast to large parts of the literature, pegging the exchange rate is never the best policy choice for the small open economy in our model. Instead, monetary targeting and, depending on the parameter combination, producer price index targeting co...

This paper examines the way monetary policy has been conducted recently in the seven largest Latin American economies. We run 16 alternative specifications for the Taylor rule and select the most appropriate functional form through out-of-sample measures of forecasting performance. We find strong empirical support for endogenous monetary policy reacting to macroeconomic variables. We find empir...

In many countries, the monetary policy instrument remains unchanged for a long period and shows infrequent responses to exogenous shocks. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new explanation on why the central bank’s policy instrument remains so unchanged. In the following analysis, we explore how Knightian uncertainty affects optimal monetary policy. We apply the Choquet expected decision...

-Monetary policy operates in a different environment than it did a decade ago. Financial market innovations have eroded the distinctions among monetary assets, making the definition of money increasingly arbitrary. Deregulation of interest rates and banking activity is changing the behavior of the monetary aggregates, as banks pay interest on monetary assets and nonbanks offer monetary-like ass...

This paper analyzes the stability of the exchange rate in an economy with noise traders. Noise trading is restricted to agents investing in the domestic stock market. The agents pricing foreign exchange hold rational expectations. Monetary policy is affected by the behavior of investors in the domestic stock market and in turn affects fundamental stock evaluations as well as noise trading. We s...

A segmented markets model of monetary policy is constructed, in which a novel feature is goods market segmentation, and its relationship to conventional asset market segmentation. The implications of the model for the response of prices, interest rates, consumption, labor supply, and output to monetary policy are determined. As well, optimal monetary policy is studied, as are the costs of infla...

In this paper we study the ine!ciencies of the monetary equilibrium and optimal monetary policies in a search economy. We show that the same frictions that give !at money a positive value generate an ine!cient quantity of goods in each trade and an ine!cient number of trades (or search decisions). The Friedman rule eliminates the !rst ine!ciency and the Hosios rule the second. A monetary equili...