We propose a generalized ordered response model that nests the popular Carlson-Parkin (CP) method to quantify household inflation expectations while explicitly control for cross-sectional heterogeneity in the threshold parameters and the variance. By matching qualitative and quantitative data from 1979 to 2012 from the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers, we find evidence against the t...

This paper incorporates limited asset markets participation in dynamic general equilibrium and develops a simple analytical framework for monetary policy analysis. Aggregate dynamics and stability properties of an otherwise standard business cycle model depend nonlinearly on the degree of asset market participation. While ‘moderate’ participation rates strengthen the role of monetary policy, lo...

Forecasting Economic Aggregates by Disaggregates* We explore whether forecasting an aggregate variable using information on its disaggregate components can improve the prediction mean squared error over first forecasting the disaggregates and then aggregating those forecasts, or, alternatively, over using only lagged aggregate information in forecasting the aggregate. We show theoretically that...

Once the zero bound on nominal interest rates is taken into account, Taylor-type interest-rate feedback rules give rise to unintended self-fulfilling decelerating inflation paths and aggregate fluctuations driven by arbitrary revisions in expectations. These undesirable equilibria exhibit the essential features of liquidity traps, as monetary policy is ineffective in bringing about the governme...

We propose a Bayesian approach to test the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) both as an exact relation and as a noisy/potentially misspecified model. We do so in order to reconcile the contradicting evidence that the NKPC is rejected by a Wald test but nevertheless it provides a good approximation of inflation dynamics. We apply the proposed approach to US and EMU data. When the NKPC is teste...

We develop a random-matching model to study the price dynamics of monies produced privately according time-consuming mining technology. For our leading example, there exists unique equilibrium where value money increases over time and reaches steady state. There is also continuum perfect-foresight equilibria inflates bursts gradually time. Initially, held for speculative motive, but it acquires...

U.S. imports and exports respond little to exchange rate changes in the short run. Pricing behavior has long been thought central to explaining this response: if local prices do not respond to exchange rates, neither will trade flows. Sticky prices and strategic complementarities in price setting generate sluggish responses, and they are necessary to match newly available international micro pr...

This paper has two related goals: (i) construct a model where money and credit coexist; (ii) pursue in this setting a theory of endogenous sticky prices that can be taken to the data. Search frictions generate price dispersion, and lead to monetary equilibria where profit-maximizing sellers set nominal prices they sometimes keep fixed when aggregate conditions change. Buyers can use cash or cre...

This paper presents a number of responses to Gordon de Brouwer’s criticisms of my paper on monetary policy in Indonesia. Among other things, it argues that de Brouwer has failed to disentangle the impact of two exogenous disturbances on prices—and relative prices—during the crisis and post-crisis period. These disturbances were capital flight, which resulted in real depreciation of the rupiah, ...

When real balances have even a very small productive role, contemporaneous and forwardlooking Taylor-Wicksell rules can induce ubiquitous multiplicities of equilibria and lead to consequences that are unintended by policymakers. This raises the issue of whether it is possible to anchor and stabilize the economy through backward-looking rules. We show that the standard uniqueness results that ar...