We determine optimal discretionary monetary policy in a New-Keynesian model when nominal interest rates are bounded below by zero. Nominal interest rates should be lowered faster in response to adverse shocks than in the case without bound. Such ‘preemptive easing’ is optimal because expectations of a possibly binding bound in the future amplify the e ects of adverse shocks. Calibrating the mod...

This paper evaluates quantitatively the effect of real money balances in a New Keynesian framework. Money in our model facilitates transactions and is introduced through a transactions cost technology. This technology acts like a distortionary consumption tax which varies endogenously with the nominal interest rate. In this setup the resultant Phillips curve becomes a function of the nominal in...

This paper studies uncertainty using the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters’ data. We consider both inflation and real GDP growth forecasts at the micro level and explore forecast uncertainty using two alternative measures, i.e. conventional standard deviation of individual point forecasts and the median values of individual forecasters’ uncertainty, which are based on subjective probabilit...

We consider the effect of money illusion defined referring to Stevens' ratio estimation function on the long-run Phillips curve in an otherwise standard New Keynesian model of sticky wages. We show that if households under-perceive real economic variables, negative money non-superneutralities will become more severe. On the contrary, if households over-perceive real variables, positive money no...

We propose behavioral learning equilibria as a plausible explanation of coordination of individual expectations and aggregate phenomena such as excess volatility in stock prices and high persistence in inflation. Boundedly rational agents use a simple univariate linear forecasting rule and correctly forecast the unconditional sample mean and first-order sample autocorrelation. In the long run, ...

Section A gives empirical results for the Angrist and Krueger (1991) data and discusses implementation of PI tests and confidence sets. Section B provides further details on the derivation of the limit problems discussed in Section 2 of the paper. Section C shows that general nonlinear GMM models which are weakly identified in the sense of Stock and Wright (2000) give rise to limiting problems ...

We study the design of optimal monetary policy under uncertainty using a Markov jumplinear-quadratic (MJLQ) approach. We approximating the uncertainty that policymakers face by different discrete modes in a Markov chain, and by taking mode-dependent linear-quadratic approximations of the underlying model. This allows us to apply a powerful methodology with convenient solution algorithms that we...