Kline, M. A. (2015) How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38:e31. Pasquinelli, E., Zalla, T., Gvozdic, K., Potier-Watkins, C. & Piazza, M. (2015) Mind, brain, and teaching: Some directions for future research. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38: e54. doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X14000697. BE...

Seven years after the outset of Great recession, debate continues as to which economic policies are necessary return a state balanced and sustainable growth. In this context, many voices demand more active participation central banks, including forceful implementation monetary policy measures. The Austrian school thought maintains that financial systems play key role, but it does so from founda...

We study optimal time-consistent monetary and fiscal policy in a New Keynesian model where occasional declines agents’ confidence give rise to persistent liquidity trap episodes. Insights from widely studied fundamental-driven traps are not useful guide for enhancing welfare this model. Raising the inflation target, appointing an inflation-conservative central banker, or allowing use of governm...

In this paper, we analyze coordination of macroeconomic stabilization policies within the EMU by focusing, in a dynamic set-up, on asymmetries, externalities, and the existence of a multi-country context. We study how coalitions among fiscal and monetary authorities are formed and what are their effects on the stabilization of output and price. In particular, our attention is directed to study ...

This paper develops recursive methods to study optimal and time consistent policy in dynamic models. We analyze a version of Calvo's 1978 monetary model and show that its time consistent outcomes can be completely characterized as the largest fixed point of either of two operators. Recursive application of these operators provides a computing algorithm which always converges to the set of time ...

This paper argues that the IMF financial and good technical assistance to Russia in the 1990s has been less than generous. Not only the size of the assistance might have not been adequate but also the timing and actual disbursements of these funds were in sharp discord with pledges. More importantly, the IMF made a number of serious policy mistakes in both design and the implementation of the r...

We analyze how public debt evolves when successive policymakers have different policy goals and cannot make credible commitments about their future policies. We consider several cases to be able to quantify the effects of imperfect commitment, political disagreement and political turnover. Imperfect commitment drives the long-run level of debt to zero. With political disagreement debt is a size...

We compare macroeconomic models of sticky-prices (Calvo and Costsof-adjustment) with flexible price models in terms of optimal seigniorage. This sheds light on the importance of relative price distortions. Sticky-price models with no price dispersion terms have unattractive implications, we argue, when it comes to the derivation of optimal policies. We provide examples where they may imply very...

We consider a representative-agent equilibrium model where the consumer has quasi-geometric discounting and cannot commit to future actions. We restrict attention to a parametric class for preferences and technology and solve for time-consistent competitive equilibria globally and explicitly. We then characterize the welfare properties of competitive equilibria and compare them to that of a pla...

The stability properties of a macromodel are determined by its characteristic roots. Conventional price level determinacy is achieved by imposing restrictions on policy rules so that the characteristic roots satisfy a saddlepath criterion. This paper shows how to choose arbitrary roots for the canonical New Keynesian macromodel using a simple forward-looking Taylor-type policy rule. We are able...