A number of recent studies examining historical experiences with deflation have called into question the widely-held view that maintains deflation is economically harmful. These studies contend that a broad, historical perspective reveals a more nuanced view of deflation, one that requires taking seriously both malign and benign deflation. This paper builds on these findings by taking an in-dep...

In this paper the long-run trend in CPI inflation (core inflation) for the US over the 1960– 2000 period is estimated using a common trends model. In this framework, core inflation is interpreted and constructed as the long-run forecast of inflation conditional on the information contained in nominal money growth, output fluctuations and movements in the oil price. Unlike other commonly used me...

In models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. We develop a two-sector new-Keynesian model to evaluate different inflation targeting rules in economies with financial frictions. We conclude that, in the presence of financial frictions, a welfaremaximizing central bank should adopt flexible head...

A general equilibrium model of a small open economy is developed to analyze the optimal rate of inflation under discretion. Once agents’ welfare is the sole policy objective it is possible to show that openness and inflation no longer have a simple inverse relationship. A greater degree of openness may lead the policy maker to want to exploit the short-run Phillips curve more aggressively, even...

We explore the connection between shock observability and equilibrium. When aggregate shocks are unobserved the rational expectations solutions remain unchanged if contemporaneous aggregate outcomes are observable, but their stability under adaptive learning must be reconsidered. We obtain learning stability conditions and show that, provided there is not large positive expectational feedback, ...

When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates binds, monetary policy cannot provide appropriate stimulus. We show that in the standard New Keynesian model, tax policy can deliver such stimulus at no cost and in a time-consistent manner. There is no need to use ine¢ cient policies such as wasteful public spending or future commitments to in‡ate. We conclude that in the New Keynesian model,...

This paper studies U.S. in‡ation adjustment speed to aggregate technology shocks and to monetary policy shocks in a medium size Bayesian VAR model. According to the model estimated on the 1959-2007 sample, in‡ation adjusts much faster to aggregate technology shocks than to monetary policy shocks. These results are robust to di¤erent identi…cation assumptions and measures of aggregate prices. Ho...

This paper shows that a zero-sum redistribution of wealth within a country can have persistent aggregate effects. Motivated by the case of an unanticipated inflation episode, we consider redistribution shocks that shift resources from old to young households. Aggregate effects arise because there are asymmetries in the reaction of winners and losers to changes in wealth. We focus on two sources...

This paper does two things. First, it shows both anecdotal and cross-country evidence that indicates that countries that have experienced hyperinflation display significantly lower long-term rates of inflation than countries that lack the same experience. Secondly, it presents a model to rationalize the main empirical finding. There is more than one mechanism through which the long-term effects...

We use a state-dependent model where pricing rules are optimal to examine the costs of a money-based disinflation under various assumptions about the credibility of the policy change. Our analysis allows us to relate actual credibility and future inflation inertia to the asymmetry of the price deviation distribution. An important implication of our statedependent setting is that disinflation ca...