“Having looked at monetary policy from both sides now, I can testify that central banking in practice is as much art as science. Nonetheless, while practicing this dark art, I have always found the science quEite useful.” 2 Alan S. Blinder

We estimate a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function for the postwar United States economy, before and after Volcker’s appointment as Fed Chairman in 1979. Our results point to substantial differences in the estimated rule across periods. In particular, interest rate policy in the Volcker-Greenspan period appears to have been much more sensitive to changes in expected in�ation than in the pre-Volcker period. We then compare some of the implications of the estimated rules for the equilibrium properties of in�ation and output, using a simple macroeconomic model, and show that the Volcker-Greenspan rule is stabilizing. I.

We examine the frequency of price changes for 350 categories of goods and services covering about 70 % of consumer spending, based on unpublished data from the BLS for 1995 to 1997. Compared with previous studies we find much more frequent price changes, with half of goods' prices lasting less than 4.3 months. Even excluding the role of temporary price cuts (sales), we find that half of goods' prices last 5.5 months or less. The frequency of price changes differs dramatically across categories. We exploit this variation to ask how inflation for "flexible-price goods" (goods with frequent changes in individual prices) differs from inflation for "sticky-price goods" (those displaying infrequent price changes). Compared to the predictions of popular sticky price models, actual inflation rates are far more volatile and transient, particularly for sticky-price goods.

This paper examines a model of dynamic price adjustment based on the assumption that information disseminates slowly throughout the population. Compared with the commonly used sticky-price model, this sticky-information model displays three related properties that are more consistent with accepted views about the effects of monetary policy. First, disinflations are always contractionary (although announced disinflations are less contractionary than surprise ones). Second, monetary policy shocks have their maximum impact on inflation with a substantial delay. Third, the change in inflation is positively correlated with the level of economic activity.

This paper investigates the predictions of a simple optimizing model of nominal price rigidity for the aggregate price level and the dynamics of inflation. I compare the model’s predictions with those of a perfectly competitive, flexible price ‘benchmark’ model (corresponding to the model of pricing assumed in standard real business cycle models), and evaluate how much the introduction of nominal rigidities improves the model’s fit with the data. The model’s predictions are derived using only the firms optimal pricing problem; taking as given the paths of nominal labor compensation, labor productivity, and output, I determine the implied path of prices predicted by the model. Because prices are not a stationary series, I present my results in terms of the predicted path of the price/unit labor cost ratio, where the parameters characterizing such paths are chosen to maximize the fit with the data. I find that, while the evolution of prices relative to unit labor costs is quite different from what would be predicted by the flexible-price ‘benchmark ’ model, a simple model of nominal price rigidity delivers an extremely close approximation both of the price/unit labor cost ratio and of the inflation series, even under a very simple approach to the measurement of marginal costs. Moreover, the results are robust to modifications of this measure.

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This paper discusses the short-mn tradeoffbetween inflation and unemployment. Although this tradeoff remains a necessary building block of business cycle theory, economists have yet to provide a completely satisfactory explanation for it. According to the consensus view among central bankers and monetary economists, a contractionary monetary shock raises unemployment, at least temporarily, and leads to a delayed and gradual fall in inflation. Standard dynamic models of price adjustment, however, carmot explain this pattern of responses. Reconciling the consensus view about the effects of monetary policy with models of price adjustment remains an outstanding puzzle for business cycle theorists.

We lay out a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a tractable canonical system in domestic inflation and the output gap. We employ this framework to analyze the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rule-based policy regimes for the small open economy: domestic inflation and CPI-based Taylor rules, and an exchange rate peg. We show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail. We also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy, and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with those suboptimal rules.

This paper reconsiders the Phelps-Lucas hypothesis, according to which temporary real effects of purely nominal disturbances result from imperfect information about the nature of these disturbances. This explanation for the real effects of monetary policy is often dismissed on the ground that the Lucas (1972) model predicts only highly transitory effects on real activity, and none at all insofar as changes in monetary policy can be observed by the public prior to any measurable effect on aggregate nominal expenditure. The present paper

This paper analyses the implications of imperfect exchange rate pass-through for optimal monetary policy in a linearised open-economy dynamic general equilibrium model calibrated to euro area data. Imperfect exchange rate pass through is modelled by assuming sticky import price behaviour. The degree of domestic and import price stickiness is estimated by reproducing the empirical identified impulse response of a monetary policy and exchange rate shock conditional on the response of output, net trade and the exchange rate. It is shown that a central bank that wants to minimise the resource costs of staggered price setting will aim at minimising a weighted average of domestic and import price inflation.