In the United States, the inflation and output of durable and nondurable goods respond to a monetary policy shock in the same direction with a delay. However, the existing New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models that generate the positive output comovement cannot explain this delayed response in sectoral inflation. We show that adding sticky information to both goods along with

We show that for the United States and Australia consumers expect significantly lower inflation when the political party they support holds executive office. This finding cannot be explained by previously documented sources of heterogeneity in consumer inflation expectations. It is consistent with stereotypical thinking (Bordalo et al. 2016), pointing to the use of heuristics in the formation of macro‐economic

We provide evidence that the European Central Bank (ECB's) unconventional monetary policy dampens yield cycles in secondary markets for Eurozone sovereign debt around new sovereign debt auctions. This dampening effect tends to be larger when market volatility is higher. Cycles caused by domestic auctions and the role of market volatility are largest for countries with low credit ratings. Auctions by

Using bank‐level information on lending rates, we study the transmission of conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures in the euro area via shifts in the supply of credit. For conventional operations, we find that the transmission is stronger for weaker banks, in line with the standard predictions of the bank‐lending channel literature. For nonstandard measures, instead, the monetary

New Keynesian models for which firms unilaterally adjust labor along both the intensive, and extensive margins usually fail to reproduce the volatility of unemployment. In this paper, we show that a marginal wage much more responsive than the average wage to shocks—in accordance with empirical observations—is a crucial mechanism allowing these models to replicate unemployment dynamics. At the same

In the 1920s, Irving Fisher described how variations in the price level, presumably caused by changes in the money stock, were associated with cyclical movements in output and employment. At the same time, Holbrook Working designed a rule for achieving price stability through control of the money supply. This paper develops a structural vector autoregression that allows these “classical” channels of

Do credit ratings help enforce market discipline on banks? Analyzing a uniquely comprehensive data set consisting of 1,081 rating change announcements for 154 international financial institutions between January 2004 and December 2015, we find that rating downgrades for internal reasons, such as adverse changes in the operating performance or capital structure of banks, are associated with a significant

Household debt has played a central role in the global financial crisis, yet our understanding of it remains limited. We put U.S. household leverage in an international perspective, using household‐level data for the United States and 10 euro area economies. U.S. households have the highest prevalence of mortgage and consumer debt, hold comparatively large amounts and face higher debt burdens despite

A New Keynesian model with government production, public compensation, and unemployment is fit to U.S. data to study the effects of public wage reductions. Estimation implies reductions in public wages and government goods purchases have similar effects on total output, and the fiscal balance, yet the former can raise private output slightly, while the latter does not. Exogenous public wage reductions

Items of currency wear out and must be replaced. In The Mechanism of Exchange, Jevons recommended that the government bear the cost of replacing worn gold coins with new coins instead of having the holders of worn coins bear the cost. We study the optima of a minimally interesting model: money is essential and indivisible so that physical depreciation is not neutral; and there are alternative ways

We construct experimental economies, populated with human subjects, with different institutional features that have a structure and incentives similar to a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. An experimental economy with monopolistic competition and no menu costs generates empirical patterns that are closer to the U.S. economy than simulations or the other experimental environments. We observe

Countries that specialize in commodity exports often exhibit a correlation between the relevant commodity price and the value of their currency. We explore an explanation for this correlation based on the present‐value, monetary model of the exchange rate. An increase in the commodity price leads to an increase in the expected, future policy interest rate and so to an immediate appreciation. We test

We construct measures of forecasters' subjective uncertainty at horizons from 1 to 5 years, using the European Central Bank's Survey of Professional Forecasters. The uncertainty curve is more linear than the disagreement curve. We document heterogeneity across forecasters in the level and the term structure of uncertainty, and show that the difference between long‐run and short‐run uncertainty is procyclical

I analyze a general setting where a policymaker needs information that financial market traders have in order to implement optimal policy, and prices can potentially reveal this information. Policy decisions, in turn, affect asset values. I derive a condition for the existence of fully revealing equilibria in competitive financial markets, which identifies all situations where learning from prices

This paper shows that economic uncertainty proxied by the variance risk premium (VRP) has an important explanatory power for bank credit supply and demand. Higher VRP exerts a negative influence on both loan demand and supply, increases loan spreads, reduces loan size and maturity, and increases the proportion of collateralized loans. These effects are substantive in the syndicated loan market and

What are the tradeoffs that the public is willing to accept between inflation and unemployment? We find that people dislike extra points of unemployment more than extra points of inflation. This is true for both Europe and Latin America. For the latter, the aversion to unemployment relative to inflation is much greater. Moreover, in both regions, the poor's distaste for extra points of unemployment

We use the taper tantrum to measure the effects of a sudden depreciation of the exchange rate. We treat this announcement in the United States of America as an exogenous shock in emerging markets and use a difference‐in‐differences approach. We show that, before the tantrum, the impact of exchange rate changes on inflation is low in both the control and the treatment groups. However, the tantrum increased

Money is both the medium for transaction and the most liquid asset for banks. We examine both roles of money in an integrated framework, where banks are subject to aggregate illiquidity risk. An active central bank can replicate the constrained efficient allocation, which, however, cannot be implemented in the market equilibrium: due to moral hazard problems, banks invest excessively in illiquid assets

What should be the role of a public development bank (PDB)? Which projects/firms should the PDB target? What can theory say about the types of loans and ways of delivering them that PDBs around the world use? We analyze these questions in the context of a model where screening is costly to banks. Underprovision of credit results from the inability of banks to (i) appropriate the full benefits of projects

This paper studies the impact of product and labor market reforms when the economy faces major slack and a binding constraint on monetary policy easing—such as the zero lower bound (ZLB). To this end, we build a model with endogenous producer entry, labor market frictions, and nominal rigidities. We find that while the effect of market reforms depends on the cyclical conditions under which they are

Financial institutions are exempt from the value‐added tax (VAT) in most countries. We develop a general equilibrium model with endogenous firm entry and a banking sector to accommodate three key distortions related to exempt treatment: (i) self‐supply bias in the banking sector, (ii) under‐taxation of payment services, and (iii) input distortions in the business sector and tax cascading. We calibrate

Do borrowers demand less credit from banks with weak balance sheets, following monetary policy shocks? To answer this, we use novel bank‐specific survey data matched with balance sheet information for euro area banks. We find that, following a monetary policy shock, bank strength influences credit demand as well as credit supply. Bank resilience is important for firms when selecting a lender and it

We reformulate the standard New Keynesian model to include heterogeneity in price stickiness suggested by microevidence on price changes and to allow for positive trend inflation. In the new model, higher trend inflation leads to a relatively greater long‐run output loss and, consequently, a smaller determinacy region than in the standard model. When trend inflation is 4%, the determinacy region of

We study the forecasting power of economic uncertainty about government policy for future bond returns. Using the economic policy uncertainty measure () developed by Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016), we investigate its relationship to expected bond returns. The impact of the is shown to be large for earlier maturities at shorter investment horizons. Estimating an affine term structure model incorporating

We study the effects of coordinated and noncoordinated macroprudential policies in a core–periphery model that emphasizes the role of international financial centers. After documenting empirically the existence of cross‐country macroprudential spillovers and policy interdependence, we derive a number of results. First, even absent financial frictions, self‐oriented policymakers attempt to manipulate

Dispersion in firm‐level growth rates rises during recessions. To date, this has been explained through mechanisms on the firms' side of the economy. In this paper, I show that countercyclical dispersion can arise from changes on the demand side of the economy. Using retail data I find that during recessions demand elasticity rises, the dispersion of firms' growth rates increases, and this increase

We examine inflation forecast disagreement during periods of deflation. Using a large cross‐country data set of professional forecasters’ expectations, we show that the relationship between inflation outcomes and forecast disagreement is U‐shaped: disagreement rises with both positive and negative inflation outcomes. We show that information frictions do not explain rising disagreement in deflations

We empirically test early monetary theories in which reserve creation plays a crucial role in the transmission of quantitative easing (QE). Analyzing the unprecedented injection of reserves across several Federal Reserve QE programs, we demonstrate a causal effect of bank‐level reserve accumulation on lending and risk‐taking activity. To overcome the endogeneity of bank‐level reserve increases to banks'

Modeling nominal interest rates requires to take into account the effective lower bound (ELB). We propose a flexible time‐series approach that includes a “shadow rate”—a notional rate identical to the actual nominal rate except when the ELB binds . We apply this approach to a trend‐cycle decomposition of interest rates and macro‐economic variables that generates competitive interest‐rate forecasts

There are several real‐world examples of local governments that faced with budget problems circulate a fiat token in parallel to the official currency. A well‐known case is the Argentinian “Patacon,” printed by the province of Buenos Aires during the crisis of 2001. We present a simple model to analyze the workings of monetary equilibria where the parallel currency is valued in equilibrium and discuss

I develop an adaptive learning model to study the welfare effects of Social Security policy uncertainty in an aging economy. Agents combine full knowledge of the political process (which Social Security reforms are possible and when they could occur) with limited knowledge about the structure of the economy. The adaptive learning amplifies cyclical dynamics along the transition path to the new steady

I construct a quarterly data set on political pressure faced by 118 central banks from 2010 to 2018 using country‐level reports. I code whether each central bank is reportedly succumbing to pressure or resisting pressure. About 10% of central banks reportedly face political pressure in an average year. Even central banks with high legal independence frequently face pressure—nearly always for looser