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Rising interest rates have prompted concerns about losses on bank assets, especially following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March 2023. In this working paper, we examine whether US credit unions could be subject to similar losses as banks and analyze how their regulatory capital would be affected. We estimate that after realizing losses from assets that have decreased in value and not yet been sold the overall net worth of the credit union industry would have fallen by 40 percent in 2023:Q1. Unrealized losses were most severe at the largest credit unions. Nonetheless, the bulk of deposits at credit unions were insured, suggesting limited risk of an SVB-style run. In addition, credit union deposit rates are relatively insensitive to market interest rates, providing credit unions with a hedge against a rising rate environment. Overall, credit unions' balance sheet positions seemed to be more resilient to unrealized interest rate risk than banks'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of bank credit to firms and households affects macroeconomic performance. We use survey measures of changes in bank lending standards, disaggregated by loan category, to quantify the effect of changes in banks’ attitudes toward lending on aggregate output, inflation, and interest rates. Bank lending to businesses is particularly important for macroeconomic outcomes, with peak effects on output of around half a percentage point after four quarters of the initial shock. These effects depend on the stage of the business cycle and the proximity of the short-term interest rate to its effective lower bound. The effects are larger when output is growing below trend and when the interest rate is away from its lower bound. We also find that the response of the economy to lending-standards shocks is asymmetric, with tightening shocks having larger effects on output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much consideration has been given among scholars and policymakers to the decline in the U.S. natural rate of interest since the 2007 - 09 global financial crisis. In this paper, I investigate its determinants and drivers through the lens of the workhorse two-country New Keynesian model that captures the trade and technological interconnectedness of the U.S. with the rest of the world economy. Using Bayesian techniques, I bring the set of binding log-linearized equilibrium conditions from this model to the data, but augmented with survey-based forecasts in order to align the solution with observed expectations incorporating the macro effects of the zero-lower bound constraint. With this structural framework, I recover a novel open-economy estimate of the U.S. natural rate. The paper's main results are: (a) the decline in the U.S. natural rate largely follows the slide of the longrun real interest rate in the forecast data, but is partly cushioned in the short run by the contribution of domestic and to a significant extent also foreign productivity shocks; (b) the fall of U.S. measured labor productivity during this time contributed to a concomitant fall in U.S. output potential; (c) the past decade is also characterized by the compression of markups (negative cost-push shocks) which accounts for much of the cyclical upswing in U.S. output in spite of the fall in its potential; and (d) monetary policy has shown its efficacy boosting U.S. output and sustaining U.S. inflation close to its 2 percent target against the drag on inflation from the negative cost-push shocks during this time. Finally, I also argue that ignoring the international linkages may result in biased estimates and can distort the empirical inferences on U.S. monetary policy in important ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how risk and other factors altered the relative use of short-term business debt funded by the shadow banking system since the early 1960s. Results indicate that the share was affected over the long-run not only by changing information and reserve requirement costs, but also by shifts in the impact of regulations on bank versus nonbank credit sources--such as Basel I in 1990 and reregulation in 2010. In the short-run, the shadow share rose when deposit interest rate ceilings were binding, the economic outlook improved, or risk premia declined, and fell when event risks disrupted financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the yield curve's ability to predict future output and recessions differ when interest rates are low, as in the current global environment? In this paper we build on recent econometric work by Shi, Phillips, and Hurn that detects changes in the causal impact of the yield curve and relate that to the level of interest rates. We explore the issue using historical data going back to the 19th century for the United States and more recent data for the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. This paper is similar in spirit to Ramey and Zubairy (2018), who look at the government spending multiplier in times of low interest rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use two comprehensive micro datasets to study the evolution of the distribution of mortgage debt during the 2000s housing boom. We show that the allocation of mortgage debt remained stable, as did the distribution of real estate assets. We propose that any theory of the boom must replicate this fact. Using a general equilibrium model, we show that this requires two elements: (1) an exogenous shock to the economy that increases expected house price growth or, alternatively, reduces interest rates and (2) financial markets that endogenously relax constraints in response to the shock. The role played by subprime mortgage debt provides additional empirical evidence that this narrative mirrors reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use mixed-frequency (quarterly-monthly) data to estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model embedded with the financial accelerator mechanism à la Bernanke et al. (1999). We find that the financial accelerator can work very differently at monthly frequency compared to quarterly frequency; that is, we document its inversion. That is because aggregating monthly data into quarterly data leads to large biases in the estimated quarterly parameters and, as a consequence, to a deep change in the transmission of shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we review the relationship between ination rates, nominal interest rates, and rates of growth of monetary aggregates for a large group of OECD coun- tries. We conclude that the low-frequency behavior of these series maintains a close relationship, as predicted by standard quantity theory models. In an estimated model, we show those relationships to be relatively invariant to alternative frictions that can deliver very different high-frequency dynamics. We argue that these relationships are useful for policy design aimed at controlling ination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a exible semi-structural time-series model to estimate jointly several macroeconomic "stars" -- i.e., unobserved long-run equilibrium levels of output (and growth rate of output), the unemployment rate, the real rate of interest, productivity growth, price ination, and wage ination. The ingredients of the model are in part motivated by economic theory and in part by the empirical features necessitated by the changing economic environment. Following the recent literature on ination and interest rate modeling, we explicitly model the links between long-run survey expectations and stars to improve the stars' econometric estimation. Our approach permits time variation in the relationships between various components, including time variation in error variances. To tractably estimate the large multivariate model, we use a recently developed precision sampler that relies on Bayesian methods. The by-products of this approach are the time-varying estimates of the wage and price Phillips curves, and the pass-through between prices and wages, both of which provide new insights into these empirical relationships' instability in US data. Generally, the contours of the stars echo those documented elsewhere in the literature - estimated using smaller models - but at times the estimates of stars are different, and these differences can matter for policy. Furthermore, our estimates of the stars are among the most precise. Last, we document the competitive real-time forecasting properties of the model and, separately, the usefulness of stars' estimates as steady-state values in external models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how congressional testimony about monetary policy by the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System affects interest rates and stock prices. First, we study testimony associated with the Federal Reserve's Monetary Policy Reports (MPRs) to Congress. Testimony for a particular MPR is usually given on two days, one day for each chamber of Congress. We separately study the first day and second day of MPR testimony. We also study testimonies not associated with MPRs but that are still related to monetary policy. We find that first-day MPR testimonies cause the largest movements in interest rates and generate negative co-movement between interest rates and stock prices. Testimonies not associated with MPRs have similar but weaker effects. Second-day MPR testimonies cause the smallest movements in interest rates and generate no co-movement between interest rates and stock prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In principle, bank deposits can be withdrawn on demand. In practice, depositors tend to maintain stable balances for long periods, allowing banks to fund long-dated assets. Nevertheless, the cost of deposit funding influences banks' capacity for maturity transformation. Banks and researchers conventionally model the response of deposit interest rates to market interest rates as constant, implying that deposits have nearly constant duration. Contrary to this standard assumption, we show empirically that the "beta" of deposit rates to market rates increases as market rates rise, causing the duration of deposits to fall. The amount of duration risk delivered to bank balance sheets via this channel from March 2022 to September 2023 is comparable in magnitude to the amount of duration risk absorbed by each of the several large-scale asset purchase programs the Federal Reserve has undertaken since 2008. Dynamic betas present a significant challenge to bank portfolio hedgers by introducing large and dynamic risks that are difficult to model and impractical to replicate on the asset side of the balance sheet. As a result, deposit convexity amplifies monetary policy transmission and increases financial fragility, mechanisms that recent banking stresses have highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study how the informational effect of monetary policy changes the optimal conduct of monetary policy. In my model, the private sector extracts information about unobserved shocks from the central bank's interest rate decisions. The central bank optimally changes the informational effect of the interest rate by committing to a state-contingent policy rule, in which case the Phillips curve becomes endogenous. In a dynamic model, the optimal policy rule overshoots the natural-rate shock and gradually responds to the cost-push shock, which makes the interest rate change expected output growth but not expected inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines forward guidance using a nonlinear New Keynesian model with a zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate. Forward guidance is modeled with news shocks to the monetary policy rule. The effectiveness of forward guidance depends on the state of the economy, the speed of the recovery, the ZLB constraint, the degree of uncertainty, the monetary response to inflation, the size of the news shocks, and the forward guidance horizon. Specifically, the stimulus from forward guidance falls as the economy deteriorates or as households expect a slower recovery. When the ZLB binds, less uncertainty about the economy or an expectation of a stronger response to inflation reduces the benefit of forward guidance. Forward guidance via a news shock is less stimulative than an unanticipated monetary policy shock around the steady state, but a news shock is more stimulative near the ZLB and always has a larger cumulative effect on output. When the central bank extends the forward guidance horizon, the cumulative effect initially increases but then decreases. These results indicate that there are limits to the stimulus forward guidance can provide, but that stimulus is largest when the news is communicated early in a recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capital accumulation in Argentina was slow in the 1990s, despite high total factor productivity (TFP) growth and low international interest rates. A possible explanation for the "missing capital" is that foreign investors were reluctant to take advantage of the high returns to investment seemingly offered by that small open economy under such favorable conditions, on the grounds that previous historical developments had led them to perceive Argentina as a country prone to external debt "opportunistic defaults." The paper examines this conjecture from the perspective of an optimal contract between foreign lenders and a small open economy subject to limited commitment constraints. Numerical experiments for a deterministic version of that analytical framework show that limited commitment constraints introduce an asymmetry to the capital accumulation process of small open economies: the responses of investment to positive TFP shocks are muted and shortlived, while those to negative TFP shocks are large and persistent. Furthermore, under some circumstances, a lower international interest rate environment can magnify the asymmetry. A quantitative implementation of the model economy to data from Argentina accounts, in line with asymmetry just described, for the rapid decline that that country's capital stock experienced, along with a falling TFP during the 1980s, as well as for the lack of any visible recovery of that stock during the significant surges of TFP observed between 1992-1998 and 2002-2008. In the absence of the limited commitment constraint, Argentina's capital stock in 2008 would have been 50% higher than it actually was. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical support for the long-run Fisher effect, a hypothesis that a permanent change in inflation leads to an equal change in the nominal interest rate, has been hard to come by. This paper provides a plausible explanation of why past studies have been unable to find support for the long-run Fisher effect. This paper argues that the necessary permanent change to the inflation rate following a monetary shock has not occurred in the industrialized countries of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Instead, this paper shows that inflation in these countries follows a mean-reverting, fractionally integrated, long-memory process, not the nonstationary inflation process that is integrated of order one or larger found in previous studies of the Fisher effect. Applying a bivariate maximum likelihood estimator to a fractionally integrated model of inflation and the nominal interest rate, the inflation rate in all seventeen countries is found to be a highly persistent, fractionally integrated process with a positive differencing parameter significantly less than one. Hence, in the long run, inflation in these countries will be unaffected by a monetary shock, and a test of the long-run Fisher effect will be invalid and uninformative as to the truthfulness of the long-run Fisher effect hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a new and easily implementable necessary and sufficient condition for the exact identification of a Markov-switching structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. The theorem applies to models with both linear and some nonlinear restrictions on the structural parameters. We also derive efficient MCMC algorithms to implement sign and long-run restrictions in Markov-switching SVARs. Using our methods, four well-known identification schemes are used to study whether monetary policy has changed in the euro area since the introduction of the European Monetary Union. We find that models restricted to only time-varying shock variances dominate the other models. We find a persistent post-1993 regime that is associated with low volatility of shocks to output, prices, and interest rates. Finally, the output effects of monetary policy shocks are small and uncertain across regimes and models. These results are robust to the four identification schemes studied in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the yield curve's ability to predict future output and recessions differ when interest rates and ination are low, as in the current global environment? We explore the issue using historical data going back to the 19th century for the US. This paper is similar in spirit to Ramey and Zubairy (2018) who look, at the government spending multiplier in times of low interest rates. If anything, the yield curve tends to predict output growth better in low interest rate environments, though this result is stronger for RGDP than for IP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a exible semi-structural time-series model to estimate jointly several macroeconomic "stars" -- i.e., unobserved long-run equilibrium levels of output (and growth rate of output), the unemployment rate, the real rate of interest, productivity growth, the price ination, and wage ination. The ingredients of the model are in part motivated by economic theory and in part by the empirical features necessitated by the changing economic environment. Following the recent literature on ination and interest rate modeling, we explicitly model the links between long-run survey expectations and stars to improve the stars' econometric estimation. Our approach permits time variation in the relationships between various components, including time variation in error variances. To tractably estimate the large multivariate model, we use a recently developed precision sampler that relies on Bayesian methods. The by-products of this approach are the time-varying estimates of the wage and price Phillips curves, and the pass-through between prices and wages, both of which provide new insights into these empirical relationships' instability in US data. Generally, the contours of the stars echo those documented elsewhere in the literature - estimated using smaller models - but at times the estimates of stars are different, and these differences can matter for policy. Furthermore, our estimates of the stars are among the most precise. Lastly, we document the competitive real-time forecasting properties of the model and, separately, the usefulness of stars' estimates if they were used as steady-state values in external models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the model of Cogley and Sargent to incorporate stochastic volatility and then estimates it for post World War II U.S. data in order to shed light on the following questions. Have aggregate time series responded through time-invariant linear impulse response functions to possibly heteroskedastic shocks? Or is it more likely that the impulse responses to shocks themselves have evolved over time because of drifting coefficients or other nonlinearities? Evidence is presented that shock variances evolved systematically over time, and so did the autoregressive coefficients of VARS. The conclusion is that much of our earlier evidence for drifting coefficients survives after we take stochastic volatility into account. This paper accumulates evidence inside an atheoretical statistical model. The patterns of time variation used revolve around whether it was bad monetary policy or bad luck that made inflation-unemployment outcomes worse in the 1970's than before or after.

This paper considers the implications of an important source of model mis specification for the design of monetary policy rules: the assumed manner of expectations formation. Following a considerable literature on learning, it is assumed that private agents seek to maximize their objectives subject to standard constraints and the restriction of using an econometric model to make inferences about future uncertainty. Agents do not know other agents' tastes or beliefs and therefore do not have a complete economic model with which to derive true probability laws. Because agents solve a multi-period decision problem, their actions depend on forecasts of macroeconomic conditions many periods into the future, unlike the analysis of the Bullard and Mitra (2002) and Evans and Honkapohja (2002). The central question addressed is whether the learning dynamics converge to the equilibrium predicted by rational expectations equilibrium analysis. This question is considered for several prominent instrument rules for the determination of the nominal interest rate. A key result is that a Taylor rule ensures convergence to rational expectations equilibrium, if the so-called Taylor principle is satisfied, under any of a broad class of specifications of the learning dynamics. This suggests the Taylor rule to be desirable from the point of view of eliminating instability due to self-fulfilling expectations. A companion paper, Preston (2002b), demonstrates that several policy rules argued to be desirable in the recent literature on monetary policy and learning frequently lead to the propagation of self-fulfilling expectations and hence economic instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of the zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nom- inal interest rate by estimating three variants of a small-scale New Keynesian model: (1) a nonlinear model with an occassionally binding ZLB constraint; (2) a constrained linear model, which imposes the constraint in the filter but not the solution; and (3) an unconstrained linear model, which never imposes the constraint. The posterior distributions are similar, but impor- tant differences arise in their predictions at the ZLB. The nonlinear model ts the data better at the ZLB and primarily attributes the ZLB to a reduction in household demand due to discount factor shocks. In the linear models, the ZLB is due to large contractionary monetary policy shocks, which is at odds with the Fed's expansionary policy during the Great Recession. Pos- terior predictive analysis shows the nonlinear model is partially able to account for the increase in output volatility and the negative skewness in output and inflation that occurred during the ZLB period, whereas the linear models predict almost no changes in those statistics. We also compare the results from our nonlinear model to the quasi-linear solution based on OccBin. The quasi-linear model fits the data better than the linear models, but it still generate too little volatility at the ZLB and predicts that a large policy shock caused the ZLB to bind in 2008Q4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the welfare-increasing role of credit and banking at zero interest rates in a microfounded general equilibrium monetary model. Agents differ in their opportunity costs of holding money due to heterogeneous idiosyncratic time-preference shocks. Without banks, the constrained-efficient allocation is never attainable, since impatient agents always face a positive implicit rate in equilibrium. With banks, patient agents pin down the borrowing rate and in turn enable impatient agents to borrow at no cost when the inflation rate approaches the highest discount factor. Banks can therefore improve welfare at zero rates, provided that both types of agents are included in the financial system and that the borrowing limit is sufficiently lax. The result is robust to several extensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States is now committed to using two relatively sophisticated approaches to measuring capital adequacy: Basel III and stress tests. This paper shows how stress testing could mitigate weaknesses in the way Basel III measures credit and interest rate risk, the way it measures bank capital, and the way it creates countercyclical capital buffers. However, this paper also emphasizes the extent to which stress tests add value will depend upon the exercise of supervisor discretion in the design of stress scenarios. Whether supervisors will use this discretion more effectively than they have used other tools in the past remains to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the first attempt to estimate the time-varying natural rate jointly with the output gap and trend potential output growth for the world as a whole using a simple unobserved components model broadly following the methodology developed by Laubach and Williams (2003). We find that the world natural rate has been trending down for the past few decades. Nearly half of the variation in the natural rate is accounted for by the trend potential output growth rate. However, the relationship between the world natural interest rate and the world trend growth is modest and not statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has found that the dynamic properties of the New Keynesian model can be very different when the nominal interest rate is zero. Improvements in technology and reductions in the labor tax rate lower economic activity, and the size of the government purchase output multiplier can be well above one. This paper provides evidence that the focus on specifications of the New Keynesian model that produce unorthodox results in a liquidity trap may be misplaced. We show that a prototypical New Keynesian model fit to Japanese data exhibits orthodox dynamics during Japan's episode with zero interest rates. We then demonstrate that this specification is more consistent with outcomes in Japan than alternative specifications that have unorthodox properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate alternative public debt management policies in light of constraints imposed by the effective lower bound on interest rates. Replacing the current limit on gross debt issued by the fiscal authority with a limit on consolidated debt of the government can ensure that output always reaches its potential, but it may permit excess government spending when the economy is away from the effective lower bound. The welfare-maximizing policy sets the gross debt limit to the level implied by Samuelson (1954), while the central bank finances government spending with money when the economy is at the effective lower bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider two approaches to incorporate judgment into DSGE models. First, Bayesian estimation indirectly imposes judgment via priors on model parameters, which are then mapped into a judgmental interest rate decision. Standard priors are shown to be associated with highly unrealistic judgmental decisions. Second, judgmental interest rate decisions are directly provided by the decision maker and incorporated into a formal statistical decision rule using frequentist procedures. When the observed interest rates are interpreted as judgmental decisions, they are found to be consistent with DSGE models for long stretches of time, but excessively tight in the 1980s and late 1990s and excessively loose in the late 1970s and early 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document that the interest rate response to fiscal stimulus (IRRF) is lower in countries with high inequality or high household debt. To interpret this evidence we develop a model in which households take on debt to maintain a consumption threshold (saving constraint). Now debt-burdened, these households use additional income to deleverage. In economies with more debt-burdened households, increases in government spending tighten credit conditions less (relax credit conditions more), leading to smaller increases (larger declines) in the interest rate. Our theoretical framework predicts that the negative relationship between the IRRF and debt only holds when credit is not restricted. It also predicts that the consumption response to fiscal stimulus is falling in debt and inequality (only during periods of relaxed credit). We perform a series of empirical tests and find support for these predictions. In doing so, we provide context to recent evidence on the debt-dependent effects of government spending by highlighting that the relationship between debt and fiscal effects varies with credit conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the connection between the asymmetric tax treatment of homeowners and landlords and the progressivity of income taxation using a quantitative overlapping generations general equilibrium model with housing and rental markets. Our model emphasizes the determinants of tenure choice (owning versus renting) and the household decision to supply housing services to the rental market. This formulation breaks the link between the rental price and the equilibrium interest rate. Hence, the aggregate supply of rental property responds differently to the direction of rental price changes, marginal tax rate changes, and maintenance cost changes. We show that the model replicates the key factors and the distributional patterns of ownership, house size, and landlords. The degree of progressivity in the income tax code has important implications for housing tenure and housing consumption. We find that a movement toward a less progressive income tax code can generate sizable increases in homeownership and welfare that result from the equilibrium effects and a portfolio reallocation mechanism absent in economies with single assets (e.g., Conesa and Krueger 2006). We find that the removal of existing asymmetries in the tax code has effects on housing that differ from those reported in the literature. We show that housing policy can increase the ownership rate of a particular segment of the population but generate nontrivial distributional costs. The welfare increases are no larger than those found when the progressivity of the tax code is reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper implements a structural model of the yield curve with data on nominal positions and survey forecasts. Bond prices are characterized in terms of investors' current portfolio holdings as well as their subjective beliefs about future bond payoffs. Risk premia measured by an econometrician vary because of changes in investors' subjective risk premia that are identified from portfolios and subjective beliefs but also because differ from those of the econometrician. The main results is that investors' systematic forecast errors are an important source of business cycle variation in measured risk premia. By contrast, subjective risk premia move less and more slowly over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study the optimal type of forward guidance in a flexible-price economy in which both the private sector and the central bank are subject to imperfect information about the aggregate state of the economy. In this case, forward guidance changes the private sector's expectations about both future monetary policy and the state of the economy. I study two types of forward guidance. The first type is instrument based, in which case the central bank commits to a value of the policy instrument. The second type is state contingent, in which case the central bank reveals its imperfect information and commits to a policy response rule. The key message is that forward guidance allows the central bank to reduce ex-ante price fluctuations by making the optimal trade-off between price deviations after the actual shock and after the noise shock. However, this benefit comes with a cost under the instrument-based forward guidance; that is, since firms perfectly know the change in monetary policy and prices are fully flexible, the real output level becomes independent of monetary policy. Consequently, while state-contingent forward guidance guarantees ex-ante welfare improvement, instrument-based forward guidance improves ex-ante welfare only if the central bank's information is sufficiently precise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence indicates that house prices have become somewhat more synchronized during this century, likely reflecting more correlated movements in long-term interest rates and macroeconomic cycles that are related to trends in globalization and international portfolio diversification. Nevertheless, the trend toward increased synchronization has not been continuous, reflecting that house prices depend on other fundamentals, which are not uniform across countries or cities. Theory and limited econometric evidence indicate that the more common are fundamentals, the more in-synch house price cycles will become and the more substitution effects may matter. In addition, real estate markets that are open to immigration and foreign investment have become more sensitive to shifts in the international demand for property by migrants or investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper computes welfare-maximizing monetary and fiscal policy rules in a real business cycle model augmented with sticky prices, a demand for money, taxation, and stochastic government consumption. We consider simple feedback rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as a function of output and inflation and taxes are set as a function of total government liabilities. We implement a second-order accurate solution to the model. We have several main findings. First, the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest rate rule plays a minor role for welfare. It matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium. Second, optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output. More importantly, interest rate rules that feature a positive response to output can lead to significant welfare losses. Third, the welfare gains from interest rate smoothing are negligible. Fourth, optimal fiscal policy is passive. Finally, the optimal monetary and fiscal rule combination attains virtually the same level of welfare as the Ramsey optimal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a New Keynesian model in which monetary policy may switch between regimes. We derive sufficient conditions for indeterminacy that are easy to implement and we show that the necessary and sufficient condition for determinacy, provided by Davig and Leeper, is necessary but not sufficient. More importantly, we use a two-regime model to show that indeterminacy in a passive regime may spill over to an active regime no matter how active the latter regime is. As a result, a passive monetary policy is more damaging than has been previously thought. Our results imply that the propagation of shocks in an active regime, such as that of the Federal Reserve in the post-1982 period, may be substantially affected by the possibility of a return to a passive regime of the kind that was followed in the 1960s and 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a novel method for conducting policy analysis with potentially misspecified dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models and applies it to a New Keynesian DSGE model along the lines of Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Evans (JPE 2005) and Smets and Wouters (JEEA 2003). We first quantify the degree of model misspecification and then illustrate its implications for the performance of different interest rate feedback rules. We find that many of the prescriptions derived from the DSGE model are robust to model misspecification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates a dynamic stochastic equilibrium model in which agents use a Bayesian rule to learn about the state of monetary policy. Monetary policy follows a nominal interest rate rule that is subject to regime shifts. The following results are obtained. First, the author's policy regime estimates are consistent with the popular view that policy was marked by a shift to a high-inflation regime in the early 1970s, which ended with Volcker's stabilization policy at the beginning of the 1980s. Second, while Bayesian posterior odds favor the "full-information" version of the model in which agents know the policy regime, the fall of inflation and interest rates in the disinflation episode in the early 1980s is better captured by the delayed response of the "learning" specification. Third, the author examines the magnitude of the expectations-formation effect of monetary policy interventions in the "learning" specification by comparing impulse responses to a version of the model in which agents ignore the information contained in current and past monetary policy shocks about the likelihood of a regime shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1997 the U.S. Treasury introduced Inflation Indexed (or Protected) Securities with substantial promotional fanfare. Yet, due in part to what some in the finance profession have described as a "tax disadvantage"placed upon TIPS, many are questioning whether they should appeal to a wide audience. Some, in fact, advise holding TIPS only in tax-deferred accounts. In this paper, the authors develop a framework that allows them to demonstrate that the tax treatment of TIPS is trivially different from that of conventional Treasury securities. Utilizing an after-tax valuation approach, they further show that under relatively conservative projections for inflation, TIPS generally have after-tax yields comparable to, if not exceeding, conventional fixed-rate Treasury securities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we make use of the uncovered interest rate parity (UIRP) relationship to examine the extent that the liberalization of emerging financial markets has resulted in the integration of developing countries' currency markets into the international capital market. Previous tests of the impact of liberalization on the integration of emerging markets capital markets into world financial markets are confined to equity markets, ignoring currency markets that arguably are more important in determining the success of financial liberalization. We find that, in general, deviation from UIRP in the emerging markets is systematic in nature and that a significant part of emerging market currency excess returns is attributable to time-varying risk premium. Importantly we also find that these countries' currency deposits provide U.S. (equity) investors the benefits of international diversification. Our results also show that for some markets, liberalization improved (worsened) investors' perception of growth opportunity while reducing (increasing) investors' perception of the probability of financial distress. Finally, while several countries benefited from liberalization and have become more integrated into the world capital market, the experience is country specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The yield curve is shaped by (1) expectations of the future path of short-term interest rates and (2) uncertainty about the path. Uncertainty affects the yield curve through two channels: (1) investors' attitudes toward risk as reflected in risk premia, and (2) the nonlinear relation between yields and bond prices (known as convexity). The way in which these forces simultaneously work to shape the yield curve can be understood in terms of the conditions that guarantee the absence of arbitrage opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the modern theory of the term structure of interest rates using high-school algebra. In order to present the theory correctly, one must take uncertainty seriously. Nevertheless, the source of uncertainty can be modeled quite simply: All uncertainty is resolved by a single flip of a coin. In this setting, the author can rigorously present all three forces that shape the yield curve: expectations, risk aversion, and convexity. The analysis is organized around the conditions that guarantee the absence of arbitrage opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should public debt be managed when uncertainty about the business cycle is widespread and debt levels are high, as in the aftermath of the last financial crisis? This paper analyzes optimal fiscal policy with ambiguity aversion and endogenous government spending. We show that, without ambiguity, optimal surplus-to-output ratios are acyclical and that there is no rationale for either reduction or further accumulation of public debt. In contrast, ambiguity about the cycle can generate optimal policies that resemble "austerity" measures. Optimal policy prescribes front-loaded fiscal consolidations and convergence to a balanced primary budget in the long run. This is the case when interest rates are sufficiently responsive to cyclical shocks; that is, when the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is sufficiently low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]