Optimal monetary policy regime switches

Optimal Monetary Policy Regime Switches∗

Given structural shifts in the economy, optimal simple monetary policy rules may respond with switches in their policy parameters. When the growth rate, inter-temporal preferences, or volatilities switch, the monetary authority chooses regime-dependent policy parameters to maximize welfare. These optimized policy parameters may differ across regimes and from the optimal choice of parameters for...

Monetary regime-switches and central bank preferences

Monetary policy objectives and targets are not necessarily constant over time. The regime-switching literature has typically analyzed and interpreted changes in policymakers’ behavior through simple interest rate rules. This paper analyzes policy regime-switches by explicitly modeling policymakers’ behavior and objectives. We show that changes in the parameters of simple rules do not necessaril...

Time-varying Policy Targets and Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy

The central bank’s monetary policy targets are usually assumed to be constant overtime for simplicity when estimating a Taylor rule, but recent studies have shed some light on the time variation in policy targets, especially in the inflation target. The potential bias due to misspecification of the time variation can be quite considerable, especially in regime-swtiching models. In this paper, w...

1 Optimal Monetary Policy

We re-examine optimal monetary policy when lump-sum taxes are unavailable. Under commitment, we show that, with alternative utility functions to that considered in Nicolini’s related analysis, the direction of the incentive to cheat may depend on the initial level of government debt, with low debt creating an incentive towards surprise deflation, but high debt the reverse. Under discretion, we ...

Optimal Monetary Stabilization Policy∗