State-Dependent Pricing and Optimal Monetary Policy

State-Dependent Pricing and Optimal Monetary Policy

Abstract: This paper analyzes optimal monetary policy under precommitment in a state-dependent pricing (SDP) environment. Under SDP, monopolistically competitive firms are allowed to endogenously change the timing of price adjustments. I show that this endogenous timing of price adjustment alters the tradeoff and the cost of inflation variation faced by the monetary authority in comparison to t...

Asset Pricing and Monetary Policy∗

This paper examines the role of money in understanding the behavior of asset prices and whether and how monetary policy should react to asset prices such as stock prices and equity premiums. To do so, I introduce money via the form of transaction cost into a production economy with limited stock market participation where agents with lower inter-temporal elasticity of substitution (IES), called...

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∗

Optimal Monetary Policy

This article studies optimal monetary policy when decision-makers in firms choose how much attention they devote to aggregate conditions. When the amount of attention that decision-makers in firms devote to aggregate conditions is exogenous, complete price stabilization is optimal only in response to shocks that cause efficient fluctuations under perfect information. When decision-makers in fir...