We experimentally investigate the extent to which social observability of one’s actions and the possibility of social non-monetary judgment affect the decision to engage in rule breaking behavior. We consider three rule breaking scenarios — theft, bribery and embezzlement — in the absence of any formal enforcement mechanism. By involving a student sample characterized by cultural heterogeneity ...

In this paper, we study interest rate feedback rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as an increasing function of the in ation rate and characterize conditions under which such rules generate multiple equilibria. We show that these conditions depend not only on the monetaryscal regime (as emphasized in the scal theory of the price level) but also on the way in which money is assumed to...

4 Non-technical summary 5

Over the 1980s and 1990s, monetary policy in most industrialized countries has focussed increasingly on achieving rates of inflation at or close to price stability. The result in the 1990s has been a remarkable convergence in these economies towards relatively low rates of inflation. In some countries, such as New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Sweden the move towards price stability ...

This paper studies the effect on monetary policy of a non-homogeneous degree of competition across the (two) members of a monetary union. In particular, we assess the welfare loss brought about by the use of a simple interest rate rule that does not take into account such structural differences. Our results show that, ceteris paribus, the welfare-maximizing central bank should react more aggres...

This paper examines if US monetary policy responds to asset prices. Using real-time data we estimate a Taylor-type rule with an asset price variable. This variable refers to real estate prices, considering that those exhibit an important share in households’ asset portfolio. Moreover, especially real estate prices seem to have a close connection to monetary conditions. To analyze this link we d...

Monetary rules matter for the equilibrium rate of employment when the number of price-wage setters is small, even when assuming rational expectations, complete information, central bank precommitment, and absence of nominal rigidities. If the central bank is nonaccommodating, sufficiently large unions, bargaining independently, have an incentive to moderate sectoral money wages, and thereby exp...

The key issue in the debate, in my opinion, is that, in practice, much of interest rate setting is not driven by looking at inflation and growth forecasts at all horizons, but is based on rules of thumb. In particular, inflation-targeting is usually based on inflation forecasts 1-3 years out, often with a focus on a fixed horizon such as two-years. This can have the effect that asset price misa...

We consider optimal monetary stabilization policy in a New Keynesian model with explicit microfoundations, when the central bank recognizes that private-sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any beliefs close enough to model-consistency. We show how to characterize robustly optimal policy without...