We study disclosure of information about the multidimensional state of the world when uninformed receivers’ actions affect the sender’s utility. Given a disclosure rule, the receivers form an expectation about the state following each message. Under the assumption that the sender’s expected utility is written as the expected value of a quadratic function of those conditional expectations, we id...

The simulated results of this paper show that New Keynesian DSGE models with capital accumulation can generate substantial persistencies in the dynamics of the main economic variables, due to the stock nature of capital. Empirical estimates on U.S. data from 1960:I to 2008:I show the response of monetary policy to inflation was almost twice lower than traditionally considered, as capital accumu...

In this paper, a simple search model of the labor market is combined with a cash-in-advance model of a monetary economy. Changes in the nominal rate of interest alter the job destruction margin, and persistent rate changes generate hump shaped responses of employment and income similar to those observed in the data. The model is used to study optimal monetary policy under both commitment and di...

The stability properties of a macromodel are determined by its characteristic roots. Conventional price level determinacy is achieved by imposing restrictions on policy rules so that the characteristic roots satisfy a saddlepath criterion. This paper shows how to choose arbitrary roots for the canonical New Keynesian macromodel using a simple forward-looking Taylor-type policy rule. We are able...

We develop a theory of money and credit as competing payment instruments, then put it to work in applications. Buyers can use cash or credit, with the former (latter) subject to the inflation tax (transaction costs). Frictions making the choice of payment method interesting also imply equilibrium price dispersion, and together these deliver closed-form solutions for money demand. The model can ...

This paper argues that recently popular forecast-based instrument rules for monetary policy may fail to stabilize economic ‡uctuations. In a New Keynesian model of output gap and in‡ation determination in which private agents face multi-period decision problems, but have non-rational expectations and learn over time, if the monetary authority adopts a forecast-based instrument rule and responds...

I develop and estimate a monetary business cycle model with nominal loans and collateral constraints tied to housing values. Demand shocks move housing and nominal prices in the same direction, and are amplified and propagated over time. The financial accelerator is not uniform: nominal debt dampens supply shocks, stabilizing the economy under interest rate control. Structural estimation suppor...

This paper tests for the existence of asymmetric information between the Federal Reserve and the public by examining Federal Reserve and commercial inflation forecasts. It demonstrates that the Federal Reserve has considerable information about inflation beyond what is known to commercial forecasters. It also shows that monetary-policy actions provide signals of the Federal Reserve’s informatio...

We study a simple monetary model in which a central bank faces a boundedly rational private sector and has the goal of stabilizing inflation. The system’s dynamics is generated by the interaction of the expectations about inflation of the various agents involved. A modest degree of heterogeneity in such expectations is found to have interesting consequences, in particular when the central bank ...

We examine global economic dynamics under learning in a New Keynesian model in which the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. Under normal monetary and fiscal policy, the intended steady state is locally but not globally stable. Large pessimistic shocks to expectations can lead to deflationary spirals with falling prices and falling output. To avoid this outcome we recommend a...