We study the dynamics linking monetary policy with bank leverage and show that adjustments in leverage act as the linchpin in the monetary transmission mechanism that works through uctuations in risk-taking. Motivated by the evidence, we formulate a model of the “risk-taking channel” of monetary policy in the international context that rests on the feedback loop between increased leverage of gl...

This paper investigates optimal monetary policy rules when two large countries simultaneously face non-negativity constraints on nominal interest rates. Under policy coordination, domestic optimal monetary policy rules depend on domestic endogenous variables, foreign inflation, and domestic and foreign policy rates when the zero lower bound is never binding. Such policy rules generally lose the...

Search-based theories of the exchange process provide economists with a way of formalizing the microfoundations of monetary economics and to discuss a variety of issues in monetary theory and policy in a new light. Many questions that cannot even be formulated in more traditional monetary models can be profitably analyzed in these new models. In this essay, we propose to review recent developme...

We assess the quantitative importance of expectation effects of regime shifts in monetary policy in a DSGE model that allows the monetary policy rule to switch between a “bad” regime and a ”good” regime. When agents take into account such regime shifts in forming expectations, the expectation effect is asymmetric. In the good regime, the expectation effect is small despite agents’ disbelief tha...

In recent decades, the declarations of “independent” central banks and the conduct of monetary policy have been assigned an ever increasing role in the pursuit of economic and financial stability. This is curious since there is, in practice, no body of scientific knowledge (evidence based beliefs) solid enough to have ensured agreement among central banks on the best way to conduct monetary pol...

For a country that chooses not to "permanently" fix its exchange rate through a currency board, or a common currency, or some kind of dollarization, the only alternative monetary policy that can work well in the long run is one based on the trinity of (i) a flexible exchange rate, (ii) an inflation target, and (iii) a monetary policy rule.' While not often put into this threepart format, the de...

This paper estimates and solves a multi-country version of the standard New Keynesian, MCNK, model. Modelling a large number of countries requires a range of methodological innovations. Each country has a Phillips curve determining inflation, an IS curve determining output, a Taylor Rule determining interest rates, and a real effective exchange rate equation. All variables are measured as devia...

A simple model of monetary/labor search is constructed to study Keynesian indeterminacy and optimal policy. In the model, economic agents have trouble splitting the surplus from exchange appropriately, and we consider monetary and fiscal policies that correct this Keynesian inefficiency. A Taylor rule does not imply determinacy, nor does it support an efficient outcome. Optimal policies yield a...