In a standard New Keynesian model, a discretionary and myopic central bank concerned with changes in the output gap and inßation will implement a monetary policy that replicates the optimal, timeless perspective, precommitment policy. By stabilizing output gap changes, the central bank imparts inertia into output and inßation that is absent under pure discretion. It is shown that even a fully o...

I propose a novel method of estimating the potential level of U.S. GDP in real time. The proposed wage-based measure of economic potential remains virtually unchanged when new data are released. The distance between current and potential output – the output gap – satisfies Okun’s law and outperforms many other measures of slack in forecasting inflation. Thus, I provide a robust statistical tool...

In many economies, the monetary policy instrument is the level of short-term nominal interest rates, but the monetary policy stance might be better characterised by the ex ante real interest rate that this nominal rate implies, relative to some “neutral” or “natural” real rate of interest. In this paper, we estimate the natural rate of interest and the real interest rate gap the difference betw...

Output gap estimates calculated in real-time are known to be often unreliable. Recent work has found that, without the benefit of hindsight, it can prove difficult for policy-makers to pin down accurately the current position of the output gap. However, attention primarily has focussed on output gap point estimates alone. This paper considers output gap estimates and their uncertainty more gene...