What is the right inflation rate?

The primary objective of most of the world's central banks these days is to keep inflation low, and the range of inflation rates banks find acceptable appears to be around 2.5 to 3.5 percent. While banks may have hit on this range through trial and error, economic theory and empirical observations suggest a good reason for it.Inflation (Finance) ; Banks and banking, Central

Dollarization: what's in it for US?

Should the United States care if other countries abandon their own currencies and adopt the dollar? Dollarization imparts benefits to the United States as well as costs, and these ought to be weighed as we decide what to do about the growing number of countries turning to dollarization or considering it.Dollar, American ; Currency convertibility

Why is stable money such a big deal?

What do attempts to counterfeit an enemy’s currency during wartime have in common with decisions to adopt another country’s currency during peacetime? Both are inspired by the power of a stable monetary standard and, conversely, the consequences of losing it. Both illustrate why preserving the value of the nation’s currency is a central bank’s most important responsibility.Money

Fixing Social Security: is the surplus the solution?

It may seem an attractive proposal-the Administration's plan of using projected budget surpluses to restore Social Security's finances-but it obscures the real trade-off we face in tackling this problem. The proposal is essentially a change in the accounting treatment of surpluses, deficits, and debt held by the public and in the Social Security Trust Fund. It would in no way alter the fundamental imbalance that afflicts the nation's most basic pension program.Social security

Why haven't long-term interest rates fallen?

In 2001, the Federal Reserve lowered the federal funds rate target more than it had in over 25 years, but long-term interest rates didn't budge. Has monetary policy become ineffective? Just the opposite, the authors argue. The stability of long-term rates shows that people don't expect inflation to rise. That confidence, especially in light of the dramatic shocks the economy experienced, attests to the success of the central bank's policies.Interest rates ; Federal funds rate

Dollarization and monetary sovereignty: the case of Argentina

In January, President Menim of Argentina proposed strengthening his country's commitment to monetary stability by replacing the peso with the U.S. dollar. Dollarization leaves Argentina without a lender of last resort, but the Federal Reserve's current operating procedure combines with existing Argentine arrangements to mitigate this drawback.Argentina ; Monetary policy - Argentina ; Currency boards

Firm-specific capital, nominal rigidities, and the business cycle

Macroeconomic and microeconomic data paint conflicting pictures of price behavior. Macroeconomic data suggest that inflation is inertial. Microeconomic data indicate that firms change prices frequently. We formulate and estimate a model which resolves this apparent micro - macro conflict. Our model is consistent with post-war U.S. evidence on inflation inertia even though firms re-optimize prices on average once every 1.5 quarters. The key feature of our model is that capital is firm-specific and predetermined within a period.Inflation (Finance) ; Monetary policy ; Business cycles

The Output Gap, the Labor Wedge, and the Dynamic Behavior of Hours

We use a standard quantitative business cycle model with nominal price and wage rigidities to estimate two measures of economic ineffciency in recent U.S. data: the output gap - the gap between the actual and effcient levels of output - and the labor wedge - the wedge between households' marginal rate of substitution and firms' marginal product of labor. We establish three results. (i ) The output gap and the labor wedge are closely related, suggesting that most ineffciencies in output are due to the ineffcient allocation of labor. (ii ) The estimates are sensitive to the structural interpretation of shocks to the labor market, which is ambiguous in the model. (iii ) Movements in hours worked are essentially exogenous, directly driven by labor market shocks, whereas wage rigidities generate a markup of the real wage over the marginal rate of substitution that is acyclical. We conclude that the model fails in two important respects: it does not give clear guidance concerning the effciency of business cycle uctuations, and it provides an unsatisfactory explanation of labor market and business cycle dynamics

Monetary Policy in an Estimated Open-Economy Model with Imperfect Pass-Through

We develop a structural model of a small open economy with gradual exchange rate pass-through and endogenous inertia in inflation and output. We then estimate the model by matching the implied impulse responses with those obtained from a VAR model estimated on Swedish data. Although our model is highly stylized it captures very well the responses of output, domestic and imported inflation, the interest rate, and the real exchange rate. However, in order to account for the observed persistence in the real exchange rate and the large deviations from UIP, we need a large and volatile premium on foreign exchange