True Love Is Requited: The Argument of Lysis 221d-222a

I defend the argument in Plato's Lysis that true love is requited. I state the argument, the main objections, and my replies. I begin with a synopsis of the dialogue

Socrates, Piety, and Nominalism

The argument used by Socrates to refute the thesis that piety is what all the gods love is one of the most well known in the history of philosophy. Yet some fundamental points of interpretation have gone unnoticed. I will show that (i) the strategy of Socrates' argument refutes not only Euthyphro's theory of piety and such neighboring doctrines as cultural relativism and subjectivism, but nominalism in general; moreover, that (ii) the argument needs to assume much less than is generally thought, and finally that (iii) while Socrates' argument, properly understood in its full force, appears to be inconsistent with the goal of his own inquiry, his own 'Platonic' position escapes the inconsistency

Christopher Rowe's Plato and the art of philosophical writing

The review argues that Plato makes a valid distinction between inferior hypothetical and superior unhypothetical methods. Given the distinction, the book confuses the hypothetical for unhypothetical dialectic

Signals from unconventional monetary policy

Federal Reserve announcements of future purchases of longer-term bonds may affect asset prices by changing market expectations of the future supply of targeted securities. Such announcements may also affect asset prices by signaling that the stance of conventional monetary policy is likely to remain loose for longer than previously anticipated. Research suggests that these signaling effects were a major contributor to the cumulative declines in Treasury security yields following the eight Fed announcements in 2008 and 2009 about its first round of large-scale asset purchases.Monetary policy ; Open market operations

Assessing nominal income rules for monetary policy with model and data uncertainty

Nominal income rules for monetary policy have long been debated, but two issues are of particular recent interest. First, there are questions about the performance of such rules over a range of plausible empirical models - especially models with and without rational inflation expectations. Second, there are questions about the performance of these rules in real time using the type of data is actually available contemporaneously to policymakers rather than final revised data. This paper determines optimal monetary policy rules in the presence of such model uncertainty and real-time data uncertainty and finds only a limited role for nominal output growth. JEL Classification: E5

The Recent Shift in Term Structure Behavior from a No-Arbitrage Macro-Finance Perspective

This paper examines a recent shift in the dynamics of the term structure and interest rate risk. We first use standard yield-spread regressions to document such a shift in the U.S. in the mid-1980s. Over the pre- and post-shift subsamples, we then estimate dynamic, affine, no-arbitrage models, which exhibit a significant difference in behavior that can be largely attributed to changes in the pricing of risk associated with a "level" factor. Finally, we suggest a link between the shift in term structure behavior and changes in the risk and dynamics of the inflation target as perceived by investors

The bond premium in a DSGE model with long-run real and nominal risks

The term premium on nominal long-term bonds in the standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model used in macroeconomics is far too small and stable relative to empirical measures obtained from the data--an example of the ''bond premium puzzle.'' However, in models of endowment economies, researchers have been able to generate reasonable term premiums by assuming that investors have recursive Epstein-Zin preferences and face long-run economic risks. We show that introducing Epstein-Zin preferences into a canonical DSGE model can also produce a large and variable term premium without compromising the model's ability to fit key macroeconomic variables. Long-run real and nominal risks further improve the model's ability to fit the data with a lower level of household risk aversion.Interest rates ; Econometric models

A Macro-Finance Model of the Term Structure, Monetary Policy, and the Economy

This paper develops and estimates a macro-finance model that combines a canonical affine no-arbitrage finance specification of the term structure with standard macroeconomic aggregate relationships for output and inflation. From this new empirical formulation, we obtain several important results: (1) the latent term structure factors from finance no-arbitrage models appear to have important macroeconomic and monetary policy underpinnings, (2) there is no evidence of monetary policy inertia or a slow partial adjustment of the policy interest rate by the Federal Reserve, and (3) both forward-looking and backward-looking elements play important roles in macroeconomic dynamicsTerm Structure, Monetary Policy

Revealing the Secrets of the Temple: The Value of Publishing Central Bank Interest Rate Projections

The modern view of monetary policy stresses its role in shaping the entire yield curve of interest rates in order to achieve various macroeconomic objectives. A crucial element of this process involves guiding financial market expectations of future central bank actions. Recently, a few central banks have started to explicitly signal their future policy intentions to the public, and two of these banks have even begun publishing their internal interest rate projections. We examine the macroeconomic effects of direct revelation of a central bank's expectations about the future path of the policy rate. We show that, in an economy where private agents have imperfect information about the determination of monetary policy, central bank communication of interest rate projections can help shape financial market expectations and may improve macroeconomic performance.