Learning and Expectational Stability under Robust Monetary Policy
Learning and Expectational Stability under Robust Monetary Policy

Author: Sohei Kaihatsu

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 59

ISBN-13:

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In the last few years, several articles have been devoted to the study of model uncertainty in the New Keynesian model using robust control methods. Most studies have focused on how to design a robust monetary policy to take model uncertainty more seriously. Little attention has, however, been given to expectation formation under such a robust monetary policy. The purpose of this study is to explore the expectational stability under robust monetary policy when private expectations are formed by the adaptive learning technology. We find that the economy is determinate and stable under learning if (i) private agents' expectations are observable to the central bank and appropriately incorporated into its optimal policy rules, and (ii) the central bank's preference for robustness is sufficiently weak. It follows that it is important for the central bank to consider expectational stability when it implements a robust monetary policy.

Learning, Monetary Policy and Asset Prices
Learning, Monetary Policy and Asset Prices

Author: Mr.Marco Airaudo

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2015-01-23

Total Pages: 34

ISBN-13: 1498343724

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We explore the stability properties of interest rate rules granting an explicit response to stock prices in a New-Keynesian DSGE model populated by Blanchard-Yaari non-Ricardian households. The constant turnover between long-time stock holders and asset-poor newcomers generates a financial wealth channel where the wedge between current and expected future aggregate consumption is affected by the market value of financial wealth, making stock prices non-redundant for the business cycle. We find that if the financial wealth channel is sufficiently strong, responding to stock prices enlarges the policy space for which the rational expectations equilibrium is both determinate and learnable (in the E-stability sense of Evans and Honkapohja, 2001). In particular, the Taylor principle ceases to be necessary and also mildly passive policy responses to inflation lead to determinacy and E-stability. Our results appear to be more prominent in economies characterized by a lower elasticity of substitution across differentiated products and/or more rigid labor markets.

Robust Monetary Policy with Imperfect Knowledge
Robust Monetary Policy with Imperfect Knowledge

Author: Athanasios Orphanides

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13:

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We examine the performance and robustness properties of monetary policy rules in an estimated macroeconomic model in which the economy undergoes structural change andwhere private agents and the central bank possess imperfect knowledge about the true structure of the economy. Policymakers follow an interest rate rule aiming to maintain price stability and to minimize fluctuations of unemployment around its natural rate but areuncertain about the economy's natural rates of interest and unemployment and how private agents form expectations. In particular, we consider two models of expectations formation :rational expectations and learning. We show that in this environment the ability to stabilize the real side of the economy is significantly reduced relative to an economy under rational expectations with perfect knowledge. Furthermore, policies that would be optimal under perfect knowledge can perform very poorly if knowledge is imperfect. Efficient policies that take account of private learning and misperceptions of natural rates call for greater policy inertia, a more aggressive response to inflation, and a smaller response to the perceived unemployment gap than would be optimal if everyone had perfect knowledge of the economy. We show that such policies are quite robust to potential misspecification of private sector learning and the magnitude of variation in natural rates.

Inflation Expectations
Inflation Expectations

Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1135179778

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Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Financial Factors and Monetary Policy
Financial Factors and Monetary Policy

Author: Paul Kitney

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 59

ISBN-13:

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This paper contributes to the debate whether central banks should respond to asset prices, credit spreads and other financial factors in setting monetary policy, by evaluating determinacy and expectational stability of equilibria under various monetary policy rules. With adaptive learning, beliefs constitute an additional set of state variables, which may require more than a response to inflation, that has traditionally been argued in the literature as sufficient to achieve central bank objectives under rational expectations. Furthermore, financial frictions are introduced by extending the determinacy and adaptive learning methodology embodied in Bullard and Mitra (2002) and Bullard and Mitra (2007), beyond the New Keynesian modelling framework by incorporating a Financial Accelerator (Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist 1999). A key result is that monetary policy rules responding to lagged asset prices and credit volume have less desirable determinacy and learnability characteristics than responding to current asset prices and credit spreads. This conclusion dovetails with recent research such as Gilchrist and Zakrajsek (2011) and Gilchrist and Zakrajsek (2012), who show that signals derived from credit spreads contain information which help explain business cycle fluctuations and demonstrate that a credit spread augmented monetary policy rule dampens cycle variability. Another result is that the conclusions in both Bullard and Mitra (2002) and Bullard and Mitra (2007) are robust to a New Keynesian model with financial frictions.

Imperfect Knowledge and Monetary Policy
Imperfect Knowledge and Monetary Policy

Author: Vítor Gaspar

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-02-16

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9781139448567

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Based on lectures given as part of The Stone Lectures in Economics, this book discusses the problem of formulating monetary policy in practice, under the uncertain circumstances which characterize the real world. The first lecture highlights the limitations of decision rules suggested by the academic literature and recommends an approach involving, first, a firm reliance on the few fundamental and robust results of monetary economics and, secondly, a pragmatic attitude to policy implementation, taking into consideration lessons from central banking experience. The second lecture revisits Milton Friedman's questions about the effects of active stabilization policies on business cycle fluctuations. It explores the implications of a simple model where the policy maker has imperfect knowledge about potential output and the private sector forms expectations according to adaptive learning. This lecture shows that imperfect knowledge limits the scope for active stabilization policy and strengthens the case for conservatism.