We develop an extension of the open economy New Keynesian model in which agents are boundedly rational à la Gabaix (2020). Our setup nests rational expectations (RE) as a special case and it can successfully mitigate many “puzzling” aspects of the relationship between exchange rates and interest rates. Since the model implies an uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) condition featuring behavioral expectations, our results are also consistent with recent empirical evidence showing that several UIP puzzles vanish when actual exchange rate expectations are used (instead of realizations implicitly coupled with the RE assumption). We find that cognitive discounting dampens the effects of current monetary shocks and lowers the efficacy of forward guidance (FG), but its relative importance in mitigating the so-called FG puzzle is decreasing in openness. Finally, we show that accounting for myopia exacerbates the small open economy unit-root problem, makes positive monetary spillovers more likely, and increases the persistence of net foreign assets and the real exchange rate.

This analysis of macroeconomic policy, originally published in 1989, argues that key government objectives, such as reduced inflation, decreased unemployment and an adequate level of national saving can be achieved only by employing both monetary and fiscal policies, in conjunction with supply-side policies expressly designed to improve the workings of the labour market. Part 1 is a comparative analysis showing the effects of monetary and fiscal policy on the economy. Real-wage rigidity in the labour market is shown to have important consequences for the working of both types of policy, because it conditions the economy’s response to tax changes. Part 2 presents an econometric model which combines consistent stock-flow accounts with a full range of expectational effects. Part 3 presents an innovative technique for solving rational expectations models with the need for arbitary terminal conditions.

Economic growth, low inflation, and financial stability are among the most important goals of policy makers, and central banks such as the Federal Reserve are key institutions for achieving these goals. In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, leading scholars and practitioners probe the interaction of central banks, asset markets, and the general economy to forge a new understanding of the challenges facing policy makers as they manage an increasingly complex economic system. The contributors examine how central bankers determine their policy prescriptions with reference to the fluctuating housing market, the balance of debt and credit, changing beliefs of investors, the level of commodity prices, and other factors. At a time when the public has never been more involved in stocks, retirement funds, and real estate investment, this insightful book will be useful to all those concerned with the current state of the economy.

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.

We re-examine the monetary approach to the exchange rate from a number of perspectives, using monthly data on the deutschemark-dollar exchange rate. Using the Campbell-Shiller technique for testing present value models, we reject the restrictions imposed upon the data by the forward-looking rational expectations monetary model. We demonstrate, however, that the monetary model is validated as a long-run equilibrium condition. Moreover, imposing the long-run monetary model restrictions in a dynamic error correction framework leads to exchange rate forecasts which are superior to those generated by a random walk forecasting model.

We analyze coordination of monetary and exchange rate policy in a two-sector model of a small open economy featuring imperfect substitution between domestic and foreign financial assets. Our central finding is that management of the exchange rate greatly enhances the efficacy of inflation targeting. In a flexible exchange rate system, inflation targeting incurs a high risk of indeterminacy where macroeconomic fluctuations can be driven by self-fulfilling expectations. Moreover, small inflation shocks may escalate into much larger increases in inflation ex post. Both problems disappear when the central bank leans heavily against the wind in a managed float.