The novel feature of this study is the application of Keynes' principle of effective demand to demonstrate the existence of a long-run unemployment equilibrium without the assumption of rigid wages.

This timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.

The financial crisis of 2007 and the following recession present a major challenge to macroeconomic theory. The same holds true for exceptionally low interest rates during the recent years and for the puzzle that super-expansive monetary policies failed to produce high inflation. Approaches that focus on steady states, rational expectations, and individuals planning over infinite horizons, are not suitable for analysing such abnormal situations. A Study in Monetary Macroeconomics refines and improves mainstream approaches to resolve these puzzles and to contribute to a better understanding of monetary and fiscal policies. Using a rich institutional structure that includes features such as credit money, external finance, borrowing constraints, net worth, real estate and commercial banks, this timely study reduces rationality requirements to cope with its complex setting. It starts with a simple baseline model, deriving results from mathematical reasoning and simulations whilst adhering to the method of dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) with optimizing agents and fully specified models. Highly topical, A Study in Monetary Macroeconomics uses a unified theoretical framework to demonstrate that a DGE approach makes it possible to develop clean models that work outside steady states and are appropriate for answering macroeconomic questions of actual interest.

With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, any pretense of a connection of the world's currencies to any real commodity has been abandoned. Yet since the 1980s, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure "fiat" currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account? Interest and Prices seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing. Michael Woodford reexamines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate. The book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime--one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the "New Classical" critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.