Employment Hours And Optimal Monetary Policy

In an estimated two-sector New-Keynesian model with durable and nondurable goods, an inverse relationship between sectoral labor mobility and the optimal weight the central bank should attach to durables inflation arises. The combination of nominal wage stickiness and limited labor mobility leads to a nonzero optimal weight for durables inflation even if durables prices were fully flexible. These results survive alternative calibrations and interestrate rules and point toward a non-negligible role of sectoral labor mobility for the conduct of monetary policy.

I introduce unemployment into the New Keynesian model by assuming search and matching frictions in the labor market, and analyze the implications for optimal monetary policy. In this framework, firms can adjust both their number of workers and hours per worker. Social efficiency requires eliminating inflation, closing the output gap (equivalently, setting hours at their efficient level), as well as preventing deviations of employment from its efficient path. I show that, provided the economy's steady state is efficient, if wages follow the Nash bargaining rule the central bank can achieve the efficient allocation. If wages are rigid, then the central bank faces a trade-off among its stabilization objectives. Following e.g. a negative productivity shock, the central bank must temporarily concede an increase in inflation, a drop in the output gap and a fall in employment below its efficient path.

This paper highlights the importance of debt composition in setting optimal fiscal and monetary policy over short-run business cycles and in the long run. Nominal debt as state-contingent debt can be a significant policy tool to reduce the volatility of distortionary government policy, thereby reducing macroeconomic volatility while increasing equilibrium output and consumption. The welfare gain from using nominal debt to hedge against shocks to the government budget is as large as the welfare gain from the ability to issue debt.

Froyen and Guender have provided a thorough and careful analysis of optimal monetary policy over most of the range of theoretical models that have been used in modern macroeconomics. By providing a comprehensive and clear comparative framework they will help the student of monetary policy understand why there have been conflicting views of what policy makers should do. Central Banking In Optimal Monetary Policy Under Uncertainty, academicians and economists Richard T. Froyen and Alfred V. Guender have collaborated on presenting an informed and informative survey of optimal monetary policy literature arising during the 1970s and 1980s as a ground work for understanding current market and other economic influences on such germane issues as discretion versus commitment, target versus instrument rules, and the delegation of policy making authority within the private and public sectors. With meticulous attention to scholarship and objectivity. . . Optimal Monetary Policy Under Uncertainty is a thoughtful and thought-provoking body of work that is very strongly recommended for professional, academic, corporate and governmental economic reference collections and supplemental reading lists. Midwest Book Review Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of optimal monetary policy under uncertainty. This book provides a thorough survey of the literature that has resulted from this renewed interest. The authors ground recent contributions on the science of monetary policy in the literature of the 1970s, which viewed optimal monetary policy as primarily a question of the best use of information, and studies in the 1980s that gave primacy to time inconsistency problems. This broad focus leads to a better understanding of current issues such as discretion versus commitment, target versus instrument rules, and the merits of delegation of policy authority. Casting a wide net, the authors survey the recent literature on the New Keynesian approach to optimal monetary policy in the context of the earlier literature. They emphasize the relationship between policy decisions and the information set available to the policymaker, a central focus of the earlier literature, obscured in much recent work. Optimal policy questions are considered in open as well as closed economy models and the often confusing terminology in the literature is sorted and clarified. Questions are considered within easily analysed models and the authors clearly show why these models lead to different (or equivalent) policy conclusions. Recent policy issues such as desirability of inflation targeting and the relative merits of target versus instrument rules are covered in detail. Economists in academia and in policymaking organizations who want to learn about recent developments in the area of optimal monetary policy, as well as graduate and advanced undergraduate students in macroeconomic and monetary economics, will find this volume a clear and thorough examination of the topic.

I analyze optimal monetary policy in an economy with search and matching frictions in the labor market and staggered nominal wage and price contracts. In this framework, as opposed to the standard New Keynesian model, preset nominal wages need not have any effect on existing employment relationships. However, staggered bargaining of nominal wages distorts aggregate job creation and creates inefficient dispersion in hiring rates across firms. Targeting zero inflation (the optimal policy in the standard New Keynesian model) only magnifies these distortions. The optimal policy allows for non-zero inflation in response to real shocks, so as to reduce the rigidity of real wages. Quantitatively, the case against price stability as the sole goal of monetary policy turns out to be important.

I provide an integrated analysis of monetary and macroprudential policies in a model economy featuring a financial friction and a nominal wage rigidity. In this set-up, the monetary authority faces a trade-off between macroeconomic and financial stability: While expansionary counter-cyclical monetary policy prevents involuntary unemployment, it also amplifies an inefficient reallocation of capital across sectors. The main contribution of the analysis is threefold: First it highlights a novel channel through which monetary policy can impact financial stability. Second, it shows that, by itself, monetary policy can significantly mitigate the wedge between the constrained efficient and the competitive allocation. Third, regardless of the availability of macroprudential tools, stabilizing demand is usually not optimal for monetary policy.

The form of bounded rationality characterizing the representative agent is key in the choice of the optimal monetary policy regime. While inflation targeting prevails for myopia that distorts agents' inflation expectations, price level targeting emerges as the optimal policy under myopia regarding the output gap, revenue, or interest rate. To the extent that bygones are not bygones under price level targeting, rational inflation expectations is a minimal condition for optimality in a behavioral world. Instrument rules implementation of this optimal policy is shown to be infeasible, questioning the ability of simple rules à la Taylor (1993) to assist the conduct of monetary policy. Bounded rationality is not necessarily associated with welfare losses.