Staff research

We show that in a heterogeneous economy, optimal policy after cost-push shocks raises short-term rates to curb inflation while lowering long-term rates to support indebted households, speeding investment and output recovery while increasing consumption inequality.

We quantify the effects of large-scale stock purchases by a central bank and compare these to bond purchases. We find that the central bank’s equity purchases would lower the risk and term premiums on stocks and long-term bonds, respectively, and thereby stimulate economic activity.

We evaluate, both empirically and theoretically, the spillover effects that debt-financed fiscal policy interventions of the United States have on other economies. We consider a two-country model with international portfolio rebalancing effects. We show that US fiscal expansions would increase global long-term rates and hinder economic activity in the rest of the world.

This paper studies the effects of foreign exchange (FX) interventions in a two-region model where governments issue both short- and long-term bonds. We find that the term premium channel dominates the trade balance channel in our calibrated model. As a result, the conventional beggar-thy-neighbor effects of interventions are overturned.

Should monetary policy lean against housing market booms? We approach this question using a small-scale, regime-switching New Keynesian model, where housing market crashes arrive with a logit probability that depends on the level of household debt.