Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Optimal Monetary Policy under Commitment with a Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates

Contents:

Author Info

  • Adam, Klaus
  • Billi, Roberto M.

Abstract

We determine optimal monetary policy under commitment in a forward-looking New Keynesian model when nominal interest rates are bounded below by zero. The lower bound represents an occasionally binding constraint that causes the model and optimal policy to be nonlinear. A calibration to the U.S. economy suggests that policy should reduce nominal interest rates more aggressively than suggested by a model without lower bound. Rational agents anticipate the possibility of reaching the lower bound in the future and this amplifies the effects of adverse shocks well before the bound is reached. While the empirical magnitude of U.S. mark-up shocks seems too small to entail zero nominal interest rates, shocks affecting the natural real interest rate plausibly lead to a binding lower bound. Under optimal policy, however, this occurs quite infrequently and does not imply positive average inflation rates in equilibrium. Interestingly, the presence of binding real rate shocks alters the policy response to (non-binding) markup shocks.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mcb.2006.0089
File Function: full text
Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Blackwell Publishing in its journal Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.

Volume (Year): 38 (2006)
Issue (Month): 7 (October)
Pages: 1877-1905

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:mcb:jmoncb:v:38:y:2006:i:7:p:1877-1905

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-2879

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Adam, Klaus & Billi, Roberto M, 2003. "Optimal Monetary Policy Under Commitment with a Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates," CEPR Discussion Papers 4111, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Paul R. Krugman, 1998. "It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(2), pages 137-206.
  3. Uhlig, Harald, 2000. "Should We be Afraid of Friedman's Rule?," CEPR Discussion Papers 2548, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  4. R. Kato & S. Nishiyama, 2002. "Optimal Monetary Policy When Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero," Computing in Economics and Finance 2002 8, Society for Computational Economics.
  5. Woodford, Michael, 1997. "Doing Without Money: Controlling Inflation in a Post-Monetary World," Seminar Papers 632, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
  6. George W. Evans & Seppo Honkapohja, 2003. "Policy interaction, expectations, and the liquidity trap," Working Paper 2003-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
  7. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe & Martin Uribe, 2004. "Optimal Simple and Implementable Monetary and Fiscal Rules," NBER Working Papers 10253, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Athanasios Orphanides, 2004. "Monetary policy in deflation: the liquidity trap in history and practice," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2004-01, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  9. Gauti B. Eggertsson, 2003. "How to Fight Deflation in a Liquidity Trap: Committing to Being Irresponsible," IMF Working Papers 03/64, International Monetary Fund.
  10. Martin Uribe & Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, 2001. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under sticky prices," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Jun.
  11. Coenen, Guenter & Wieland, Volker, 2003. "The Zero-Interest-Rate and the Role of the Exchange Rate for Monetary Policy in Japan," CFS Working Paper Series 2003/09, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
  12. Klaus Adam & Roberto M. Billi, 2004. "Optimal monetary policy under discretion with a zero bound on nominal interest rates," Working Paper Series 380, European Central Bank.
  13. Eggertsson, Gauti B., 2006. "The Deflation Bias and Committing to Being Irresponsible," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(2), pages 283-321, March.
  14. Benhabib, J. & Schmitt-Grohe, S. & Uribe, M., 1999. "Avoiding Liquidity Traps," Working Papers 99-21, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  15. Lawrence Summers, 1991. "Panel discussion: price stability ; How should long-term monetary policy be determined?," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 625-631.
  16. Willem H. Buiter & Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, 2003. "Overcoming the zero bound on nominal interest rates with negative interest on currency: gesell's solution," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(490), pages 723-746, October.
  17. Adam, Klaus & Billi, Roberto M., 2007. "Discretionary monetary policy and the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 728-752, April.
  18. Peter N. Ireland, 2002. "Technology Shocks in the New Keynesian Model," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 536, Boston College Department of Economics.
  19. Julio Rotemberg & Michael Woodford, 1997. "An Optimization-Based Econometric Framework for the Evaluation of Monetary Policy," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1997, Volume 12, pages 297-361 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  20. Jeff Fuhrer & Brian Madigan, 1994. "Monetary policy when interest rates are bounded at zero," Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory 94-06, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  21. Albert Marcet & Ramon Marimon, 2011. "Recursive Contracts," Working Papers 552, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
  22. Alan J. Auerbach & Maurice Obstfeld, 2003. "The Case for Open-Market Purchases in a Liquidity Trap," NBER Working Papers 9814, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  23. S. Rao Aiyagari & Albert Marcet & Thomas J. Sargent & Juha Seppala, 2002. "Optimal Taxation without State-Contingent Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(6), pages 1220-1254, December.
  24. David Reifschneider & John C. Williams, 2000. "Three lessons for monetary policy in a low-inflation era," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, pages 936-978.
  25. Lawrence J. Christiano & Jonas D.M. Fisher, 1997. "Algorithms for solving dynamic models with occasionally binding constraints," Working Paper 9711, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
  26. Volker Wieland & Gunter Coenen, 2003. "The Zero-Interest-Rate Bound and the Role of the Exchange Rate for Monetary Policy in Japan," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 138, Society for Computational Economics.
  27. Alexander L. Wolman, 1999. "Real Implications of the Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates," Computing in Economics and Finance 1999 1152, Society for Computational Economics.
  28. Marvin Goodfriend, 2000. "Overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy," Working Paper 00-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
  29. Reifschneider, David & Willams, John C, 2000. "Three Lessons for Monetary Policy in a Low-Inflation Era," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 32(4), pages 936-66, November.
  30. Lars E.O. Svensson, 2003. "Escaping from a Liquidity Trap and Deflation: The Foolproof Way and Others," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 145-166, Fall.
  31. Jung, Taehun & Teranishi, Yuki & Watanabe, Tsutomu, 2005. "Optimal Monetary Policy at the Zero-Interest-Rate Bound," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 813-35, October.
  32. Evans, George W & Honkapohja, Seppo, 2003. "Policy Interaction, Expectation and Liquidity Trap," CEPR Discussion Papers 3925, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  33. Julio Rotemberg, 1987. "The New Keynesian Microfoundations," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1987, Volume 2, pages 69-116 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  34. Jón Steinsson, 2000. "Optimal monetary policy in an economy with inflation persistence," Economics wp11, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
  35. Marc P. Giannoni & Michael Woodford, 2003. "Optimal Interest-Rate Rules: I. General Theory," Levine's Bibliography 506439000000000384, UCLA Department of Economics.
  36. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcb:jmoncb:v:38:y:2006:i:7:p:1877-1905

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing) or (Christopher F. Baum).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.