IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/2007-025.html

Monetary policy and natural disasters in a DSGE model: how should the Fed have responded to Hurricane Katrina?

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin D. Keen
  • Michael R. Pakko

Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, speculation arose that the Federal Reserve might respond by easing monetary policy. This paper uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to investigate the appropriate monetary policy response to a natural disaster. We show that the standard Taylor (1993) rule response in models with and without nominal rigidities is to increase the nominal interest rate. That finding is unchanged when we consider the optimal policy response to a disaster. A nominal interest rate increase following a disaster mitigates both temporary inflation effects and output distortions that are attributable to nominal rigidities.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin D. Keen & Michael R. Pakko, 2007. "Monetary policy and natural disasters in a DSGE model: how should the Fed have responded to Hurricane Katrina?," Working Papers 2007-025, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2007-025
    DOI: 10.20955/wp.2007.025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.20955/wp.2007.025
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20955/wp.2007.025?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. King, Robert G & Watson, Mark W, 2002. "System Reduction and Solution Algorithms for Singular Linear Difference Systems under Rational Expectations," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 20(1-2), pages 57-86, October.
    2. Pakko Michael R., 2005. "Changing Technology Trends, Transition Dynamics, and Growth Accounting," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-42, December.
    3. Kim, Jinill & Henderson, Dale W., 2005. "Inflation targeting and nominal-income-growth targeting: When and why are they suboptimal?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1463-1495, November.
    4. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June.
    5. Woodford Michael, 2002. "Inflation Stabilization and Welfare," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-53, February.
    6. Gavin, William T. & Keen, Benjamin D. & Pakko, Michael R., 2009. "Inflation Risk And Optimal Monetary Policy," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(S1), pages 58-75, May.
    7. Christopher J. Neely, 2004. "The Federal Reserve responds to crises: September 11th was not the first," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 86(Mar), pages 27-42.
    8. Chari, V. V. & Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin, 1998. "Expectation Traps and Discretion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 462-492, August.
    9. Frank Smets & Raf Wouters, 2003. "An Estimated Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model of the Euro Area," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1123-1175, September.
    10. Erceg, Christopher J. & Henderson, Dale W. & Levin, Andrew T., 2000. "Optimal monetary policy with staggered wage and price contracts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 281-313, October.
    11. Hayashi, Fumio, 1982. "Tobin's Marginal q and Average q: A Neoclassical Interpretation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 213-224, January.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Eduardo Cavallo & Ilan Noy, 2009. "The Economics of Natural Disasters: A Survey," Research Department Publications 4649, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    2. Allan Wright & Patrice Borda, 2016. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations Under Natural Disaster Shocks in Central America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 97076, Inter-American Development Bank.
    3. Toshiki JINUSHI & Nobuyuki ISAGAWA & Kozo HARIMAYA, 2013. "Monetary Policy and Natural Disasters: An Extension and Simulation Analysis in the Framework of New Keynesian Macroeconomic Model," APIR Discussion Paper Series 1001783, Asia Pacific Institute of Research.
    4. Celso Brunetti & Matteo Crosignani & Benjamin Dennis & Gurubala Kotta & Donald P. Morgan & Chaehee Shin & Ilknur Zer, 2024. "Climate-Related Financial Stability Risks for the United States: Methods and Applications," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 30(1), pages 1-37, October.
    5. Mitsuhiro Okano, 2013. "Monetary Policy and Natural Disasters: An Extension and Simulation Analysis in the Framework of New Keynesian Macroeconomic Model," APIR Discussion Paper Series 32, Asia Pacific Institute of Research.
    6. Liu, Yawen & Cui, Qi & Liu, Yu & Zhang, Jinzhu & Zhou, Meifang & Ali, Tariq & Yang, Lingyu & Feng, Kuishuang & Hubacek, Klaus & Li, Xinbei, 2021. "Countermeasures against economic crisis from COVID-19 pandemic in China: An analysis of effectiveness and trade-offs," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 482-495.
    7. Allan Wright & Patrice Borda, 2020. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations Under Natural Disaster Shocks in Central America and he Caribbean [DSGE-Cycles]," Working Papers hal-02532193, HAL.
    8. Wright, Allan & Borda, Patrice, 2016. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations Under Natural Disaster Shocks in Central America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 8039, Inter-American Development Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benjamin D. Keen & Michael R. Pakko, 2011. "Monetary Policy and Natural Disasters in a DSGE Model," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(4), pages 973-990, April.
    2. Benjamin Keen, 2009. "Output, Inflation, and Interest Rates in an Estimated Optimizing Model of Monetary Policy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(2), pages 327-343, April.
    3. Gavin, William T. & Keen, Benjamin D. & Pakko, Michael R., 2009. "Inflation Risk And Optimal Monetary Policy," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(S1), pages 58-75, May.
    4. Guangling 'Dave' Liu & Rangan Gupta & Eric Schaling, 2009. "A New-Keynesian DSGE model for forecasting the South African economy," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 387-404.
    5. Alexander Tobón Arias, 2022. "La estructura lógica de la teoría del equilibrio general dinámico estocástico," Borradores Departamento de Economía 20477, Universidad de Antioquia, CIE.
    6. Bazhenova Olena & Bazhenova Yuliya, 2016. "Modelling the Impact of External Shocks on Economy of Ukraine: Dsge Approach," Ekonomika (Economics), Sciendo, vol. 95(1), pages 64-83, January.
    7. Kuchta, Zbigniew, . "Sztywność płac nominalnych w modelach DSGE małej skali. Analiza empiryczna dla Polski," Gospodarka Narodowa-The Polish Journal of Economics, Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie / SGH Warsaw School of Economics, vol. 2014(6).
    8. Andrei Polbin & Sergey Drobyshevsky, 2014. "Developing a Dynamic Stochastic Model of General Equilibrium for the Russian Economy," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 166P, pages 156-156.
    9. Lim, G.C. & McNelis, Paul D., 2008. "Computational Macroeconomics for the Open Economy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262123061, December.
    10. Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2007. "Macroeconomic Modeling for Monetary Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 25-46, Fall.
    11. Giammarioli, Nicola & Valla, Natacha, 2003. "The natural real rate of interest in the euro area," Working Paper Series 233, European Central Bank.
    12. Pawel Baranowski & Zbigniew Kuchta, 2015. "Changes in nominal rigidities in Poland – a regime switching DSGE perspective," Lodz Economics Working Papers 6/2015, University of Lodz, Faculty of Economics and Sociology.
    13. Nao Sudo & Yuki Teranishi, 2008. "Optimal Monetary Policy under Imperfect Financial Integration," IMES Discussion Paper Series 08-E-25, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    14. Deming Luo & Stephen Ferris, 2008. "Optimal Simple Monetary Policy Rules in a Small Open Economy with Exchange Rate Imperfections," Carleton Economic Papers 08-03, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    15. Casares, Miguel, 2006. "Time-to-build, monetary shocks, and aggregate fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1161-1176, September.
    16. Benjamin D. Keen & Evan F. Koenig, 2018. "How Robust Are Popular Models of Nominal Frictions?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(6), pages 1299-1342, September.
    17. A. Campolmi, 2005. "Which inflation to target? A small open economy with sticky wages indexed to past inflation," Working Papers 553, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    18. Benjamin D. Keen, 2007. "Sticky Price And Sticky Information Price‐Setting Models: What Is The Difference?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(4), pages 770-786, October.
    19. Huang, Kevin X.D. & Meng, Qinglai, 2012. "Increasing returns and unsynchronized wage adjustment in sunspot models of the business cycle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(1), pages 284-309.
    20. Tayler, William & Zilberman, Roy, 2014. "Macroprudential Regulation and the Role of Monetary Policy," Dynare Working Papers 37, CEPREMAP.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2007-025. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.