IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/macdyn/v12y2008i05p664-693_07.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can The U.S. Monetary Policy Fall (Again) In An Expectation Trap?

Author

Listed:
  • Armenter, Roc
  • Bodenstein, Martin

Abstract

We propose a model to study monetary policy under discretion. We focus on Markov perfect equilibria, ruling out trigger strategies. The model is simple enough that the determinants of monetary policy under discretion are clear. We also find that for all parameterizations with an equilibrium inflation rate around 2%, there is a second equilibrium with an inflation rate just above 10%. Thus the model can simultaneously account for the low- and high-inflation episodes in the U.S. experience.

Suggested Citation

  • Armenter, Roc & Bodenstein, Martin, 2008. "Can The U.S. Monetary Policy Fall (Again) In An Expectation Trap?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(5), pages 664-693, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:macdyn:v:12:y:2008:i:05:p:664-693_07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1365100508070387/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Altonji, Joseph G, 1986. "Intertemporal Substitution in Labor Supply: Evidence from Micro Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 176-215, June.
    2. David Domeij & Martin Floden, 2006. "The Labor-Supply Elasticity and Borrowing Constraints: Why Estimates are Biased," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(2), pages 242-262, April.
    3. Jean-Charles Rochet & Xavier Vives, 2004. "Coordination Failures and the Lender of Last Resort: Was Bagehot Right After All?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(6), pages 1116-1147, December.
    4. Morris, Stephen & Shin, Hyun Song, 1998. "Unique Equilibrium in a Model of Self-Fulfilling Currency Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 587-597, June.
    5. Barro, Robert J & Gordon, David B, 1983. "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 589-610, August.
    6. Richard Clarida & Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 147-180.
    7. Roc Armenter & Martin Bodenstein, 2005. "Does the time inconsistency problem make flexible exchange rates look worse than you think?," Staff Reports 230, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    8. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler & Mark Watson, 1997. "Systematic Monetary Policy and the Effects of Oil Price Shocks," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 28(1), pages 91-157.
    9. Aubhik Khan & Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 2001. "The pitfalls of monetary discretion," Working Paper 01-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    10. Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 2004. "Monetary Discretion, Pricing Complementarity, and Dynamic Multiple Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(4), pages 1513-1553.
    11. Dupor, Bill, 2003. "Optimal random monetary policy with nominal rigidity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 66-78, September.
    12. Stefania Albanesi & V. V. Chari & Lawrence J. Christiano, 2003. "Expectation Traps and Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(4), pages 715-741.
    13. Lawrence J. Christiano & Christopher J. Gust, 2000. "The expectations trap hypothesis," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 25(Q II), pages 21-39.
    14. 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.
    15. Goodfriend, Marvin & King, Robert G., 2005. "The incredible Volcker disinflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 981-1015, July.
    16. Albert Marcet & Juan P. Nicolini, 2003. "Recurrent Hyperinflations and Learning," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1476-1498, December.
    17. Morris, Stephen & Shin, Hyun Song, 2004. "Coordination risk and the price of debt," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 133-153, February.
    18. Alan B. Krueger & Andreas Mueller, 2011. "Job Search and Job Finding in a Period of Mass Unemployment: Evidence from High-Frequency Longitudinal Data," Working Papers 1295, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    19. Roc Armenter, 2008. "A General Theory (and Some Evidence) of Expectation Traps in Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(5), pages 867-895, August.
    20. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    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. Roc Armenter & Martin Bodenstein, 2005. "Does the time inconsistency problem make flexible exchange rates look worse than you think?," Staff Reports 230, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    2. Xu, Yingying & Liu, Zhixin & Ortiz, Jaime, 2018. "The relationship between media bias and inflation expectations in P.R. China," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 402-412.

    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. Leduc, Sylvain & Sill, Keith & Stark, Tom, 2007. "Self-fulfilling expectations and the inflation of the 1970s: Evidence from the Livingston Survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 433-459, March.
    2. Roc Armenter, 2008. "A General Theory (and Some Evidence) of Expectation Traps in Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(5), pages 867-895, August.
    3. David Arseneau, 2012. "Expectation traps in a new Keynesian open economy model," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 49(1), pages 81-112, January.
    4. Roc Armenter & Martin Bodenstein, 2005. "Does the time inconsistency problem make flexible exchange rates look worse than you think?," Staff Reports 230, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    5. Aurélien Goutsmedt, 2021. "From the Stagflation to the Great Inflation: Explaining the US economy of the 1970s," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 131(3), pages 557-582.
    6. Stefania Albanesi & V. V. Chari & Lawrence J. Christiano, 2003. "Expectation Traps and Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(4), pages 715-741.
    7. Siu, Henry E., 2008. "Time consistent monetary policy with endogenous price rigidity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 184-210, January.
    8. Srinivasan, Naveen & Jain, Sumit & Ramachandran, M., 2009. "Monetary policy and the behaviour of inflation in India: Is there a need for institutional reform?," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 13-24, January.
    9. Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 2004. "Monetary Discretion, Pricing Complementarity, and Dynamic Multiple Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(4), pages 1513-1553.
    10. Roc Armenter, 2014. "The Perils of Nominal Targets," 2014 Meeting Papers 428, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Naveen Srinivasan, 2014. "Testing the Expectations Trap Hypothesis: A Time-Varying Parameter Approach," Working Papers 2014-089, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    12. Giancarlo Marini & Giovanni Piersanti, 2012. "Models of Speculative Attacks and Crashes in International Capital Markets," CEIS Research Paper 245, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 24 Jul 2012.
    13. Taiji Harashima, 2005. "The Cause of the Great Inflation: Interactions between the Government and the Monetary Policymakers," Macroeconomics 0510026, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 Nov 2005.
    14. Roc Armenter, 2013. "The perils of nominal targets," Working Papers 14-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    15. Michael D. Bordo & Athanasios Orphanides, 2013. "Introduction to "The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking"," NBER Chapters, in: The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, pages 1-22, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Robert B. Barsky & Lutz Kilian, 2002. "Do We Really Know That Oil Caused the Great Stagflation? A Monetary Alternative," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2001, Volume 16, pages 137-198, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    18. 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.
    19. Giovanni B. Pittaluga & Elena Seghezza & Pierluigi Morelli, 2024. "The myth of federal reserve de facto independence," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 1675-1702, November.
    20. Alfaro, Laura & Kanczuk, Fabio, 2010. "Nominal versus indexed debt: A quantitative horse race," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(8), pages 1706-1726, December.

    More about this item

    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:cup:macdyn:v:12:y:2008:i:05:p:664-693_07. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/mdy .

    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.