IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mcb/jmoncb/v40y2008i5p867-895.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A General Theory (and Some Evidence) of Expectation Traps in Monetary Policy

Author

Listed:
  • ROC ARMENTER

Abstract

I show that multiple equilibria are a general property of economies under full monetary policy discretion. Three simple conditions are sufficient to rule out, generically, a unique equilibrium in a static economy. The key departure from Barro and Gordon (1983) is to consider bounded welfare costs of inflation. I also show that in a two Markov equilibrium economy the inflation response to certain perturbations is, generically, qualitatively different in each equilibrium. Finally, I discuss some evidence on inflation dynamics that supports the hypothesis that U.S. monetary policy was caught in an expectation trap during the high inflation episode of the 1970s. Copyright (c) 2008 The Ohio State University.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcb:jmoncb:v:40:y:2008:i:5:p:867-895
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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. Barthelemy, Jean & Mengus, Eric, 2024. "Time-consistent implementation in macroeconomic games," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(3), July.
    3. Jeffrey Campbell & Jacob Weber, 2021. "Discretion rather than rules: Equilibrium uniqueness and forward guidance with inconsistent optimal plans," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 41, pages 243-254, July.
    4. 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.
    5. Roc Armenter, 2013. "The perils of nominal targets," Working Papers 14-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    6. 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.
    7. Eric Swanson & Gauti Eggertsson, 2007. "Optimal Time-Consistent Monetary Policy in the New Keynesian Model with Repeated Simultaneous Play," 2007 Meeting Papers 214, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Volker Hahn, 2021. "Discretionary policy and multiple equilibria in a new Keynesian model," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(1), pages 423-445.
    9. Roc Armenter, 2014. "The Perils of Nominal Targets," 2014 Meeting Papers 428, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    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:mcb:jmoncb:v:40:y:2008:i:5:p:867-895. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-2879 .

    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.