IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/589.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Interest Rate Policies and Informational Efficiency

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence Weiss

Abstract

Monetary policy may be implemented either by controlling the nominal money supply or by fixing the nominal interest rates. This paper investigates the effects on available information of both kinds of policies in the equilibrium rational expectations model presented in Grossman-Weiss (1980). A necessary and sufficient condition for informational efficiency is that agents have homogenous expectations about the real interest rate. Interest rate policies can be first best in the sense of yielding higher quality information than any feasible money growth feedback policies. Unlike desirable money growth rules, interest rate policies do not require more information on behalf of the policy authority prior to period t than was held by a representative trader at t - 1. In general, it is desirable to set the interest rate target so that the expected price level is constant.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence Weiss, 1981. "Interest Rate Policies and Informational Efficiency," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 589, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:589
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d05/d0589.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J & Weiss, Laurence, 1982. "Heterogeneous Information and the Theory of the Business Cycle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(4), pages 699-727, August.
    2. Weiss, Laurence M, 1980. "The Role for Active Monetary Policy in a Rational Expectations Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(2), pages 221-233, April.
    3. Sargent, Thomas J & Wallace, Neil, 1975. ""Rational" Expectations, the Optimal Monetary Instrument, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 83(2), pages 241-254, April.
    4. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1972. "Expectations and the neutrality of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 103-124, April.
    5. Laurence Weiss, 1982. "Information Aggregation and Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(1), pages 31-42.
    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. Bindseil, Ulrich, 1997. "Die Stabilisierungswirkungen von Mindestreserven," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1997,01, Deutsche Bundesbank.

    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. Benassy, Jean-Pascal, 2001. "On the optimality of activist policies with a less informed government," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 45-59, February.
    2. Rousakis, Michael, 2012. "Expectations and Fluctuations: The Role of Monetary Policy," Economic Research Papers 270655, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    3. Rousakis, Michael, 2012. "Expectations and Fluctuations : The Role of Monetary Policy," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 984, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    4. Dotsey, Michael & King, Robert G, 1986. "Informational Implications of Interest Rate Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 33-42, March.
    5. Michael Rousakis, 2013. "Expectations and Fluctuations: The Role of Monetary Policy," 2013 Meeting Papers 681, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Glick, Reuven & Kretzmer, Peter & Wihlborg, Clas, 1995. "Real exchange rate effects of monetary disturbances under different degrees of exchange rate flexibility: An empirical analysis," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3-4), pages 249-273, May.
    7. John B. Taylor, 1982. "The role of expectations in the choice of monetary policy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 47-95.
    8. Dotsey, Michael & King, Robert G., 1983. "Monetary instruments and policy rules in a rational expectations environment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 357-382, September.
    9. John B. Taylor, 1983. "Rational Expectations Models in Macroeconomics," NBER Working Papers 1224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Hwang, Chiun-Lin, 1989. "Optimal monetary policy in an open macroeconomic model with rational expectation," ISU General Staff Papers 1989010108000010197, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    11. Bennet T. McCallum, 1984. "A Linearized Version of Lucas's Neutrality Model," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 17(1), pages 138-145, February.
    12. Josh Ryan-Collins, 2015. "Is Monetary Financing Inflationary? A Case Study of the Canadian Economy, 1935-75," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_848, Levy Economics Institute.
    13. Thomas M. Humphrey, 1999. "Mercantilists and classicals: insights from doctrinal history," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 55-82.
    14. Mulder, C.B., 1986. "Testing Korteweg's rational expectations model for a small open economy," Other publications TiSEM c52e6c80-834d-49c7-ae6a-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Mishkin, Frederic S, 1982. "Does Anticipated Monetary Policy Matter? An Econometric Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(1), pages 22-51, February.
    16. Carlos A. Rodríguez, 2018. "Fuentes de las fluctuaciones macroeconómicas en Puerto Rico\Sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in Puerto Rico," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 33(2), pages 219-252.
    17. Grossman, Herschel I., 1983. "The natural-rate hypothesis, the rational-expectations hypothesis, and the remarkable survival of non-market-clearing assumptions," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 225-245, January.
    18. Robert G. King, 2010. "Comment on "Noisy Business Cycles"," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 395-407, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Giuseppe Pernagallo & Benedetto Torrisi, 2020. "A theory of information overload applied to perfectly efficient financial markets," Review of Behavioral Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 14(2), pages 223-236, October.
    20. John B. Taylor, 2007. "Thirty‐Five Years of Model Building for Monetary Policy Evaluation: Breakthroughs, Dark Ages, and a Renaissance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 193-201, February.

    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:cwl:cwldpp:589. 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: Brittany Ladd (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cowleus.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.