The author estimates consumption variability ratios for both durable and nondurable consumption using data for six OECD countries. His methodology, which relies on a long-run restriction implied by the consumer's intertemporal budget constraint, overcomes many of the problems inherent to previous approaches. Some important departures from the permanent income model emerge: (1) nondurable consumption shows mild excess smoothness in the United States and Italy, and mild excess volatility in Japan and France, and (2) durable consumption shows extreme excess smoothness in all countries. Alternative factors capable of generating the differences in volatility across types of goods are discussed.

I examine the impact of alternative monetary policy rules on a rational asset price bubble, through the lens of an overlapping generations model with nominal rigidities. A systematic increase in interest rates in response to a growing bubble is shown to enhance the fluctuations in the latter, through its positive effect on bubble growth. The optimal monetary policy seeks to strike a balance between stabilization of the bubble and stabilization of aggregate demand. The paper's main findings call into question the theoretical foundations of the case for “leaning against the wind” monetary policies.

We lay out a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap. We use the resulting framework to analyse the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rule-based policy regimes for the small open economy: domestic inflation and CPI-based Taylor rules, and an exchange rate peg. We show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail. We also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy, and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with the suboptimal rules.

Is consumption more or less variable than predicted by the permanent-income hypothesis? To answer that question, the author develops a procedure based on a long-run restriction implied by the consumer's intertemporal budget constraints. In contrast to previous work, the approach here (1) does not require any assumptions on the stochastic properties of labor income, (2) does not impose restrictions on the consumer's information set, and (3) is robust to departures from the permanent-income-hypothesis model. The application of the procedure to postwar U.S. data suggests that consumption is smoother than the permanent-income-hypothesis model predicts.

The paper reviews the recent literature on monetary policy rules. We exposit the monetary policy design problem within a simple baseline theoretical framework. We then consider the implications of adding various real world complications. Among other things, we show that the optimal policy implicitly incorporates inflation targeting. We also characterize the gains from making a credible commitment to fight inflation. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we show that gains from commitment may emerge even if the central bank is not trying to inadvisedly push output above its natural level. We also consider the implications of frictions such as imperfect information.

We estimate a forward-looking monetary policy reaction function for the postwar United States economy, before and after Volcker's appointment as Fed Chairman in 1979. Our results point to substantial differences in the estimated rule across periods. In particular, interest rate policy in the Volcker-Greenspan period appears to have been much more sensitive to changes in expected inflation than in the pre-Volcker period. We then compare some of the implications of the estimated rules for the equilibrium properties of inflation and output, using a simple macroeconomic model, and show that the Volcker-Greenspan rule is stabilizing.

Optimal Monetary Policy in Open versus Closed Economies: An Integrated Approach by Richard Clarida, Jordi Gali and Mark Gertler. Published in volume 91, issue 2, pages 248-252 of American Economic Review, May 2001