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We develop a theoretical model to compare forecast uncertainty estimated from time-series models to those available from survey density forecasts. The sum of the average variance of individual densities and the disagreement is shown to approximate the predictive uncertainty from well-specified time-series models when the variance of the aggregate shocks is relatively small compared to that of the idiosyncratic shocks. Due to grouping error problems and compositional heterogeneity in the panel, individual densities are used to estimate aggregate forecast uncertainty. During periods of regime change and structural break, ARCH estimates tend to diverge from survey measures.

From the standpoint of a policy maker who has access to a number of expert forecasts, the uncertainty of a combined or ensemble forecast should be interpreted as that of a typical forecaster randomly drawn from the pool. This uncertainty formula should incorporate forecaster discord, as justified by (i) disagreement as a component of combined forecast uncertainty, (ii) the model averaging literature, and (iii) central banks’ communication of uncertainty via fan charts. Using new statistics to test for the homogeneity of idiosyncratic errors under the joint limits with both T and n approaching infinity simultaneously, the authors find that some previously used measures can significantly underestimate the conceptually correct benchmark forecast uncertainty.

Questionnaire surveys made at currency markets around the world reveal that currency trade to a large extent not only is determined by an economy's performance or expected performance. Indeed, a fraction is guided by technical trading, which means that past exchange rates are assumed to provide information about future exchange rate movements. The purpose of this paper is to ask how a successful monetary policy should be designed when technical trading in the form of trend following is used in currency trading.

The paper embeds an optimal policy rule into Galí and Monacelli's dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for a small open economy, which is augmented with trend following in currency trading, to examine the prerequisites for a successful monetary policy. Specifically, the conditions for a determinate rational expectations equilibrium (REE) that also is stable under least squares learning are in focus. The paper also computes impulse‐response functions for key variables to study how the economy returns to steady state after being hit by a shock.

The paper finds that a determinate REE that also is stable under least squares learning often is the outcome when there is a limited amount of trend following in currency trading, but that a more flexible inflation rate targeting in monetary policy sometimes cause an indeterminate REE in the economy. Thus, strict, or almost strict, inflation rate targeting in monetary policy is recommended also when there is technical trading in currency trading and not only when all currency trading is guided by fundamental analysis (in the form of rational expectations). This result is a new result in the literature.

There are already models in the literature on monetary policy design that incorporate technical trading in currency trading into an otherwise standard DSGE model. There is also a huge amount of DSGE models in the literature in which monetary policy is optimal. However, the model in this paper is the first model, to the best of the author's knowledge, where technical trading in currency trading and optimal monetary policy are combined in the same DSGE model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ability of monetary policy to generate real effects in laboratory general equilibrium production economies.

To understand why monetary policy is not consistently effective at stabilizing economic activity, the author vary the types of agents interacting in the economy and consider treatments where subjects are playing the role of households (firms) in an economy where automated firms (households) are programmed to behave rationally.

While the majority of participants’ expectations respond to monetary policy in the direction intended, subjects do form expectations adaptively, relying heavily on past variables and forecasts in forming two-steps-ahead forecasts. Moreover, in the presence of counterparts that are boundedly rational, forecast accuracy worsens significantly. When interacting with automated households, updating firms’ prices respond modestly to monetary policy and significantly to anticipated marginal costs and future prices. The greatest deviations in behavior from theoretical predictions arise from human households (HH). Households persistent oversupply of labor and under-consumption is attributed to precautionary saving and debt aversion. The results provide evidence that the effects of monetary policy on decision making hinge on the distribution of indebtedness of households.

The author present causal evidence of the effects of potential bounded rationality on agents’ consumption and labor decisions.

Previous studies have shown that the effectiveness of monetary policy depends, to a large extent, on the market expectations of its future actions. This paper proposes an econometric framework to address the effect of the current state of the economy on monetary policy expectations. Specifically, we study the effect of contractionary (or expansionary) demand (or supply) shocks hitting the euro area countries on the expectations of the ECB's monetary policy in two stages. In the first stage, we construct indexes of real activity and inflation dynamics for each country, based on soft and hard indicators. In the second stage, we use those indexes to provide assessments on the type of aggregate shock hitting each country and assess its effect on monetary policy expectations at different horizons. Our results indicate that expectations are responsive to aggregate contractionary shocks, but not to expansionary shocks. Particularly, contractionary demand shocks have a negative effect on short-term monetary policy expectations, while contractionary supply shocks have negative effect on medium- and long-term expectations. Moreover, shocks to different economies do not have significantly different effects on expectations, although some differences across countries arise.

This paper aims to contribute to the analysis concerning how inflation forecasts from different economic agents (professional forecasters and consumers) lead to varying levels of central bank credibility and how it affects the monetary policy interest rate and its expectations.

Based on the Brazilian economy data from June 2007 to May 2022, the authors provide evidence that is useful for search mechanisms that improve the conduct of monetary policy through the management of inflation expectations. The authors perform several ordinary least squares and generalized method of moments regressions inspired by the Taylor rule principle. In brief, the benchmark model considers that the monetary policy interest rate and its expectations respond to departures of inflation expectations to the target (a proxy for central bank credibility) and the level of economic activity.

The main result of the analysis is that inflation expectations from professional forecasters and consumers imply different perceptions of central bank credibility that affect the monetary policy interest rate and expectations for horizons until one year ahead.

The novelty that the authors bring from the analysis is that the authors calculate central bank credibility by taking into account the “public beliefs” of different economic agents. Furthermore, the authors analyze the effect of central bank credibility from professional forecasters and consumers on the monetary policy interest rate and its expectations.

The role of trend inflation shocks for the U.S. macroeconomic dynamics is investigated by estimating two DSGE models of the business cycle. Policymakers are assumed to be concerned with a time-varying inflation target, which is modeled as a persistent and stochastic process. The identification of trend inflation shocks (as opposed to a number of alternative innovations) is achieved by exploiting the measure of trend inflation recently proposed by Aruoba and Schorfheide (2011). Our main findings point to a substantial contribution of trend inflation shocks for the volatility of inflation and the policy rate. Such contribution is found to be time dependent and highest during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s.

The role of money and monetary policy of the central bank in pursuing macroeconomic stability has significantly changed over the period since the end of World War II. Globalization, liberalization, integration, and transition processes generally shaped the crucial milestones of the macroeconomic development and substantial features of economic policy and its framework in Europe. Policy-driven changes together with variety of exogenous shocks significantly affected the key features of macroeconomic environment on the European continent that fashioned the framework and design of monetary policies.

This chapter examines the key basis of the central bank’s monetary policy on its way to pursue and preserve the internal and external stability of the purchasing power of money. Substantial elements of the monetary policy like objectives and strategies are not only generally introduced but also critically discussed according to their accuracy, suitability, and reliability in the changing macroeconomic conditions. Brief overview of the Eurozone common monetary policy milestones and the past Eastern bloc countries’ experience with a variety of exchange rate regimes provides interesting empirical evidence on origins and implications of vital changes in the monetary policy conduction in Europe and the Eurozone.

This chapter investigates the predictability of the European monetary policy through the eyes of the professional forecasters from a large investment bank. The analysis is based on forward-looking Actual and Perceived Taylor Rules for the European Central Bank which are estimated in real-time using a newly constructed database for the period April 2000–November 2009. The former policy rule is based on the actual refi rate set by the Governing Council, while the latter is estimated for the bank’s economists using their main point forecast for the upcoming refi rate decision as a dependent variable. The empirical evidence shows that the pattern of the refi rate is broadly well predicted by the professional forecasters even though the latter have foreseen more accurately the increases rather than the policy rate cuts. Second, the results point to an increasing responsiveness of the ECB to macroeconomic fundamentals along the forecast horizon. Third, the rolling window regressions suggest that the estimated coefficients have changed after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in October 2008; the ECB has responded less strongly to macroeconomic fundamentals and the degree of policy inertia has decreased. A sensitivity analysis shows that the baseline results are robust to applying a recursive window methodology and some of the findings are qualitatively unaltered from using Consensus Economics forecasts in the regressions.

This chapter examines the effect of changes in the public debt–gross domestic product (GDP) ratio on long, 10 year, interest rates in a panel of 17 countries over the period 1870–2016 controlling for other variables, in particular the world interest rate. Over this long period, one can argue that most of the big changes in public debt were the product of factors largely exogenous to national interest rate determination, such as war, depression or financial crisis. The issue is of current relevance since the Covid-19 pandemic has caused large increases in the ratio of public debt to GDP in many countries. The estimates suggest that it is the change in debt, rather than the level of debt or the deficit that matters for long interest rates. World interest rates have long- and short-run effects on interest rates which are very well determined and close to one. Current inflation has a small but significant effect.