Price-Level Determinacy, Lower Bounds on the Nominal Interest Rate, and Liquidity Traps
-
Ragna Alstadheim
and Dale W. Henderson
Abstract
We study standard monetary-policy rules with inflation-rate targets and either interest-rate or money-supply instruments using a flexible-price, perfect-foresight model. We focus mainly on interest-rate rules, but the results for money-supply rules are analogous. A locally-unique target equilibrium always exists. There are also below-target equilibria (BTE) with inflation below target and constant or asymptotically approaching or eventually reaching a below-target value. Liquidity traps are neither necessary nor sufficient for BTE. Such equilibria can also arise if monetary policy keeps the interest rate above a lower bound. We construct monetary-policy rules that preclude BTE. All are non-monotonic and discontinuous in current inflation. Each implies a difference equation in inflation. Some of these difference equations are continuous, but others are not. They are all non-monotonic and non-differentiable at a point. We argue that Japan's difficulties in the 1990s were probably the result of a stabilization problem rather than an indeterminacy problem.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Heterogeneity in Price Stickiness and the Real Effects of Monetary Shocks
- Frontiers Article
- 10.2202/1534-6013.1320
- Advances Article
- Monetary Policy and Uncertainty about the Natural Unemployment Rate: Brainard-Style Conservatism versus Experimental Activism
- Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies
- Inflation, Prices, and Information in Competitive Search
- Contributions Article
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- Job Separation Under Uncertainty and the Wage Distribution
- A Closed Form Solution to the Ramsey Model
- Convergence and Stability in U.S. Employment Rates
- What Does the Solow Model Tell Us about Economic Growth?
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