期刊名称:Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN:1830-3420
电子版ISSN:1830-3439
出版年度:2007
卷号:1
出版社:European Central Bank
摘要:The objectives of this paper are : first, to quantify the stabilization welfare gains from commitment; second, to examine how commitment to an optimal rule can be sustained as an equilibrium and third, to find a simple interest rate rule that closely approxi- mates the optimal commitment one. We utilize an influential empirical micro-founded DSGE model, the euro area model of Smets and Wouters (2003), and a quadratic approximation of the representative household’s utility as the welfare criterion. Im- portantly, we impose the effect of a nominal interest rate zero lower bound. In contrast with previous studies, we find significant stabilization gains from commitment: our central estimate is a 0.4 − 0.5% equivalent permanent increase in consumption, but in a variant with a higher degree of price stickiness, gains of over 2% are found. We also find that a simple optimized commitment rule with the nominal interest rate re- sponding to current inflation and the real wage closely mimics the optimal rule