Monetary Policy when the Phillips Curve is Locally Quite Flat

Franck Portier, Paul Beaudry and Chenyu Hou

No 15184, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This papers begins by highlighting how the presence of a cost channel of monetary policy can offer new insights into the behavior of inflation when the Phillips curve is locally quite flat. For instance, we highlight a key condition whereby lax monetary policy can push the economy in a low inflation trap and we discuss how, under the same condition, standard policy rules for targeting inflation may need to be modified. In the second part of the paper we explore the empirical relevance of the conditions that give rise to these observations using US data. To this end, we present both (i) a wide set of estimates derived from single-equation estimation of the Phillips curve and (ii) estimates based on structural estimation of a full model. The results from both sets of empirical exercises strongly support the key condition we derived.

Keywords: Monetary policy; inflation; Interest rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E3 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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