Optimal monetary policy with durable and non-durable goods

Christopher Erceg and Andrew Levin ()

No 748, International Finance Discussion Papers from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: The durable goods sector is much more interest sensitive than the non-durables sector, and these sectoral differences have important implications for monetary policy. In this paper, we perform VAR analysis of quarterly US data and find that a monetary policy innovation has a peak impact on durable expenditures that is roughly five times as large as its impact on non-durable expenditures. We then proceed to formulate and calibrate a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model that roughly matches the impulse response functions of the data. While the social welfare function involves sector-specific output gaps and inflation rates, we find that performance of the optimal policy rule can be closely approximated by a very simple rule that targets a weighted average of aggregate wage and price inflation rates. In contrast, some commonly-prescribed policy rules (such as strict price inflation targeting and Taylor's rule) perform very poorly in terms of social welfare.

Keywords: Monetary policy; Durable goods, Consumer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Optimal monetary policy with durable and non-durable goods (2002)
Working Paper: Optimal Monetary Policy with Durable and Non-Durable Goods (2002)
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