Herbert A. Simon, 1978 Economics Nobel Prize laureate, talked about satisficing (his neologism) rather than optimizing as being what economists really need. Indeed, optimization might be an unsuitable solution procedure (in that it suggests a unique “optimal” solution) for problems where many solutions could be satisfactory. We think that looking for an applicable monetary policy is a problem of this kind because there is no unique way in which a central bank can achieve a desired inflation (unemployment, etc.) path. We think that it is viability theory, which is a relatively young area of mathematics, that rigorously captures the essence of satisficing. We aim to use viability analysis to analyze a simple macro policy model and show how some robust adjustment rules can be endogenously obtained.

The U.S. economy has experienced a reduction in volatility since the mid-1980s. In this paper we investigate the changes in the response of the economy to an oil price shock and the role of the systematic monetary policy response in accounting for changes in the response of output, prices, inventories, sales, and the overall decline in volatility. Our results suggest a smaller and more short-lived response of most macro variables during the Volcker-Greenspan period. It also appears that whereas the systematic monetary policy response dampened fluctuations in economic activity during the 1970s, it has had virtually no effect after the “Great Moderation.”

We study a Ramsey problem in infinite and continuous time and space. The problem is discounted both temporally and spatially. Capital flows to locations with higher marginal return. We show that the problem amounts to optimal control of parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs). We rely on the existing related mathematical literature to derive the Pontryagin conditions. Using explicit representations of the solutions to the PDEs, we first show that the resulting dynamic system gives rise to an ill-posed problem in the sense of Hadamard. We then turn to the spatial Ramsey problem with linear utility. The obtained properties are significantly different from those of the nonspatial linear Ramsey model due to the spatial dynamics induced by capital mobility.

This paper explores the influence of wage and price staggering on monetary persistence. We show that, for plausible parameter values, wage and price staggering are complementary in generating monetary persistence. We do so by proposing the new measure of “quantitative inertia,” after discussing weaknesses of the “contract multiplier,” a standard measure of monetary persistence. The existence of complementarities means that beyond understanding how wage and price staggering work in isolation, it is important to investigate their interactions. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that the degree of monetary persistence generated by wage vis-à-vis price staggering depends on the relative competitiveness of the labor and product markets. We show that the conventional finding that wage staggering generates more persistence than price staggering holds under homogeneous capital accumulation. Under firm-specific capital, wage staggering generates more persistence only when the labor market is sufficiently competitive relative to the product market.

This paper develops a monetary endogenous growth model with capital and skill heterogeneity to analyze the relationship among inflation, growth, and income inequality. In the model inflation, growth, and inequality are jointly determined. We show that an increase in the long-run money growth rate raises inflation and reduces growth, but its effect on income inequality depends on the relative importance of the two types of heterogeneity. Inequality shrinks with the rise of inflation when capital heterogeneity dominates and enlarges when skill heterogeneity dominates. Therefore, our model supports a negative (positive) inflation–inequality relationship and a positive (negative) growth–inequality relationship when capital (skill) heterogeneity dominates. In any event, inflation and growth are negatively related.

This paper finds evidence of nonlinearities in the dynamics of the euro area demand for the narrow aggregate M1. A long-run money demand relationship is first estimated over a sample period covering the past three decades. Although the parameters of the relationship are jointly stable, there are indications of nonlinearity in the residuals of the error-correction model. This nonlinearity is explicitly modeled using a fairly general Markov switching error-correction model with satisfactory results. The empirical findings of the paper are consistent with theoretical predictions of nonlinearities in the dynamics of adjustment to equilibrium stemming from “buffer stock” and “target-threshold” models and with analogous empirical evidence for European countries and the United States.