Tag Archives: New Keynesian model

To analyze the transmission from interest rate policies to output and inflation, many academics and central bank economists use the basic New Keynesian (NK) ‘three-equation model’ and its various extensions. A key factor responsible for the model’s success is the seeming alignment with conventional wisdom—some of the model features can be framed in the language of familiar business cycle narratives, as found in newspapers, central bank communication, or introductory macroeconomics...

In an NBER working paper John Cochrane concludes that … we have been guilty of playing with too-complex models when we don’t really understand basics, such as stability, determinacy, and the frictionless limit. … Given the state of actual agreed-on knowledge, central banks’ proclamations of detailed technocratic ability to manipulate delicate frictions is laughable. Figure 10 shows in chart form the Rube-Goldberg list of mechanisms the ECB thinks it understands and can manipulate....