Stefan Laséen,
Sveriges Riksbank
Jesper Lindé,
Federal Reserve Board and CEPR
First version: October 2007
This version: May 2012
This paper studies the transmission of shocks and the trade-offs between stabilizing CPI inflation and alternative measures of the output gap in Ramses, the Riksbank's empirical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy. The main results are, first, that the transmission of shocks depends substantially on the conduct of monetary policy, and second, that the trade-off between stabilizing CPI inflation and the output gap strongly depends on which concept of potential output in the output gap between output and potential output is used in the loss function. If potential output is defined as a smooth trend this trade-off is much more pronounced compared to the case when potential output is defined as the output level that would prevail if prices and wages were flexible.
JEL Classification: E52, E58
Keywords: Optimal monetary policy, instrument rules, open-economy DSGE models,
propagation of shocks, impulse responses, output gap, potential output