What are the effects of fiscal policy at the zero lower bound?

R. Anton Braun, Lena Boneva & Yuichiro Waki.

Does fiscal policy have large and qualitatively different effects when the nominal interest rate is zero? An emerging consensus in the New Keynesian literature is that supply-side fiscal stimulus is ineffective at the zero lower bound (ZLB) while demand-side fiscal stimulus is a useful tool to escape a liquidity trap. But new evidence provided in our paper suggests that supply-side fiscal policies can play an important role at the ZLB while the effects of demand-side stimulus may be weaker than previously found.

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How did the Bank’s forecasts perform before, during and after the crisis?

Nicholas Fawcett, Riccardo Masolo, Lena Koerber, Matt Waldron.

Introduction: forecasting and policy-making

Forecasting is difficult, especially when it concerns the future. If we needed a reminder, the 2008-09 financial crisis demonstrated that macroeconomic forecasts can be highly inaccurate when the economy is buffeted by large shocks (see, for example, Figure 1). But that is not a good reason to avoid forecasting: monetary policy takes time to work, so forecasts are indispensable in monetary policymaking. Instead, we need to understand how different models behave in the eye of the storm: do some cope better during breaks and crises than others? And can we make better forecasts by using information that is not normally included in economic models?

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