1  1  As a matter of fact, I had a similar experience, but more than 20 years earlier, in 1972, with my initial doctoral thesis project entitled “Simulation Analyses of European Monetary Integration.” At that time, nobody in Austria understood what I was talking about: People back then were totally unfamiliar with the computer-based modeling method and the economic content of my proposal – and consequently, even my financial support request to the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) was rejected.
3  -3delivers long-run inflation expectations well anchored at the target “for free.” And, indeed, in the 15 years before December 2008, when the federal funds rate first hit the ELB—a period when, de facto, if not de jure the Federal Reserve conducted a monetary policy that was interpreted to be targeting an inflation rate of 2 percent (Clarida, Galí, and Gertler, 2000)—personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation averaged very close to 2 percent (see figure 1).