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This paper proposes a new methodology for assessing price indeterminacy to supplant the discredited nonexplosive criterion. Using this methodology, we find that nominal GDP targeting and price-level targeting do determine prices when the central bank follows a sufficiently strong feedback rule for setting the nominal interest rate. However, inflation targeting leads to price indeterminacy, a result consistent with the principles of calculus. This price indeterminacy of inflation targeting could manifest itself in a liquidity trap or zero bound for nominal interest rates rendering central banks impotent. Nominal GDP targeting could overcome this liquidity-trap effect.

We present the integration of two musical interfaces into a new music-making system that seeks to capture the expe-rience of a choir and bring it into the mobile space. This system relies on three pervasive technologies that each support a different part of the musical experience. First, the mobile device application for performing with an artificial voice, called ChoirMob. Then, a central composing and conducting application running on a local interactive display, called Vuzik. Finally, a network protocol to synchronize the two. ChoirMob musicians can perform music together at any location where they can connect to a Vuzik central conducting device displaying a composed piece of music. We explored this system by creating a chamber choir of ChoirMob performers, consisting of both experienced musicians and novices, that performed in rehearsals and live concert scenarios with music composed using the Vuzik interface.

For U.S. recessions since 1948, we study paneled time series of (i) ExUR, the excess of the unemployment rate over the prerecession rate, and (ii) NGAP, the percent deviation of nominal GDP from its prerecession trend. Excluding the 1969-70 and 1973-75 recessions, a regression of ExUR on current and past values of NGAP has an R2 of 75%. Simulations indicate that NGDP targeting could have eliminated 84% of the average ExUR during the period from 1.5 years and 4 years after the recessions began. The maximum effect of NGAP on unemployment occurs with a lag of 2 to 3 quarters.

For a pure-exchange, closed economy without storage, Eagle and Domian (2005) and Koenig (2011) derive similar but different equations of Pareto-efficient risk sharing. We confirm that both equations are correct. We also generalize and reinterpret Koenig’s equation. We find that Koenig’s equation as the superior one when we use the harmonic mean to compute average relative risk aversion. Our reinterpretation of Koenig’s generalized equation is that Pareto efficiency requires that the consumption of an individual with average relative risk should be proportional to the real GDP.

The economic profession should demand that that price-determinacy literature adhere to normal academic standards and burdens of proof. By presenting two examples where the non-exploding criterion fails miserably, we demonstrate that that criterion does not universally apply. Therefore, the previous price-determinacy literature has the burden to prove that the non-explosive criterion does apply, but has not met and probably cannot meet that burden. This paper looks at an economy with an arbitrarily large, but finite horizon and concludes that inflation targeting leads to price indeterminacy even with a Taylor-like feedback rule for setting the nominal interest rate.

In stark contrast to the previous literature, we find that IT leads to price indeterminacy even when the central bank uses a Taylor-like feedback rule to peg the nominal interest rate. We also find that there is no mechanism with IT to determine the current inflation rate or price level. We conclude that the previous literature has either committed mathematical errors involving infinity or misused the non-explosive criterion for ruling out speculative bubbles. To avoid making errors involving infinity, we analyze inflation targeting (IT) in a typical rational-expectations, pure-exchange, general-equilibrium model where the time horizon is arbitrarily large, but finite.