Imperfect unemployment insurance leads to suboptimal monetary policy decisions.
The study looks at how to set the best monetary policy when unemployment insurance isn't perfect. They use a model that considers sticky prices and efficiency wages. The findings show that when earnings lost from unemployment change with the economy, it's better to adjust the policy to stabilize output, rather than sticking to zero inflation. This means that the optimal policy depends on how much income is lost during unemployment and how it changes during different economic cycles.