Download or read book Understanding Inflation and the Implications for Monetary Policy written by Jeff Fuhrer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-09-11 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current perspectives on the Phillips curve, a core macroeconomic concept that treats the relationship between inflation and unemployment. In 1958, economist A. W. Phillips published an article describing what he observed to be the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment; subsequently, the “Phillips curve” became a central concept in macroeconomic analysis and policymaking. But today's Phillips curve is not the same as the original one from fifty years ago; the economy, our understanding of price setting behavior, the determinants of inflation, and the role of monetary policy have evolved significantly since then. In this book, some of the top economists working today reexamine the theoretical and empirical validity of the Phillips curve in its more recent specifications. The contributors consider such questions as what economists have learned about price and wage setting and inflation expectations that would improve the way we use and formulate the Phillips curve, what the Phillips curve approach can teach us about inflation dynamics, and how these lessons can be applied to improving the conduct of monetary policy. Contributors Lawrence Ball, Ben Bernanke, Oliver Blanchard, V. V. Chari, William T. Dickens, Stanley Fischer, Jeff Fuhrer, Jordi Gali, Michael T. Kiley, Robert G. King, Donald L. Kohn, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Jane Sneddon Little, Bartisz Mackowiak, N. Gregory Mankiw, Virgiliu Midrigan, Giovanni P. Olivei, Athanasios Orphanides, Adrian R. Pagan, Christopher A. Pissarides, Lucrezia Reichlin, Paul A. Samuelson, Christopher A. Sims, Frank R. Smets, Robert M. Solow, Jürgen Stark, James H. Stock, Lars E. O. Svensson, John B. Taylor, Mark W. Watson

Download or read book How Monetary Policy Got Behind the Curve and How to Get Back written by Michael D. Bordo and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2023-03-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the inflation rate in the United States and many other countries on the rise for over a year and nearing double digits, the Hoover Institution hosted its 2022 conference on monetary policy. Policy makers, market participants, and academic researchers gathered to discuss the situation. Many agreed that low interest rates and high money growth were inappropriate given the high inflation rate and evidence that the United States has recovered from the deep recession induced by the pandemic and its policy response in 2020. The thoughtful papers and the thorough discussions in this volume of conference proceedings illustrate the debate about the reasons for this mismatch, as well as how to get back on track. They reflect a range of opinions and perspectives, including examination of the fiscal shock resulting from the COVID pandemic and the related borrowing and spending; emphasis on the value of adherence to rules versus discretion in setting Fed policy; lessons from history in the spikes in federal expenditures during times of war (including the pandemic) and in the timing of the Fed's use of its policy instruments; the role of central banks in the emerging inflation crisis; and strategies toward disinflation.

Download or read book Monetary Policy Mistakes and the Evolution of Inflation Expectations written by Athanasios Orphanides and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What monetary policy framework, if adopted by the Federal Reserve, would have avoided the Great Inflation of the 1960s and 1970s? The authors use counterfactual simulations of an estimated model of the U.S. economy to evaluate alternative monetary policy strategies. The authors document that policymakers at the time both had an overly optimistic view of the natural rate of unemployment and put a high priority on achieving full employment. They show that in the presence of realistic informational imperfections and with an emphasis on stabilizing economic activity, an optimal control approach would have failed to keep inflation expectations well anchored, resulting in highly volatile inflation during the 1970s. Charts and tables.

Download or read book Inflation and Activity Two Explorations and their Monetary Policy Implications written by Mr.Olivier J. Blanchard and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We explore two issues triggered by the crisis. First, in most advanced countries, output remains far below the pre-recession trend, suggesting hysteresis. Second, while inflation has decreased, it has decreased less than anticipated, suggesting a breakdown of the relation between inflation and activity. To examine the first, we look at 122 recessions over the past 50 years in 23 countries. We find that a high proportion of them have been followed by lower output or even lower growth. To examine the second, we estimate a Phillips curve relation over the past 50 years for 20 countries. We find that the effect of unemployment on inflation, for given expected inflation, decreased until the early 1990s, but has remained roughly stable since then. We draw implications of our findings for monetary policy.

Download or read book Inflation Unemployment and Monetary Policy written by Robert M. Solow and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited and with an introduction by Benjamin M. Friedman The connection between price inflation and real economic activity has been a focus of macroeconomic research--and debate--for much of the past century. Although this connection is crucial to our understanding of what monetary policy can and cannot accomplish, opinions about its basic properties have swung widely over the years. Today, virtually everyone studying monetary policy acknowledges that, contrary to what many modern macroeconomic models suggest, central bank actions often affect both inflation and measures of real economic activity, such as output, unemployment, and incomes. But the nature and magnitude of these effects are not yet understood. In this volume, Robert M. Solow and John B. Taylor present their views on the dilemmas facing U.S. monetary policymakers. The discussants are Benjamin M. Friedman, James K. Galbraith, N. Gregory Mankiw, and William Poole. The aim of this lively exchange of views is to make both an intellectual contribution to macroeconmics and a practical contribution to the solution of a public policy question of central importance.

Download or read book Monetary Policy with a Convex Phillips Curve and Asymmetric Loss written by Demosthenes N. Tambakis and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1998-02-01 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent theoretical and empirical work has cast doubt on the hypotheses of a linear Phillips curve and a symmetric quadratic loss function underlying traditional thinking on monetary policy. This paper analyzes the Barro-Gordon optimal monetary policy problem under alternative loss functions—including an asymmetric loss function corresponding to the “opportunistic approach” to disinflation—when the Phillips curve is convex. Numerical simulations are used to compare the implications of the alternative loss functions for equilibrium levels of inflation and unemployment. For parameter estimates relevant to the United States, the symmetric loss function dominates the asymmetric alternative.

Download or read book The Great Inflation written by Michael D. Bordo and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-06-28 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

Download or read book Flattening of the Phillips Curve written by Dora M. Iakova and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2007-04 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade, inflation has become less responsive to domestic demand pressures in many industrial countries. This development has been attributed, in part, to globalization forces. A small macroeconomic model, estimated on UK data using Bayesian estimation, is used to analyze the monetary policy implications of this structural change. The focus is on the implications of a globalization-related flattening of the Phillips curve for the trade-off between inflation and output gap variability and for the efficient monetary policy response rule.

Download or read book Equilibrium Yield Curve the Phillips Curve and Monetary Policy written by Mitsuru Katagiri and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-11-09 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upward sloping yield curves are hard to reconcile with the positive association between income and inflation (the Phillips curve) in consumption-based asset pricing models. Using US and UK data, this paper shows inflation is negatively correlated with long-run income growth but positively correlated with cyclical income, thus enabling the model to replicate positive and sizable term premiums, along with the Phillips curve over business cycles. Quantitative analyses also emphasize the importance of monetary policy, predicting that a permanently low growth and low inflation environment would precipitate flatter yield curves due to constraints to monetary policy around the zero lower bound.

Download or read book A Phillips Curve with Anchored Expectations and Short Term Unemployment written by Laurence M. Ball and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the recent behavior of core inflation in the United States. We specify a simple Phillips curve based on the assumptions that inflation expectations are fully anchored at the Federal Reserve’s target, and that labor-market slack is captured by the level of shortterm unemployment. This equation explains inflation behavior since 2000, including the failure of high total unemployment since 2008 to reduce inflation greatly. The fit of our equation is especially good when we measure core inflation with the Cleveland Fed’s series on weighted median inflation. We also propose a more general Phillips curve in which core inflation depends on short-term unemployment and on expected inflation as measured by the Survey of Professional Forecasters. This specification fits U.S. inflation since 1985, including both the anchored-expectations period of the 2000s and the preceding period when expectations were determined by past levels of inflation.

Download or read book Handbook of Monetary Policy written by Jack Rabin and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 1009 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook explains the development and implementation of monetary policy. It examines theories and issues related to the preservation of economic activity and explores why the preservation of economic stability is a principal goal of public policy.

Download or read book Defensive Expectations written by Liviu Voinea and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains why inflation remains subdued after recessions, based on three revolutionary concepts: defensive expectations, compensatory savings, and cumulative wage gap. When income falls, consumption falls, and savings rise, as people rebuild their past wealth. Households will not spend more until they fully recover what they lost. The revised Phillips Curve explains that current inflation depends on the cumulative difference between current income and past income. This new theory is tested and validated by data for US since 1960 to date and for 35 OECD countries from 1990 to date. A number of policy implications are derived from these results. The book calls for an optimal policy mix between monetary policy and fiscal policy; it also discusses the coronavirus crisis as an extreme case of defensive expectations.

Download or read book Labor Force Participation and Monetary Policy in the Wake of the Great Recession written by Christopher J. Erceg and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, we provide compelling evidence that cyclical factors account for the bulk of the post-2007 decline in the U.S. labor force participation rate. We then proceed to formulate a stylized New Keynesian model in which labor force participation is essentially acyclical during “normal times” (that is, in response to small or transitory shocks) but drops markedly in the wake of a large and persistent aggregate demand shock. Finally, we show that these considerations can have potentially crucial implications for the design of monetary policy, especially under circumstances in which adjustments to the short-term interest rate are constrained by the zero lower bound.

Download or read book Monetary Policy Rules written by John B. Taylor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.

Download or read book Monetary Policy Under Flexible Exchange Rates written by Pierre-Richard Agénor and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past few years, a number of central banks have adopted inflation targeting for monetary policy. The author provides an introduction to inflation targeting, with an emphasis on analytical issues, and the recent experience of middle- and high-income developing countries (which have relatively low inflation to begin with, and reasonably well-functioning financial markets). After presenting a formal analytical framework, the author discusses the basic requirements for inflation targeting, and how such a regime differs from money, and exchange rate targeting regimes. After discussing the operational framework for inflation targeting (including the price index to monitor the time horizon, the forecasting procedures, and the role of asset prices), he examines recent experiences with inflation targets, providing new evidence on the convexity of the Phillips curve for six developing countries. His conclusions: Inflation targeting is a flexible policy framework that allows a country's central bank to exercise some degree of discretion, without putting in jeopardy its main objective of maintaining stable prices. In middle- and high-income developing economies that can refrain from implicit exchange rate targeting, it can improve the design, and performance of monetary policy, compared with other policy approaches that central banks may follow. Not all countries may be able to satisfy the technical requirements (such as adequate price data, adequate understanding of the links between instruments, and targets of monetary policy, and adequate forecasting capabilities), but such requirements should not be overstated. Forecasting capability can never be perfect, and sensible projections always involve qualitative judgment. More important, and often more difficult, is the task of designing, or improving an institutional framework that would allow the central bank to pursue the goal of low, stable inflation, while maintaining the ability to stabilize fluctuations in output.

Download or read book Inflation and UK Monetary Policy written by Mark Russell and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1999 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is part of a series which reflects the changing face of the economic climate and business world. It is specifically focused to the needs of AS, A level and first year undergraduate students. It includes a more European and global perspective.

Download or read book An Analysis of Milton Friedman s The Role of Monetary Policy written by Nick Broten and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of all time – and his ideas had a huge impact on the economic policies of governments across the world. A key theorist of capitalism and its relationship to democratic freedoms, Friedman remains one of the most cited authorities in both academic economics and government economic policy. His work remains striking not just for its brilliant grasp of economic laws and realities, but also for its consistent application of high-level evaluation and reasoning skills to produce arguments that can convince experts and laypeople alike. Friedman’s 1968 essay ‘The Role of Monetary Policy’ is a key example of how Friedman’s critical thinking skills helped to cement his influence and reputation. The paper addressed the question of how a government’s monetary policy affects the economy – from employment levels to inflation and so on. At its heart lies an evaluation and critique of the most widely accepted conception of monetary policy at the time – the ‘Phillips Curve’ – which argued that increased inflation leads naturally to increased employment. Systematically noting the flaws and weaknesses of the Phillips Curve theory, Friedman showed why this is not, in fact, the case. He then drew up a systematic alternative argument for what governmental monetary policy could and should aim to do. Though economists now consider Friedman’s ideas to have considerable limitations, ‘The Role of Monetary Policy’ remains a masterclass in evaluating and countering faulty arguments.