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Did Casey Mulligan ever spend any time in the real world?

University of Chicago economics professor Casey Mulligan has a new comment on Economix. In his post “Who cares about Fed funds?” Mulligan has the following remarkable quote:

“New research confirms that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy has little effect on a number of financial markets, let alone the wider economy.”

Mulligan’s point apparently is that the Federal Reserve is not able to influence financial markets and as a consequence monetary policy is impotent. First of all we have to sadly conclude that monetarism is nonexistent at the University of Chicago – gone is the wisdom of Milton Friedman. I wonder if anybody at the University of Chicago even cares that Friedman would have turned 100 years in a few days.

Anyway, I wonder if Casey Mulligan ever spent any time looking at real financial markets – especially over the past four years. I have in a number of blog posts over the last couple of months demonstrated that the major ups and downs in both the US fixed income and equity markets have been driven by changes in monetary policy stance by the major global central banks – the Fed, the ECB and the People’s Bank of China. I could easy have demonstrated the same to be the case in the global commodity markets.

Maybe Casey Mulligan should have a look on the two graphs below. I think it is pretty hard to NOT to spot the importance of monetary policy changes on the markets.

Of course it would also be interesting to hear an explanation why banks, investment funds, hedge funds etc. around the world hire economists to forecast (guess?) what the Fed and other central banks will do if monetary policy will not have an impact on financial markets. Are bankers irrational Professor Mulligan?

Anyway, I find it incredible that anybody would make these claims and it seems like Casey Mulligan spend very little time looking at actual financial markets. It might be that he can find some odd models where monetary policy is not having an impact on financial markets, but it is certainly not the case in the world I live in.

Let me finally quote Scott Sumner who is as puzzled as I am about Mulligan’s comments:

“Yes, Mulligan is a UC economics professor.  And yes, Milton Friedman is spinning faster and faster in his grave.”

Yes, indeed – Friedman would have been very upset by the fact that University of Chicago now is an institution where money doesn’t matter. It is sad indeed.

Update: Brad Delong is “slightly” more upset about Mulligan’s piece than Scott and I are…

PS Maybe professor Mulligan could explain to me why the US stock market rallied today? Was it a positive supply shock or had it anything to do with what ECB chief Draghi said? And then tell me again that markets do not care about monetary policy…

16 Comments
by Lars Christensen on July 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Casey Mulligan, Efficient-Market Hypothesis, Milton Friedman, Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on July 26, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/07/26/did-casey-mulligan-ever-spend-any-time-in-the-real-world/

Noah Smith should ask why stock markets are volatile

Noah Smith has a new blog post where he questions Scott Sumner’s idea that monetary policy should be conducted with the use of NGDP futures.

Here is Noah:

I have a problem with that. The problem is called “excess volatility”. According to some theories, asset prices should be an optimal forecast of (discounted) future payouts – for example, the price of a stock should be an optimal forecast of discounted future dividends, etc. An optimal forecast should not respond to “noise”; in other words, if something happens that doesn’t affect dividends, it shouldn’t affect the forecast. This means that actual dividends should be more variable than prices – the dividends should have lots of “surprises”.

Based on this Noah claims that NGDP futures would also be excessively volatile:

Now back to NGDP futures targeting. An NGDP futures price will probably experience excess volatility too. It will bounce around more than changes in actual NGDP. This means that the Fed will be trying to hit a very volatile moving target. One quarter, futures prices will soar, the next month they will crash, and the Fed will be trying to keep up, tightening dramatically in the first quarter and loosening dramatically in the second. This will happen even if a true optimal forecast of NGDP (which of course no one really knows) is relatively stable! Asset market volatility will cause policy volatility.

Noah of course has a fair point. If we just observe financial markets they might look terribly volatile. However, the real question Noah should be asking is why are financial markets so volatile?

My answer is that financial markets often are “excessively” volatile because of – you guessed it – volatile monetary policy.

Let me explain. What determines stock prices? Stocks is basically determined by three factors: Expectations for future dividends, a risk premium and the “risk free interest rate”. What determines future dividends? Nominal GDP! Over the long-run the capital-labour ratio in the economy is constant (or else Karl Marx is right…) and as a consequence nominal earnings should track NGDP closely.

As NGDP is determined by monetary policy it follows that expectations for future earnings will to a large extent be determined by expectations to future monetary policy. Therefore, if monetary policy is volatile as for example in the 1970s (or now) then stock markets will tend to be volatile (and the risk premium will be higher).

The same obviously goes for the fixed income and FX markets. Bond yields mostly reflect inflation expectations and as inflation is a monetary phenomena excessive volatility in fixed income markets is directly linked to monetary policy volatility. The same obviously goes the currency markets as exchange rates exactly reflect market expectations for the future supply and demand for a currency. The central bank of course determines the supply of the currency.

I have already in a couple of post tried to illustrate that the volatility in the US equity and bond markets in the last four years reflects volatile monetary policy more than anything else.

These two graphs should illustrate that:

The two graphs are from my previous posts “Monetary disorder – not animal spirits – caused the Great Recession” and “Tight money = low yields – also during the Great Recession”

In these two posts I argue that the volatility in the markets over the past fours years primarily has been caused by monetary policy failure rather than “market disorder” and while I certainly do not want to argue that market volatility is only caused by monetary policy mistakes I would like to stress that that at least over the past four years market volatility to a very large extent have been caused by failed monetary policy.

That in my view clearly underscores the need for monetary policy to be rule-following rather than discretionary.

A monetary policy based on NGDP futures is a very strong form of rule-following monetary policy and as a consequence I am convinced that such a policy would significantly reduce financial market volatility.

In that regard it is also worth noticing that the real benchmark for whether a NGDP futures market would be stable or not is not the stock market, but rather the so-called TIPS market. TIPS of course is inflation-linked US government bonds. During the Great Moderation when monetary policy de facto “shadowed” a NGDP level targeting regime TIPS-inflation expectations where extremely stable. TIPS inflation expectations only became volatile after the monetary policy “breakdown” in 2008.

Finally I would also argue that market volatility in that sense of “large swings” in financial markets is not necessarily all bad. In fact it might be a problem if the financial markets are not “volatile” enough. An example is the lack of volatility in exchange rates in countries when the central bank suffers from fear-of-floating. (See the relevant posts below).

——

Related posts:

“Understanding financial markets with MV=PY – a look at the bond market”

“Fear-of-floating, misallocation and the law of comparative advantages”

“Exchange rates are not truly floating when we target inflation”

 

Update: The always insightful Bill Woolsey has an excellent comment on Noah Smith.

10 Comments
by Lars Christensen on July 5, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Scott Sumner
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on July 5, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/07/05/noah-smith-should-ask-why-stock-markets-are-volatile/

The Fed can hit any NGDP target

I hate getting into debates where different bloggers go back and forth forever and never reach any conclusion. I am not blogging to get into debates, however, I must admit that Steven Williamson’s recent posts on NGDP level targeting have provoked me quite a bit.

In his first post Williamson makes a number of claims, which I find highly flawed. However, Scott Sumner has already at length addressed most of these issues in a reply to Williamson so I don’t want to get into that (and as you guessed I am fully in agreement with Scott). However, Williamson’s reply to Scott is not less flawed than his initial post. Again I don’t want to go through the whole thing. However, one statement that Williamson makes I think is a very common mistake and I therefore think a comment is in order. Here is Williamson:

“The key problem under the current circumstances is that you can’t just announce an arbitrary NGDP target and hit it with wishful thinking. The Fed needs some tools, and in spite of what Ben Bernanke says, it doesn’t have them.”

This is a very odd comment coming from somebody who calls himself a (New) Monetarist. It is at the core of monetarism in the sense of Friedman, Brunner, Meltzer, Cagan, Schwartz, Warburton and Yeager etc. that nominal GDP is determined by the central bank and no monetarist has ever acknowledged that there is a liquidity trap. Williamson claims that he does not agree with everything Friedman said, but I wonder what Friedman said he agrees with. If you don’t believe that NGDP is determined by the central bank then it makes absolutely no sense to call yourself a monetarist.

Furthermore, if you don’t think that the Fed can hit an NGDP target how could you think it could hit an inflation target? Both changes in NGDP and in prices are monetary phenomena.

Anyway, let’s get back to the question whether the central bank can hit an NGDP target and what instruments could be used to hit that target.

The simplest way to do it is actually to use the exchange rate channel. Let’s assume that the Federal Reserve wants to increase the US NGDP level by 15% and that it wants to do it by the end of 2013.

Scott has suggested using NGDP futures to hit the NGDP target, but let’s assume that is too complicated to understand for the critics and the Fed. Instead the Fed will survey professional forecasters about their expectations for the level of NGDP by the end of 2013. The Fed will then announce that as long as the “consensus” forecast for NGDP is below the target the Fed will step up monetary easing. The Fed will do the survey once a month.

Let’s start out with the first announcement under this new regime. Initially the forecasters are skeptical and forecast NGDP to be 12% below target. As a consequence the Fed announces a Swiss style exchange target. It simply announces that it will intervene in the FX market buying unlimited amounts of foreign currency until the US dollar has weakened 20% in nominal effective terms (and yes, the Fed has the instruments to do that – it has the printing press to print dollars). I am pretty sure that Williamson would agree that that directly would increase US NGDP (if not I would love to see his model…).

The following month the forecasters will likely have moved their forecasts for NGDP closer to the target level. But we might still have too low a level of forecasted NGDP. Therefore, the Fed will the following month announce a further “devaluation” by lets say 5%. The process will continue until the forecasted level for NGDP equals the target level. If the consensus forecast starts to overshoot the target the Fed will simply announce that it will reverse the process and revalue the dollar.

Therefore there is certainly no reason to argue 1) that the Fed can not hit any NGDP target 2) that the Fed does not have an instrument. The exchange rate channel can easily do the job. Furthermore, if the Fed announces this policy then it is very likely that the market will be doing most of the lifting. The dollar would automatically appreciate and depreciate until the market expectations are equal to the NGDP target.

If you have heard all this before then it is because this a variation of Irving Fisher’s compensated dollar plan and Lars E. O. Svensson’s foolproof way out of a liquidity trap. And yes, I have previously suggested this for small open economies, but the Fed could easily use the same method to hit a given NGDP target.

Update: I should note that the example above is exactly that – an example. I use the example to illustrate that a central bank can always increase NGDP and that the exchange rate channel is an effective tool to achieve this goal. However, the numbers mentioned in my post are purely “fictional” and again it example rather than a policy recommendation. That said, I am pretty that if the Fed did exactly as what I suggest above the US would very fast bee out of this crisis. The same goes for the ECB.

Update II: Marcus Nunes and Bill Woolsey also comment on Williamson. Nick Rowe comments on David Adolfatto’s anti-NGDP targeting post(s).

21 Comments
by Lars Christensen on July 4, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Irving Fisher, Lars E. O. Svensson, Liquidity trap, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on July 4, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/07/04/the-fed-can-hit-any-ngdp-target/

Jeff Frankel restates his support for NGDP targeting

It is no secret that I have been fascinated by some of Havard professor Jeff Frankel’s ideas especially his idea for Emerging Markets commodity exporters to peg the currency to the price of their main export (PEP). I have written numerous posts on this (see below) However, Frankel is also a long-time supporter of NGDP target and now he has restated is his views on NGDP targeting.

Here is Jeff:

“In my preceding blogpost, I argued that the developments of the last five years have sharply pointed up the limitations of Inflation Targeting (IT), much as the currency crises of the 1990s dramatized the vulnerability of exchange rate targeting and the velocity shocks of the 1980s killed money supply targeting.   But if IT is dead, what is to take its place as an intermediate target that central banks can use to anchor expectations?

The leading candidate to take the position of preferred nominal anchor is probably Nominal GDP Targeting.  It has gained popularity rather suddenly, over the last year.  But the idea is not new.  It had been a candidate to succeed money targeting in the 1980s, because it did not share the latter’s vulnerability to shifts in money demand.  Under certain conditions, it dominates not only a money target (due to velocity shocks) but also an exchange rate target  (if exchange rate shocks are large) and a price level target (if supply shocks are large).   First proposed by James Meade (1978), it attracted the interest in the 1980s of such eminent economists as Jim Tobin (1983), Charlie Bean(1983), Bob Gordon (1985), Ken West (1986), Martin Feldstein & Jim Stock (1994), Bob Hall & Greg Mankiw (1994), Ben McCallum (1987, 1999), and others.

Nominal GDP targeting was not adopted by any country in the 1980s.  Amazingly, the founders of the European Central Bank in the 1990s never even considered it on their list of possible anchors for euro monetary policy.  (They ended up with a “two pillar approach,” of which one pillar was supposedly the money supply.)” 

So far so good…and here is something, which will make all of us blogging Market Monetarists happy:

“But now nominal GDP targeting is back, thanks to enthusiastic blogging by ScottSumner (at Money Illusion), LarsChristensen (at Market Monetarist), David Beckworth (at Macromarket Musings),Marcus Nunes (at Historinhas) and others.  Indeed, the Economist has held up the successful revival of this idea as an example of the benefits to society of the blogosphere.”

This is a great endorsement of the Market Monetarist “movement” and it is certainly good news that Jeff so clearly recognize the work of the blogging Market Monetarists. Anyway back to the important points Jeff are making.

“Fans of nominal GDP targeting point out that it would not, like Inflation Targeting, have the problem of excessive tightening in response to adverse supply shocks.    Nominal GDP targeting stabilizes demand, which is really all that can be asked of monetary policy.  An adverse supply shock is automatically divided between inflation and real GDP, equally, which is pretty much what a central bank with discretion would do anyway.

In the long term, the advantage of a regime that targets nominal GDP is that it is more robust with respect to shocks than the competitors (gold standard, money target, exchange rate target, or CPI target).   But why has it suddenly gained popularity at this point in history, after two decades of living in obscurity?  Nominal GDP targeting might also have another advantage in the current unfortunate economic situation that afflicts much of the world:  Its proponents see it as a way of achieving a monetary expansion that is much-needed at the current juncture.”

Exactly! The great advantage of NGDP level targeting compared to other monetary policy rules is that it handles both velocity shocks and supply shocks. No other rules (other than maybe Jeff’s own PEP) does that. Furthermore, I would add something, which is tremendously important to me and that is that unlike any other monetary policy rule NGDP level targeting does not distort relative prices. NGDP level targeting as such ensures the optimal and unhampered working of a free market economy.

Back to Jeff:

“Monetary easing in advanced countries since 2008, though strong, has not been strong enough to bring unemployment down rapidly nor to restore output to potential.  It is hard to get the real interest rate down when the nominal interest rate is already close to zero. This has led some, such as Olivier Blanchard and Paul Krugman, to recommend that central banks announce a higher inflation target: 4 or 5 per cent.   (This is what Krugman and Ben Bernanke advised the Bank of Japan to do in the 1990s, to get out of its deflationary trap.)  But most economists, and an even higher percentage of central bankers, are loath to give up the anchoring of expected inflation at 2 per cent which they fought so long and hard to achieve in the 1980s and 1990s.  Of course one could declare that the shift from a 2 % target to 4 % would be temporary.  But it is hard to deny that this would damage the long-run credibility of the sacrosanct 2% number.   An attraction of nominal GDP targeting is that one could set a target for nominal GDP that constituted 4 or 5% increase over the coming year – which for a country teetering on the fence between recovery and recession would in effect supply as much monetary ease as a 4% inflation target – and yet one would not be giving up the hard-won emphasis on 2% inflation as the long-run anchor.”

I completely agree. I have always found the idea of temporary changing the inflation target to be very odd. The problem is not whether to target 2,3 or 4% inflation. The problem is the inflation targeting itself. Inflation targeting tends to create bubbles when the economy is hit by positive supply shocks. It does not fully response to negative velocity shocks and it leads to excessive tightening of monetary policy when the economy is hit by negative supply shocks (just have look at the ECB’s conduct of monetary policy!)
Market Monetarists advocate a clear rule based monetary policy exactly because we think that expectations is tremendously important in the monetary transmission mechanism. A temporary change in the inflation target would completely undermining the effectiveness of the monetary transmission mechanism and we would still be left with a bad monetary policy rule.
Let me give the final word to Jeff:
Thus nominal GDP targeting could help address our current problems as well as a durable monetary regime for the future.
_______
Some of my earlier posts on Jeff’s ideas:

Next stop Moscow
International monetary disorder – how policy mistakes turned the crisis into a global crisis
Fear-of-floating, misallocation and the law of comparative advantages
Exchange rates are not truly floating when we target inflation
“The Bacon Standard” (the PIG PEG) would have saved Denmark from the Great Depression
PEP, NGDPLT and (how to avoid) Russian monetary policy failure
Should small open economies peg the currency to export prices?

Scott Sumner also comments on Jeff’s blogpost.

3 Comments
by Lars Christensen on June 14, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Inflation Targeting, Jeffrey Frankel, Monetary policy rules, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Peg the Export Price (PEP), Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on June 14, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/14/jeff-frankel-restates-his-support-for-ngdp-targeting/

The Jedi mind trick – Matt O’Brien’s insightful version of the Chuck Norris effect

Our friend Matt O’Brien has a great new comment on the Atlantic.com. Matt is one of the most clever commentators on monetary matters in the US media.

In Matt’s new comment he set out to explain the importance of expectations in the monetary transmission mechanism.

Here is Matt:

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” That’s what Obi-Wan Kenobi famously tells a trio of less-than-with-it baddies in Star Wars when — spoiler alert! — they actually were the droids they were looking for. But thanks to the Force, Kenobi convinces them otherwise. That’s a Jedi mind trick — and it’s a pretty decent model for how central banks can manipulate expectations. Thanks to the printing press, the Fed can create a self-fulfilling reality. Even with interest rates at zero.

Central banks have a strong influence on market expectations. Actually, they have as strong an influence as they want to have. Sometimes they use quantitative easing to communicate what they want. Sometimes they use their words. And that’s where monetary policy basically becomes a Jedi mind trick.

The true nature of central banking isn’t about interest rates. It’s about making and keeping promises. And that brings me to a confession. I lied earlier. Central banks don’t really buy or sell short-term bonds when they lower or raise short-term interest rates. They don’t need to. The market takes care of it. If the Fed announces a target and markets believe the Fed is serious about hitting that target, the Fed doesn’t need to do much else. Markets don’t want to bet against someone who can conjure up an infinite amount of money — so they go along with the Fed.

Don’t underestimate the power of expectations. It might sound a like a hokey religion, but it’s not. Consider Switzerland. Thanks to the euro’s endless flirtation with financial oblivion, investors have piled into the Swiss franc as a safe haven. That sounds good, but a massively overvalued currency is not good. It pushes inflation down to dangerously low levels, and makes exports uncompetitive. So the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has responded by devaluing its currency — setting a ceiling on its value at 1.2 Swiss francs to 1 euro. In other words, the SNB has promised to print money until its money is worth what it wants it to be worth. It’s quantitative easing with a target. And, as Evan Soltas pointed out, the beauty of this target is that the SNB hasn’t even had to print money lately, because markets believe it now. Markets have moved the exchange rate to where the SNB wants it.”

This is essentially the Star Wars version of the Chuck Norris effect as formulated by Nick Rowe and myself. The Chuck Norris effect of monetary policy: You don’t have to print more money to ease monetary policy if you are a credible central bank with a credible target.

It is pretty simple. It is all about credibility. A central bank has all the powers in the world to increase inflation and nominal GDP (remember MV=PY!) and if the central bank clearly demonstrates that it will use this power to ensure for example a stable growth path for the NGDP level then it might not have to do any (additional) money printing to achieve this. The market will simply do all the lifting.

Imagine that a central bank has a NGDP level target and a shock to velocity or the money supply hits (for example due to banking crisis) then the expectation for future NGDP (initially) drops below the target level. If the central bank’s NGDP target is credible then market participants, however, will know that the central bank will react by increasing the money base until it achieves it’s target. There will be no limits to the potential money printing the central bank will do.

If the market participants expect more money printing then the country’s currency will obviously weaken and stock prices will increase. Bond yields will increase as inflation expectations increase. As inflation and growth expectations increase corporations and household will decrease their cash holdings – they will invest and consume more. The this essentially the Market Monetarist description of the monetary transmission mechanism under a fully credible monetary nominal target (See for example my earlier posts here and here).

This also explains why Scott Sumner always says that monetary policy works with long and variable leads. As I have argued before this of course only is right if the monetary policy is credible. If the monetary target is 100% credible then monetary policy basically becomes endogenous. The market reacts to information that the economy is off target. However, if the target is not credible then the central bank has to do most of the lifting itself. In that situation monetary policy will work with long and variable lags (as suggested by Milton Friedman). See my discussion of lag and leads in monetary policy here.

During the Great Moderation monetary policy in the euro zone and the US was generally credible and monetary policy therefore was basically endogenous. In that world any shock to the money supply will basically be automatically counteracted by the markets. The money supply growth and velocity tended to move in opposite directions to ensure the NGDP level target (See more on that here). In a world where the central bank is able to apply the Jedi mind trick the central bankers can use most of their time golfing. Only central bankers with no credibility have to work hard micromanaging things.

“I FIND YOUR LACK OF A TARGET DISTURBING”

So the reason European central bankers are so busy these days is that the ECB is no longer a credible. If you want to test me – just have a look at market inflation expectations. Inflation expectations in the euro zone have basically been declining for more than a year and is now well below the ECB’s official inflation target of 2%. If the ECB had an credible inflation target of 2% do you then think that 10-year German bond yields would be approaching 1%? Obviously the ECB could solve it’s credibility problem extremely easy and with the help of a bit Jedi mind tricks and Chuck Norris inflation expectations could be pegged at close to 2% and the euro crisis would soon be over – and it could do more than that with a NGDP level target.

Until recently it looked like Ben Bernanke and the Fed had nailed it (See here – once I believed that Bernanke did nail it). Despite an escalating euro crisis the US stock market was holding up quite well, the dollar did not strengthen against the euro and inflation expectations was not declining – clear indications that the Fed was not “importing” monetary tightening from Europe. The markets clearly was of the view that if the euro zone crisis escalated the Fed would just step up quantitative ease (QE3). However, the Fed’s credibility once again seems to be under pressures. US stock markets have taken a beating, US inflation expectations have dropped sharply and the dollar has strengthened. It seems like Ben Bernanke is no Chuck Norris and he does not seem to master the Jedi mind trick anymore. So why is that?

Matt has the answer:

“I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but nothing quite as strange as the Fed’s reluctance to declare a target recently. Rather than announce a target, the Fed announces how much quantitative easing it will do. This is planning for failure. Quantitative easing without a target is more quantitative and less easing. Without an open-ended commitment that shocks expectations, the Fed has to buy more bonds to get less of a result. It’s the opposite of what the SNB has done.

Many economists have labored to bring us this knowledge — including a professor named Ben Bernanke — and yet the Fed mostly ignores it. I say mostly, because the Fed has said that it expects to keep short-term interest rates near zero through late 2014. But this sounds more radical than it is in reality. It’s not a credible promise because it’s not even a promise. It’s what the Fed expects will happen. So what would be a good way to shift expectations? Let’s start with what isn’t a good way.”

I agree – the Fed needs to formulate a clear nominal target andit needs to formulate a clear reaction function. How hard can it be? Sometimes I feel that central bankers like to work long hours and want to micromanage things.

UPDATE: Marcus Nunes and Bill Woolsey also comments on Matt’s piece..

6 Comments
by Lars Christensen on June 5, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris Effect, ECB, euro crisis, Matthew O'Brien, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, MV=PY, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Scott Sumner, Transmission mechanism, Velocity
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on June 5, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/05/the-jedi-mind-trick-matt-obriens-insightful-version-of-the-chuck-norris-effect/

The Sumnerian Phillips curve

In my previous post ”Dude, here is your model” I suggested to model the supply in the economy with what I called a Sumnerian Phillips curve in a attempt to help Scott Sumner formulate a his ”model” of the world.

Here is the Sumnerian Phillips curve:

(1) Y=Y*+a(N-NT)

Where Y is real GDP and Y* is trend growth in real GDP. N is nominal GDP and NT is the central bank’s target for nominal GDP. a is a constant.

Commentator ”Martin” has suggested the following parametre for (1):

Y*=3

NT=5.5

a=0.75

It should be noted that Martin formulates (1) in growth rates rather than levels.

As the graph below shows Martin’s suggestion seems to fit US data very well.

One thing is very clear from the model. The Great Recession was caused by a sharp drop in NGDP. The Fed did it. Nobody else.

It also shows that there is no supply side explanation for the Great Recession. The drop in real GDP can be explained by nominal GDP. It is very simply. Too simple to understand maybe? If you disagree you have to argue that the Fed can not determine nominal GDP – may I then remind you that MV=N=PY. Or maybe we should ask Gideon Gono?

So what are the policy lessons?

Well, first of all if the central bank keeps N growing at a rate comparable with the target then real GDP growth will also remain stable. But if the central bank allow N to drop below target then Y will drop as well. Hence, recessions are always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

Obviously the central bank can determine N as we know that MV=N=PY. So it is really pretty simply – ensure a growth rate of the money supply (M) that for a given money-velocity (V) ensures that N growth at a stable rate. Then you sharply reduces the risk of recessions and and you will ensure low and stable Inflation. The Federal Reserve did that during the Great Moderation and I can not see any reason why we can not return to such a situation. Unfortunately central bankers seem to have less of an unstanding of this – particularly in Europe (Is it only me who fell like screaming!?)

20 Comments
by Lars Christensen on June 1, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Scott Sumner, The Great Recession
Tagged , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on June 1, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/01/the-sumnerian-phillips-curve/

Dude, here is your model

Here is Scott Sumner:

“Whenever I get taunted about not having a “model,” I assume the commenter is probably younger than me, highly intelligent, but not particularly wise.”

So Scott has a problem – he does not have a fancy new model he can show off to the young guys. Well, Scott let me see if I can help you.

Here is your short-term static model:

An Eaglian (as in David Eagle) equation of exchange:

(1) N=PY

Where N is nominal GDP and P is the price level. Y is real GDP.

An Sumnerian Phillips curve:

(2) Y=Y*+a(N-NT)

Where NT is the target level for nominal GDP and N is nominal GDP . Y* is trend trend RGDP.

(1) is a definition so there can be no debate about that one. (2) is a well-established emprical fact. There is a very high correlation between Y and N in the short-run. If you need a microfoundation that’s easy – it’s called “sticky prices”.

N (and NT) is exogenous in the model and is of course determined by the central bank. And yes, yes N=MV where  M is the money and V is velocity.

In the short run P is “sticky” and N determines Y. Hence, the Sumnerian Phillips curve is upward sloping.

If you want a financial sector in the model we need to re-formulate it all in growth rates and we can introduce rational expectations. That not really overly complicated. Bond yield is a function of expected growth nominal GDP over a given period and so is stock prices.

In the long-run money is neutral so Y=Y* …so if you need a model for Y* you just go for a normal Solow growth model (or whatever you need…). I the long run the Sumnerian Phillips curve becomes vertical.

It don’t have to be more complicated than that…

That said, I think it is very important to demand to see people’s models. In fact I often challenge people to exactly spell out the model people have in their heads. That will show the inconsistencies in their arguments (the Austrian Business Cycle model is for example impossible to put on equations exactly because it is inconsistent). Mostly it turns out that people are doing national accouting economics and there is no money in their models – and if there is money in the model they do not have a explicit modeling of the central bank’s reaction function. So Scott you are certainly wrong when you tell of to get rid of the models. The problem is that far too many economists and especially central bankers are not spelling out their models and their reaction functions. I would love to see the kind of model that make the ECB think that monetary policy is easy in the euro zone…

That damn loss function

Scott further complains:

“Some general equilibrium models are used to find which stabilization policy regime is optimal from a welfare perspective.  Most of these models assume some sort of wage/price stickiness.  And 100% of the models taken seriously in the real world assume wage/price stickiness.  The problem is that there are many types of wage and price stickiness, and many ways of modeling the problem.  You can get pretty much whatever policy implication you want with the right set of assumptions.  Unfortunately, macroeconomists aren’t able to prove which model is best.  I think that’s because lots of models are partly true, and the extent to which specific assumptions are true depends on which country you are looking at, as well as which time period.  And then there’s the Lucas Critique.”

Translated this mean that implicit in most New Keynesian models is a assumption about the the central bank minimizing some sort of “loss function”. The problem with that is that assumes that there is some kind of representative agent. In terms of welfare analysis of monetary policy rules that is a massive problem – any Austrian economist would (rightly) tell you so and so would David Eagle. See my earlier post on the that damn “loss function” here.

Scott has one more complaint:

“To summarize, despite all the advances in modern macro, there is no model that anyone can point to that “proves” any particular policy target is superior to NGDPLT.  There might be a superior target (indeed I suspect a nominal wage target would be superior.)  But it can’t be shown with a model.  All we can do is construct a model that has that superiority built in by design.”

Scott, I am disappointed. Haven’t you read the insights of David Eagle? David has done excellent work on why NGDPLT Pareto dominates Price Level Targeting and inflation targeting. See here and here and here. Evan Koeing of course makes a similar point. And yes, neither David nor Evan use a “loss function”. They use proper welfare theory.

Anyway, no reason to be worried about models – they just need to be the right ones and the biggest complaint against most New Keynesian models is the problematic assumption about the representative agent. And then of course New Keynesian models have a very rudimentary formulation of asset markets, but that is easy to get around.

PS I am sure Scott would not disagree with much what I just wrote and I am frankly as frustrated with “models” that are used exactly because they are fancy rather because they make economic sense.

13 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 29, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in David Eagle, Evan Koeing, MM Research agenda, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Reading recommendations, Scott Sumner
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 29, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/29/dude-here-is-your-model/

Who did most for the US stock market? FDR or Bernanke?

My post on US stock markets and monetary disorder led to some friendly but challenging comments from Diego Espinosa. Diego rightly notes that Market Monetarists including myself praises US president Roosevelt for taking the US off the gold standard and that similar decisive actions is needed today, but at the same time is critical of Ben Bernanke’s performance of Federal Reserve governor despite the fact that US share prices have performed fairly well over the last four years.

Diego’s point is basically that the Federal Reserve under the leadership of chairman Bernanke has indeed acted decisively and that that is visible if one look at the stock market performance. Diego is certainly right in the sense that the US stock market sometime ago broken through the pre-crisis peak levels and the stock market performance in 2009 by any measure was impressive. It might be worth noticing that the US stock market in general has done much better than the European markets.

However, it is a matter of fact that the stock market response to FDR’s decision to take the US off the gold standard was much more powerful than the Fed’s actions of 2008/9. I take a closer look at that below.

Monetary policy can have a powerful effect on share prices

To illustrate my point I have looked at the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) for the period from early 2008 and until today and compared that with the period from 1933 to 1937. Other stock market indices could also have been used, but I believe that it is not too important which of the major US market indices is used to the comparison.

The graph below compares the two episodes. “Month zero” is February 1933 and March 2009. These are the months where DJIA reaches the bottom during the crisis. Neither of the months are coincident as they coincide with monetary easing being implemented. In April 1933 FDR basically initiated the process that would take the US off the gold standard (in June 1933) and in March 2009 Bernanke expanded TAF and opened dollar swap lines with a number of central banks around the world.

As the graph below shows FDR’s actions had much more of a “shock-and-awe” impact on the US stock markets than Bernanke’s actions. In only four months from DJIW jumped by nearly 70% after FDR initiated the process of taking the US off the gold standard. This by the way is a powerful illustration of Scott Sumner’s point the monetary policy works with long and variable leads – you see the impact of the expected policy change even before it has actually been implemented. The announcement effects are very powerful. The 1933 episode illustrates that very clearly.

Over the first 12 months from DJIA reaches bottom in 1933 the index increases by more than 90%. That is nearly double of the increase of DJIA in 2009 as is clear from the graph.

Obviously this is an extremely crude comparison and no Market Monetarist would argue that monetary policy changes could account for everything that happened in the US stock market in 1993 or 2009. However, impact of monetary policy on stock market performance is very clear in both years.

NIRA was a disaster

A very strong illustration of the fact that monetary policy is not everything that is important for the US stock market is what happened from June 1933 to May 1935. In that nearly two year period the US stock market was basically flat. Looking that the graph it looks like the stock market rally paused to two years and then took off again in the second half of 1935.

The explanation for this “pause” is the draconian labour market policies implemented by the Roosevelt administration. In June 1933 the so-called National Industrial and Recovery Act was implemented by the Roosevelt administration (NIRA). NIRA massively strengthened the power of US labour unions and was effectively thought to lead to a cartelisation of the US labour market. Effectively NIRA was a massively negative supply shock to the US economy.

So while the decision to go off the gold standard had been a major positive demand shock that on it’s own had a massively positive impact on the US economy NIRA had the exact opposite impact. Any judgement of FDR’s economic policies obviously has to take both factors into account.

That is exactly what the US stock market did. The gold exit led to a sharp stock market rally, but that rally was soon killed by NIRA.

In May 1935 the US Supreme Court ruled that NIRA was unconstitutional. That ruling had a major positive impact positive impact as it “erased” the negative supply shock. As the graph shows very clearly the stock market took off once again after the ruling.

FDR was better for stocks than Bernanke, but…

Overall we have to conclude that FDR’s decision to take the US off the gold standard had an significantly more positive impact on the US stock markets than Ben Bernanke’s actions in 2008/9. However, contrary to the Great Depression the US has avoided the same kind of policy blunders on the supply side over the past four years. While the Obama administration certainly has not impressed with supply side reforms the damage done by his administration on the supply side has been much, much smaller than the disaster called NIRA.

Hence, the conclusion is clear – monetary easing is positive for the stock market, but any gains can be undermined by regulatory mistakes like NIRA. That is a lesson for today’s policy makers. Central banks should ensure stable growth in nominal GDP, while governments should implement supply side reforms to increase real GDP over the longer run. That would not undoubtedly be the best cocktail for the economy but also for stock markets.

Finally it should be noted that both FDR and Bernanke failed to provide a clear rule based framework for the conduct of monetary policy. That made the recovery much weaker in 1930s than it could have been and probably was a major cause why the US fell back into recession in 1937. Similarly the lack of a rule based framework has likely had a major negative impact on the effectiveness of monetary policy over the past four years.

PS this post an my two previous posts (see here and here) to a large degree is influenced by the kind of analysis Scott Sumner presents in his book on the Great Depression. Scott’s book is still unpublished. I look forward to the day it will be available to an wider audience.

6 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 28, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve, Scott Sumner, Transmission mechanism
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 28, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/28/who-did-most-for-the-us-stock-market-fdr-or-bernanke/

Monetary disorder – not animal spirits – caused the Great Recession

If one follows the financial media on a daily basis as I do there is ample room to get both depressed and frustrated over the coverage of the financial markets. Often market movements are described as being very irrational and the description of what is happening in the markets is often based on an “understanding” of economic agents as somebody who have huge mood swings due to what Keynes termed animal spirits.

Swings in the financial markets created by these animal spirits then apparently impact the macroeconomy through the impact on investment and private consumption. In this understanding markets move up and down based on rather irrational mood swings among investors. This is what Robert Hetzel has called the “market disorder”-view. It is market imperfections and particularly the animal spirits of investors which created swings not only in the markets, but also in the financial markets. Bob obviously in his new book convincingly demonstrates that this “theory” is grossly flawed and that animal spirits is not the cause of neither the volatility in the markets nor did animal spirits cause the present crisis.

The Great Recession is a result of numerous monetary policy mistakes – this is the “monetary disorder”-view – rather than a result of irrational investors behaving as drunken fools. This is very easy to illustrate. Just have a look first at S&P500 during the Great Recession.

The 6-7 phases of the Great Recession – so far

We can basically spot six or seven overall phases in S&P500 since the onset of the crisis. In my view all of these phases or shifts in “market sentiment” can easy be shown to coincide with monetary policy changes from either the Federal Reserve or the ECB (or to some extent also the PBoC).

We can start out with the very unfortunate decision by the ECB to hike interest rates in July 2008. Shortly after the ECB hike the S&P500 plummeted (and yes, yes Lehman Brother collapses in the process). The free fall in S&P500 was to some extent curbed by relatively steep interest rate reductions in the Autumn of 2008 from all of the major central banks in the world. However, the drop in the US stock markets did not come to an end before March 2009.

March-April 2009: TAF and dollar swap lines

However, from March-April 2009 the US stock markets recovered strongly and the recovery continued all through 2009. So what happened in March-April 2009? Did all investors suddenly out of the blue become optimists? Nope. From early March the Federal Reserve stepped up its efforts to improve its role as lender-of-last resort. The de facto collapse of the Fed primary dealer system in the Autumn of 2008 had effective made it very hard for the Fed to function as a lender-of-last-resort and effectively the Fed could not provide sufficient dollar liquidity to the market. See more on this topic in George Selgin’s excellent paper  “L Street: Bagehotian Prescriptions for a 21st-Century Money Market”.

Here especially the two things are important. First, the so-called Term Auction Facility (TAF). TAF was first introduced in 2007, but was expanded considerably on March 9 2009. This is also the day the S&P500 bottomed out! That is certainly no coincidence.

Second, on April 9 when the Fed announced that it had opened dollar swap lines with a number of central banks around the world. Both measures significantly reduced the lack of dollar liquidity. As a result the supply of dollars effectively was increased sharply relatively to the demand for dollars. This effectively ended the first monetary contraction during the early stage of the Great Recession and the results are very visible in S&P500.

This as it very clear from the graph above the Fed’s effects to increase the supply of dollar liquidity in March-April 2009 completely coincides with the beginning of the up-leg in the S&P500. It was not animal spirits that triggered the recovery in S&P500, but rather easier monetary conditions.

January-April 2010: Swap lines expiry, Chinese monetary tightening and Fed raises discount rate

The dollar swap lines expired February 1 2010. That could hardly be a surprise to the markets, but nonetheless this seem to have coincided with the S&P500 beginning to loose steam in the early part of 2010. However, it was probably more important that speculation grew in the markets that global central banks could move to tighten monetary conditions in respond to the continued recovery in the global economy at that time.

On January 12 2010 the People’s Bank of China increased reserve requirements for the Chinese banks. In the following months the PBoC moved to tighten monetary conditions further. Other central banks also started to signal future monetary tightening.

Even the Federal Reserve signaled that it might be reversing it’s monetary stance. Hence, on February 18 2010 the Fed increased the discount rate by 25bp. The Fed insisted that it was not monetary tightening, but judging from the market reaction it could hardly be seen by investors as anything else.

Overall the impression investors most have got from the actions from PBoC, the Fed and other central banks in early 2010 was that the central banks now was moving closer to initiating monetary tightening. Not surprisingly this coincides with the S&P500 starting to move sideways in the first half of 2010. This also coincides with the “Greek crisis” becoming a market theme for the first time.

August 27 2010: Ben Bernanke announces QE2 and stock market takes off again

By mid-2010 it had become very clear that talk of monetary tightening had bene premature and the Federal Reserve started to signal that a new round of monetary easing might be forthcoming and on August 27 at his now famous Jackson Hole speech Ben Bernanke basically announced a new round quantitative easing – the so-called QE2. The actual policy was not implemented before November, but as any Market Monetarist would tell you – it is the Chuck Norris effect of monetary policy: Monetary policy mainly works through expectations.

The quasi-announcement of QE2 on August 27 is pretty closely connected with another up-leg in S&P500 starting in August 2010. The actual upturn in the market, however, started slightly before Bernanke’s speech. This is probably a reflection that the markets started to anticipate that Bernanke was inching closer to introducing QE2. See for example this news article from early August 2010. This obviously is an example of Scott Sumner’s point that monetary policy works with long and variable leads. Hence, monetary policy might be working before it is actually announced if the market start to price in the action beforehand.

April and July 2011: The ECB’s catastrophic rate hikes

The upturn in the S&P500 lasted the reminder of 2010 and continued into 2011, but commodity prices also inched up and when two major negative supply shocks (revolutions in Northern Africa and the Japanese Tsunami) hit in early 2011 headline inflation increased in the euro zone. This triggered the ECB to take the near catastrophic decision to increase interest rates twice – once in April and then again in July. At the same time the ECB also started to scale back liquidity programs.

The market movements in the S&P500 to a very large extent coincide with the ECB’s rate hikes. The ECB hiked the first time on April 7. Shortly there after – on April 29 – the S&P500 reached it’s 2011 peak. The ECB hiked for the second time on July 7 and even signaled more rate hikes! Shortly thereafter S&P500 slumped. This obviously also coincided with the “euro crisis” flaring up once again.

September-December 2011: “Low for longer”, Operation twist and LTRO – cleaning up your own mess

The re-escalation of the European crisis got the Federal Reserve into action. On September 9 2011 the FOMC announced that it would keep interest rates low at least until 2013. Not exactly a policy that is in the spirit of Market Monetarism, but nonetheless a signal that the Fed acknowledged the need for monetary easing. Interestingly enough September 9 2011 was also the date where the three-month centered moving average of S&P500 bottomed out.

On September 21 2011 the Federal Reserve launched what has come to be known as Operation Twist. Once again this is certainly not a kind of monetary operation which is loved by Market Monetarists, but again at least it was an signal that the Fed acknowledged the need for monetary easing.

The Fed’s actions in September pretty much coincided with S&P500 starting a new up-leg. The recovery in S&P500 got further imputes after the ECB finally acknowledged a responsibility for cleaning up the mess after the two rate hikes earlier in 2011 and on December 8 the ECB introduced the so-called 3-year longer-term refinancing operations (LTRO).

The rally in S&P500 hence got more momentum after the introduction of the 3-year LTRO in December 2011 and the rally lasted until March-April 2012.

The present downturn: Have a look at ECB’s new collateral rules

We are presently in the midst of a new crisis and the media attention is on the Greek political situation and while the need for monetary policy easing in the euro zone finally seem to be moving up on the agenda there is still very little acknowledgement in the general debate about the monetary causes of this crisis. But again we can explain the last downturn in S&P500 by looking at monetary policy.

On March 23 the ECB moved to tighten the rules for banks’ use of assets as collateral. This basically coincided with the S&P500 reaching its peak for the year so far on March 19 and in the period that has followed numerous European central bankers have ruled out that there is a need for monetary easing (who are they kidding?)

Conclusion: its monetary disorder and not animal spirits

Above I have tried to show that the major ups and downs in the US stock markets since 2008 can be explained by changes monetary policy by the major central banks in the world. Hence, the volatility in the markets is a direct consequence of monetary policy failure rather than irrational investor behavior. Therefore, the best way to ensure stability in the financial markets is to ensure nominal stability through a rule based monetary policy. It is time for central banks to do some soul searching rather than blaming animal spirits.

This in no way is a full account of the causes of the Great Recession, but rather meant to show that changes in monetary policy – rather than animal spirits – are at the centre of market movements over the past four years. I have used the S&P500 to illustrate this, but a similar picture would emerge if the story was told with US or German bond yields, inflation expectations, commodity prices or exchange rates.

Appendix: Some Key monetary changes during the Great Recession

July 2008: ECB hikes interest rates

March-April 2009: Fed expand TAF and introduces dollar swap lines

January-April 2010: Swap lines expiry, Chinese monetary tightening and Fed raises discount rate

August 27 2010: Bernanke announces QE2

April and July 2011: The ECB hike interest rates twice

September-December 2011: Fed announces policy to keep rate very low until the end of 2013 and introduces “operation twist”. The ECB introduces the 3-year LTRO

March 2012: ECB tightens collateral rules

27 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 25, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, euro crisis, Federal Reserve, Financial markets, George Selgin, Keynes, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, QE, Scott Sumner, The euro, The Great Recession, Transmission mechanism
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 25, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/25/monetary-disorder-not-animal-spirits-caused-the-great-recession/

The discretionary decision to introduce rules

At the core of Market Monetarists thinking is that monetary policy should be conducted within a clearly rule based framework. However, as Market Monetarists we are facing a dilemma. The rules or rather quasi-rules that is presently being followed by the major central banks in the world are in our view the wrong rules. We are advocating NGDP level targeting, while most of the major central banks in the world are instead inflation targeters.

So we have a problem. We believe strongly that monetary policy should be based on rules rather than on discretion. But to change the wrong rules (inflation targeting) to the right rules (NGDP targeting) you need to make a discretionary decision. There is no way around this, but it is not unproblematic.

The absolute strength of the way inflation targeting – as it has been conducted over the past nearly two decades – has been that monetary policy a large extent has become de-politicised. This undoubtedly has been a major progress compared to the massive politicisation of monetary policy, which used to be so common. And while we might be (very!) frustrated with central bankers these days I think that most Market Monetarists would strongly agree that monetary policy is better conducted by independent central banks than by politicians.

That said, I have also argued that central bank independence certainly should not mean that central banks should not be held accountable. In the absence of a Free Banking system, where central banks are given a monopoly there need to be very strict limits to what central banks can do and if they do not fulfil the tasks given to them under their monopoly then it should have consequences. For example the ECB has clear mandate to secure price stability in the euro zone. I personally think that the ECB has failed to ensure this and serious deflationary threats have been allowed to develop. To be independent does not mean that you can do whatever you want with monetary policy and it does not mean that you should be free of critique.

However, there is a fine line between critique of a central bank (particularly when it is politicians doing it) and threatening the independence of the central banks. However, the best way to ensure central bank independence is that the central bank is given a very clear mandate on monetary policy. However, it should be the right mandate.

Therefore, there is no way around it. I think the right decision both in the euro zone and in the US would be to move to change the mandate of the central banks to a very clearly defined NGDP level target mandate.

However, when you are changing the rules you are also creating a risk that changing rules become the norm and that is a strong argument for maintain rules that might not be 100% optimal (no rule is…). Latest year it was debated whether the Bank of Canada should change it’s flexible inflation targeting regime to a NGDP targeting. It was decided to maintain the inflation targeting regime. I think that was too bad, but I also fully acknowledge that the way the BoC has been operating overall has worked well and unlike the ECB the BoC has understood that ensuring price stability does not mean that you should react to supply shocks. As consequence you can say the BoC’s inflation targeting regime has been NGDP targeting light. The same can be said about the way for example the Polish central bank (NBP) or the Swedish central banks have been conducting monetary policy.

Market Monetarists have to acknowledge that changing the rules comes with costs and the cost is that you risk opening the door of politicising monetary policy in the future. These costs have to be compared to the gains from introducing NGDP level targeting. So while I do think that the BoC, Riksbanken and the NBP seriously should consider moving to NGDP targeting I also acknowledge that as long as these central banks are doing a far better job than the ECB and the Fed there might not be a very urgent need to change the present set-up.

Other cases are much more clear. Take the Russian central bank (CBR) which today is operating a highly unclear and not very rule based regime. Here there would be absolutely not cost of moving to a NGDP targeting regime or a similar regime. I have earlier argued that could the easiest be done with PEP style set-up where a currency basket of currencies and oil prices could be used to target the NGDP level.

Concluding, we must acknowledge that changing the monetary policy set-up involve discretionary decisions. However, we cannot maintain rules that so obviously have failed. We need rules in monetary policy to ensure nominal stability, but when the rules so clearly is creating instability, economic ruin and financial distress there is no way out of taking a discretionary decision to get of the rules and replace them with better rules.

PS While writing this I am hearing George Selgin in my head telling me “Lars, stop this talk about what central banks should do. They will never do the right thing anyway”. I fear George is right…

PPS Jeffrey Frankel has a very good article on the Death of Inflation Targeting at Project Syndicate. Scott also comments on Jeff’s article. Marcus Nunes also comments on Jeff’s article.

PPPS It is a public holiday in Denmark today, but I have had a look at the financial markets today. When stock markets drop, commodity prices decline and long-term bond yields drop then it as a very good indication that monetary conditions are getting tighter…I hope central banks around the world realise this…

5 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in George Selgin, Inflation Targeting, Jeffrey Frankel, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Reading recommendations, Russia, Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 18, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/18/the-discretionary-decision-to-introduce-rules/

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