All posts tagged Nominal Income Targeting

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.

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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
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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/

Hear, hear!! Beckworth’s and Ponnuru’s call for monetary regime change

When you are blogging you will often find yourself quote other bloggers and commentators. Mostly just four or fives lines. However, this time around I am not going to quote anything from David Beckworth’s and Ramesh’s latest article in National Review. So why is that? Well, I simply agrees strongly with EVERYTHING the two gentlemen write in their article and I can’t quote the whole thing. It is simply an excellent piece on why the Federal Reserve and the ECB should switch to NGDP level targeting. If this will not convince you nothing will.

So instead of quoting the whole thing, but you better just go directly to National Review and have a look. That said, I would love to hear what my readers think of the article.

HT dwb

PS While we are at it – here is one more reading recommendation – have a look at Matt O’Brien’s latest story on Spain. I wonder if we would have been here is the ECB had been targeting the NGDP level. No chance!

1 Comment
by Lars Christensen on May 29, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in David Beckworth, ECB, Matthew O'Brien, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Ramesh Ponnuru, Reading recommendations
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 29, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/29/hear-hear-beckworths-and-ponnurus-call-for-monetary-regime-change/

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/

International monetary disorder – how policy mistakes turned the crisis into a global crisis

Most Market Monetarist bloggers have a fairly US centric perspective (and from time to time a euro zone focus). I have however from I started blogging promised to cover non-US monetary issues. It is also in the light of this that I have been giving attention to the conduct of monetary policy in open economies – both developed and emerging markets. In the discussion about the present crisis there has been extremely little focus on the international transmission of monetary shocks. As a consequences policy makers also seem to misread the crisis and why and how it spread globally. I hope to help broaden the discussion and give a Market Monetarist perspective on why the crisis spread globally and why some countries “miraculously” avoided the crisis or at least was much less hit than other countries.

The euro zone-US connection

– why the dollar’ status as reserve currency is important

In 2008 when crisis hit we saw a massive tightening of monetary conditions in the US. The monetary contraction was a result of a sharp rise in money (dollar!) demand and as the Federal Reserve failed to increase the money supply we saw a sharp drop in money-velocity and hence in nominal (and real) GDP. Hence, in the US the drop in NGDP was not primarily driven by a contraction in the money supply, but rather by a drop in velocity.

The European story is quite different. In Europe the money demand also increased sharply, but it was not primarily the demand for euros, which increased, but rather the demand for US dollars. In fact I would argue that the monetary contraction in the US to a large extent was a result of European demand for dollars. As a result the euro zone did not see the same kind of contraction in money (euro) velocity as the US. On the other hand the money supply contracted somewhat more in the euro zone than in the US. Hence, the NGDP contraction in the US was caused by a contraction in velocity, but in the euro zone the NGDP contraction was caused to drop by both a contraction in velocity and in the money supply. Reflecting a much less aggressive response by the ECB than by the Federal Reserve.

To some extent one can say that the US economy was extraordinarily hard hit because the US dollar is the global reserve currency. As a result global demand for dollar spiked in 2008, which caused the drop in velocity (and a sharp appreciation of the dollar in late 2008).

In fact I believe that two factors are at the centre of the international transmission of the crisis in 2008-9.

First, it is key to what extent a country’s currency is considered as a safe haven or not. The dollar as the ultimate reserve currency of the world was the ultimate safe haven currency (and still is) – as gold was during the Great Depression. Few other currencies have a similar status, but the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen have a status that to some extent resembles that of the dollar. These currencies also appreciated at the onset of the crisis.

Second, it is completely key how monetary policy responded to the change in money demand. The Fed failed to increase the money supply enough to the increase in the dollar demand (among other things because of the failure of the primary dealer system). On the other hand the Swiss central bank (SNB) was much more successful in responding to the sharp increase in demand for Swiss franc – lately by introducing a very effective floor for EUR/CHF at 1.20. This means that any increase in demand for Swiss franc will be met by an equally large increase in the Swiss money supply. Had the Fed implemented a similar policy and for example announced in September 2008 that it would not allow the dollar to strengthen until US NGDP had stopped contracting then the crisis would have been much smaller and would long have been over.

Why was the contraction so extreme in for example the PIIGS countries and Russia?

While the Fed failed to increase the money supply enough to counteract the increase in dollar demand it nonetheless acted through a number of measures. Most notably two (and a half) rounds of quantitative easing and the opening of dollar swap lines with other central banks in the world. Other central banks faced bigger challenges in terms of the possibility – or rather the willingness – to respond to the increase in dollar demand. This was especially the case for countries with fixed exchanges regimes – for example Denmark, Bulgaria and the Baltic States – and countries in currencies unions – most notably the so-called PIIGS countries.

I have earlier showed that when oil prices dropped in 2008 the Russian ruble started depreciated (the demand for ruble dropped). However, the Russian central bank would not accept the drop in the ruble and was therefore heavily intervening in the currency market to curb the ruble depreciation. The result was a 20% contraction in the Russian money supply in a few months during the autumn of 2008. As a consequence Russia saw the biggest real GDP contraction in 2009 among the G20 countries and rather unnecessary banking crisis! Hence, it was not a drop in velocity that caused the Russian crisis but the Russian central bank lack of willingness to allow the ruble to depreciate. The CBR suffers from a distinct degree of fear-of-floating and that is what triggered it’s unfortunate policy response.

The ultimate fear-of-floating is of course a pegged exchange rate regime. A good example is Latvia. When the crisis hit the Latvian economy was already in the process of a rather sharp slowdown as the bursting of the Latvian housing bubble was unfolding. However, in 2008 the demand for Latvian lat collapsed, but due to the country’s quasi-currency board the lat was not allowed to depreciate. As a result the Latvian money supply contracted sharply and send the economy into a near-Great Depression style collapse and real GDP dropped nearly 30%. Again it was primarily the contraction in the money supply rather and a velocity collapse that caused the crisis.

The story was – and still is – the same for the so-called PIIGS countries in the euro zone. Take for example the Greek central bank. It is not able to on it’s own to increase the money supply as it is part of the euro area. As the crisis hit (and later escalated strongly) banking distress escalated and this lead to a marked drop in the money multiplier and drop in bank deposits. This is what caused a very sharp drop in the Greek board money supply. This of course is at the core of the Greek crisis and this has massively worsened Greece’s debt woes.

Therefore, in my view there is a very close connection between the international spreading of the crisis and the currency regime in different countries. In general countries with floating exchange rates have managed the crisis much better than countries with countries with pegged or quasi-pegged exchange rates. Obviously other factors have also played a role, but at the key of the spreading of the crisis was the monetary policy and exchange rate regime in different countries.

Why did Sweden, Poland and Turkey manage the crisis so well?

While some countries like the Baltic States or the PIIGS have been extremely hard hit by the crisis others have come out of the crisis much better. For countries like Poland, Turkey and Sweden nominal GDP has returned more or less to the pre-crisis trend and banking distress has been much more limited than in other countries.

What do Poland, Turkey and Sweden have in common? Two things.

First of all, their currencies are not traditional reserve currencies. So when the crisis hit money demand actually dropped rather increased in these countries. For an unchanged supply of zloty, lira or krona a drop in demand for (local) money would actually be a passive or automatic easing of monetary condition. A drop in money demand would also lead these currencies to depreciate. That is exactly what we saw in late 2008 and early 2009. Contrary to what we saw in for example the Baltic States, Russia or in the PIIGS the money supply did not contract in Poland, Sweden and Turkey. It expanded!

And second all three countries operate floating exchange rate regimes and as a consequence the central banks in these countries could act relatively decisively in 2008-9 and they made it clear that they indeed would ease monetary policy to counter the crisis. Avoiding crisis was clearly much more important than maintaining some arbitrary level of their currencies. In the case of Sweden and Turkey growth rebound strongly after the initial shock and in the case of Poland we did not even have negative growth in 2009. All three central banks have since moved to tighten monetary policy – as growth has remained robust. The Swedish Riksbank is, however, now on the way back to monetary easing (and rightly so…)

I could also have mentioned the Canada, Australia and New Zealand as cases where the extent of the crisis was significantly reduced due to floating exchange rates regimes and a (more or less) proper policy response from the local central banks.

Fear-of-floating via inflation targeting

Some countries fall in the category between the PIIGS et al and Sweden-like countries. That is countries that suffer from an indirect form of fear-of-floating as a result of inflation targeting. The most obvious case is the ECB. Unlike for example the Swedish Riksbank or the Turkish central bank (TCMB) the ECB is a strict inflation targeter. The ECB does target headline inflation. So if inflation increases due to a negative supply shock the ECB will move to tighten monetary policy. It did so in 2008 and again in 2011. On both occasions with near-catastrophic results. As I have earlier demonstrated this kind of inflation targeting will ensure that the currency will tend to strengthen (or weaken less) when import prices increases. This will lead to an “automatic” fear-of-floating effect. It is obviously less damaging than a strict currency peg or Russian style intervention, but still can be harmful enough – as it clear has been in the case of the euro zone.

Conclusion: The (international) monetary disorder view explains the global crisis

I hope to have demonstrated above that the increase in dollar demand in 2008 not only hit the US economy but also lead to a monetary contraction in especially Europe. Not because of an increase demand for euro, lats or rubles, but because central banks tighten monetary policy either directly or indirectly to “manage” the weakening of their currencies. Or because they could not ease monetary policy as member of the euro zone. In the case of the ECB the strict inflation targeting regime let the ECB to fail to differentiate between supply and demand shocks which undoubtedly have made things a lot worse.

The international transmission was not caused by “market disorder”, but by monetary policy failure. In a world of freely floating exchange rates (or PEP – currencies pegged to export prices) and/or NGDP level targeting the crisis would never have become a global crisis and I certainly would have no reason to write about it four-five years after the whole thing started.

Obviously, the “local” problems would never have become any large problem had the Fed and the ECB got it right. However, the both the Fed and the ECB failed – and so did monetary policy in a number of other countries.

DISCLAIMER: I have discussed different countries in this post. I would however, stress that the different countries are used as examples. Other countries – both the good, the bad and the ugly – could also have been used. Just because I for example highlight Poland, Turkey and Sweden as good examples does not mean that these countries did everything right. Far from it. The Polish central bank had horrible communication in early 2009 and was overly preoccupied the weakening of the zloty. The Turkish central bank’s communication was horrific last year and the Sweden bank has recently been far too reluctant to move towards monetary easing. And I might even have something positive to say about the ECB, but let me come back on that one when I figure out what that is (it could take a while…) Furthermore, remember I often quote Milton Friedman for saying you never should underestimate the importance of luck of nations. The same goes for central banks.

PS You are probably wondering, “Why did Lars not mention Asia?” Well, that is easy – the Asian economies in general did not have a major funding problem in US dollar (remember the Asian countries’ general large FX reserve) so dollar demand did not increase out of Asia and as a consequence Asia did not have the same problems as Europe. Long story, but just show that Asia was not key in the global transmission of the crisis and the same goes for Latin America.

PPS For more on the distinction between the ‘monetary disorder view’ and the ‘market disorder view’ in Hetzel (2012).

14 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 11, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, Emerging Markets, euro crisis, Exchange rate policy, Exchange rates, Fear-of-floating, Federal Reserve, Gold Standard, Jeffrey Frankel, Luck, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, MV=PY, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Peg the Export Price (PEP), QE, Robert Hetzel, Russia, The euro, The Great Recession, Transmission mechanism
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 11, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/11/international-monetary-disorder-how-policy-mistakes-turned-the-crisis-into-a-global-crisis/

Imagine if Charles Evans was on the ECB’s Executive Board

Yesterday, I did a (very short) post about Irish deflation and there is no doubt that the euro crisis continues. Depressingly there is no really appetite among ECB policy maker to fundamentally have a change of monetary policy to change the status quo and while there is a (misguided) debate going on about fiscal austerity in Europe there is still no real debate about the monetary policy set-up in Europe. On the other hand in the US we are having a real debate among academics, commentators and central bankers about US monetary policy. In the US fed economists like Robert Hetzel are allowed to publish book about how monetary policy mistakes cause the Great Recession. In Europe there is no debate. That is very unfortunate.

The contrast between Europe and the US would be very clear by listen to what Chicago Fed’s Charles Evans have to say about US monetary policy. Take a look at this debate in which Evans endorse NGDP level targeting! Could you imagine that a member of the ECB Executive Board did that? Wouldn’t that just be a nice change from the business-as-usual climate we have now?

See also this excellent article from pro-market monetarist commentator Matt O’Brien at The Atlantic on Charles Evans’ endorsement of NGDP level targeting.

Our friend Marcus Nunes also has an update on Charles Evans pro-NGDP targeting position. See Scott Sumner on the same topic here.

PS Charlie if you are interest the British government is looking for a new Bank of England governor…

Leave a comment
by Lars Christensen on May 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Charles Evans, ECB, euro crisis, Marcus Nunes, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Robert Hetzel
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 2, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/02/imagine-if-charles-evans-was-on-the-ecbs-executive-board/

PEP, NGDPLT and (how to avoid) Russian monetary policy failure

I am sitting in Riga airport and writing this. I have an early (too early!) flight to Stockholm. I must admit it makes it slightly more fun to sit in an airport when you can do a bit of blogging.

Anyway, I have been giving quite a bit of thought to the Jeff Frankel’s idea about “Peg to the Export Price” (PEP). What Frankel’s is suggesting is that commodity exporters like Russia should peg their currencies to the price of the main commodity they export – in the case of Russia that would of course be the oil price.

This have made me think about the monetary transmission mechanism in an Emerging Market commodity exporter like Russia and how very few people really understand how monetary policy works in an economy like the Russian. I have, however, for more than a decade as part of my day-job spend quite a lot of time analysing the Russian economy so in this post I will try to spell out how I see the last couple of years economic development in Russia from a monetary perspective.

The oil-money nexus and why a higher oil price is a demand shock in Russia

Since the end of communism the Russian central bank has primarily conducted monetary policy by intervening in the currency market and currency intervention remains the Russian central bank’s (CBR) most important policy instrument. (Yes, I know this is a simplification, but bear with me…)

In the present Russian monetary set-up the CBR manages the ruble within a fluctuation band against a basket of euros (45%) and dollars (55%). The composition of the basket has changed over time and the CBR has gradually widened the fluctuation band so one can say that we today has moved closer to a managed or dirty float rather than a purely fixed currency. However, despite of for years having had the official intention of moving to a free float it is very clear that the CBR has a quite distinct “fear of floating”.  The CBR is not alone in this – many central banks around the world suffer from this rather irrational fear. This is also the case for countries in which the central banks officially pursue a floating exchange rate policy. How often have you not heard central bankers complain that the currency is too strong or too weak?

With the ruble being quasi-fixed changes in the money supply is basically determined by currency inflows and outflows and as oil and gas is Russia’s main exports (around 80% of total exports) changes in the oil prices determines these flows and hence the money supply.

Lets say that the global demand for oil increases and as a consequence oil prices increase by 10%. This will more or less lead to an 10% increase in the currency inflow into Russia. With inflows increasing the ruble will tend to strengthen. However, historically the CBR has not been happy to see such inflow translate into a strengthening of the ruble and as a consequence it has intervened in the FX market to curb the strengthening of the ruble. This basically means that that CBR is printing ruble and buying foreign currency. The logic consequence of this is the CBR rather than allowing the ruble to strengthen instead is accumulating ever-larger foreign currency reserves as the oil price is increasing. This basically has been the trend for the last decade or so.

So due to the CBR’s FX policy there is a more or less direct link from rising oil prices to an expansion of the Russian money supply. As we all know MV=PY so with unchanged money-velocity (V) an increase in M will lead to an increase in PY (nominal GDP).

This illustrates a very important point. Normally we tend to associate increases in oil prices with a supply shock. However, in the case of Russia and other oil exporting countries with pegged or quasi-pegged exchange rates an increase in the oil price will be a positive demand shock. Said in another other higher oil prices will push the AD curve to the right. This is also why higher oil prices have not always lead to a higher current account surplus in Russia – higher oil prices will boost private consumption growth and investments growth through an increase in the money supply. This is not exactly good news for the current account.

The point that an increase in oil prices is a demand shock in Russia is illustrated in the graph below. Over the past decade there has been a rather strong positive correlation changes in the price of oil (measured in ruble) and the growth of nominal GDP.

This correlation, however, can only exist as long as the CBR intervenes in the FX market to curb the strengthening of the ruble and if the CBR finally moved to a free floating ruble then the this correlation most likely would break down. Hence, with a freely floating ruble the money supply and hence NGDP would be unaffected by higher or lower oil prices.

PEP would effective have been a ‘productivity norm’ in Russia

So by allowing the ruble to appreciate when oil prices are increase it will effective stabilise the development the money supply and therefore in NGDP. Another way to achieve this disconnect between NGDP and oil prices would be to directly peg the ruble to the oil price. So an increase in the oil price of 10% would directly lead to an appreciation of the ruble of 10% (against the dollar).

As the graph above shows there has been a very close correlation between changes in the oil prices (measured in ruble) and NGDP. Furthermore, over the past decade oil prices has increased around 20% yearly versus the ruble and the yearly average growth of nominal GDP has been the exactly the same. As a consequence had the CBR pegged pegged the ruble a decade ago then the growth of NGDP would likely have averaged 0% per year.

With NGDP growth “pegged” by PEP to 0% we would effectively have had what George Selgin has termed a “productivity norm” in Russia where higher real GDP growth (higher productivity growth) would lead to lower prices. Remember again – if MV=PY and MV is fixed through PEP then any increase in Y will have to lead to lower P. However, as oil prices measured in ruble are fixed it would only be the prices of non-tradable goods (locally produced and consumed goods), which would drop. This undoubtedly would have been a much better policy than the one the CBR has pursued for the last decade – and a boom and bust would have been avoid from 2005 to 2009. (And yes, I assume that nominal rigidities would not have created too large problems).

Russia boom-bust and how tight money cause the 2008-9 crisis in Russia

Anybody who visits Moscow will hear stories of insanely high property prices and especially during the boom years from 2006 to when crisis hit in 2008 property prices exploded in Russia’s big cities such St. Petersburg and Moscow. There is not doubt in my mind that this property market boom was caused my the very steep increase in the Russian money supply which was a direct consequence of the CBR’s fear of floating the ruble. As oil prices where increasing and currency inflows accelerated in 2006-7 the CBR intervened to curb the strengthening of the ruble.

However, the boom came to a sudden halt in 2008, however, unlike what is the common perception the crisis that hit hard in 2008 was not a consequence of the drop in oil prices, but rather as a result of too tight monetary policy. Yes, my friends recessions are always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon and that is also the case in Russia!

Global oil prices started to drop in July 2008 and initially the Russian central bank allowed the ruble to weaken. However, as the sell-off in global oil prices escalated in Q3 2008 the CBR clearly started to worry about the impact it would have on ruble. As a consequence the CBR started intervening very heavily in the FX markets to halt the sell-off in the ruble. Obviously to do this the CBR had to buy ruble and sell foreign currency, which naturally lead to drop in the Russian foreign currency reserves of around 200bn dollars in Q3 2008 and a very sharp contraction in the Russian money supply (M2 dropped around 20%!). This misguided intervention in the currency market and the monetary contraction that followed lead to a collapse in Russian property prices and sparked a major banking crisis in Russia – luckily the largest Russian banks was not too badly affected by this a number medium sized banks collapsed in late 2008 and early 2009. As a consequence money velocity also contracted, which further worsened the economic crisis. In fact the drop in real GDP was the latest among the G20 in 2008-9.

…and how monetary expansion brought Russia out of the crisis

As the Russian FX reserve was dwindling in the Autumn 2008 the Russian central bank (probably) realised that either it would cease intervening in the FX or be faced with a situation where the FX reserve would vanish. Therefore by December 2008 the CBR stepped back from the FX market and allowed for a steeper decline in the value of the ruble. As consequence the contraction in the Russian money supply came to an end. Furthermore, as the Federal Reserve finally started to ease US monetary policy in early 2009 global oil prices started to recover and as CBR now did not allow the rub to strengthen at the same pace of rising oil prices the price of oil measured in ruble increase quite a bit in the first half of 2009.

The monetary expansion has continued until today and as a consequence the Russian economy has continued to recover. In fact contrary to the situation in the US and the euro zone one could easily argue that monetary tightening is warranted it in Russia.

Oil prices should be included in the RUB basket

I hope that my arguments above illustrate how the Russian crisis of 2008-9 can be explained by what the great Bob Hetzel calls the monetary disorder view. I have no doubt that if the Russian central bank had allowed for a freely floating ruble then the boom (and misallocation) in 2006-7 would have been reduced significantly and had the ruble been allowed to drop more sharply in line with oil prices in the Autumn of 2008 then the crisis would have been much smaller and banking crisis would likely have been avoided.

Therefore, the policy recommendation must be that the CBR should move to a free float of ruble and I certainly think it would make sense for Russia also to introduce a NGDP level target. However, the Russian central bank despite the promises that the ruble soon will be floated (at the moment the CBR say it will happen in 2013) clearly seems to maintain a fear of floating. Furthermore, I would caution that the quality of economic data in Russia in general is rather pure, which would make a regular NGDP level targeting regime more challenging. At the same time with a relatively underdeveloped financial sector and a generally low level of liquidity in the Russian financial markets it might be challenging to conduct monetary policy in Russian through open market operations and interest rate changes.

As a consequence it might be an idea for Russia to move towards implementing PEP – or rather a variation of PEP. Today the CBR manages the ruble against a basket of euros and dollars and in my view it would make a lot of sense to expand this basket with oil prices. To begin with oil prices could be introduced into the basket with a 20% weight and then a 40% weight for both euros and dollars. This is far from perfect and the goal certainly should still be to move to a free floating ruble, but under the present circumstances it would be much preferable to the present monetary set-up and would strongly reduce the risk of renewed bubbles in the Russian economy and as well as insuring against a monetary contraction in the event of a new sharp sell-off in oil prices.

…as I am finishing this post my taxi is parking in front of my hotel in Stockholm so now you know what you will be able to write going from Latvia to Sweden on an early Wednesday morning. Later today I will be doing a presentation for Danske Bank’s clients in Stockholm. The topics are Emerging Markets and wine economics! (Yes, wine economics…after all I am a proud member for the American Association of Wine Economists).

27 Comments
by Lars Christensen on April 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in George Selgin, Jeffrey Frankel, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, MV=PY, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Peg the Export Price (PEP), Productivity Norm, Robert Hetzel, Russia, Transmission mechanism
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on April 18, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/04/18/pep-ngdplt-and-how-to-avoid-russian-monetary-policy-failure/

Counterfeiting, nazis and monetary separation

A couple of months ago a friend my sent me an article from the Guardian about how “Nazi Germany flooded Europe with fake British banknotes in an attempt to destroy confidence in the currency. The forgeries were so good that even German spymasters paid their agents in Britain with fake notes..The fake notes were first circulated in neutral Portugal and Spain with the double objective of raising money for the Nazi cause and creating a lack of confidence in the British currency.”

The article made me think about the impact of counterfeiting and whether thinking about the effects of counterfeiting could teach us anything about monetary theory. It should be stressed that my argument will not be a defense of counterfeiting. Counterfeiting is obviously fraudulent and as such immoral.

Thinking about the impact of counterfeiting we need to make two assumptions. First, are the counterfeited notes (and coins for the matter) “good” or not. Second what is the policy objective of the central bank – does the central bank have a nominal target or not.

Lets start out analyzing the case where the quality of the the counterfeited notes is so good that nobody will be able to distinguish them from the real thing and where the central bank has a clear and credible nominal target – for example a inflation target or a NGDP level target. In this case the counterfeiter basically is able to expand the money supply in a similar fashion as the central bank. Hence, effectively the nazi German counterfeiters in this scenario would be able to increase inflation and the level of NGDP in the UK in the same way as the Bank of  England. However, if the BoE had been operating an inflation target then any increase in inflation (above the inflation target) due to an increase in the counterfeit money supply would have lead the BoE to reduce the official money supply. Furthermore, if the inflation target was credible an increase in inflation would be considered to be temporary by market participants and would lead to a drop in money velocity (this is the Chuck Norris effect).

Hence, under a credible inflation targeting regime an increase in the counterfeit money supply would automatically lead to a drop in the official money supply and/or a drop in money-velocity and as a consequence it would not lead to an increase in inflation. The same would go for any other nominal target.

In fact we can imagine a situation where the entire official UK money supply would have been replaced by “nazi notes” and the only thing the BoE was be doing was to provide a credible nominal anchor. This would in fact be complete monetary separation – between the different functions of money. On the one hand the Nazi counterfeiters would be supplying both the medium of exchange and a medium for store of value, while the BoE would be supplying a unit of account.

Therefore the paradoxical result is that as long as the central bank provides a credible nominal target the impact of counterfeiting will be limited in terms of the impact on the economy. There is, however, one crucial impact and that is the revenue from seigniorage from iss uing money would be captured by the counterfeiters rather than by the central bank. From a fiscal perspective this might or might not be important.

Could counterfeiting be useful?

This also leads us to what surely is a controversial conclusion that a central bank, which is faced with a situation where there is strong monetary deflation – for example in the US during the Great Depression – counterfeiting would actually be beneficial as it would increase the “effective” money supply and therefore help curb the deflationary pressures. In that regard it would be noted that this case only is relevant when the nominal target – for example a NGDP level target or lets say a 2% inflation target is not seen to be credible.

Therefore, if the nominal target is not credible and there is deflation we could argue that counterfeiting could be beneficial in terms of hitting the nominal target. Of course in a situation with high inflation and no credible nominal target counterfeiting surely would make the inflationary problems even worse. This would probably have been the case in the UK during WW2 – inflation was high and there was not a credible nominal target and as such had the nazi counterfeiting been “successful” then it surely would have had a serious a negative impact on the British economy in the form of potential hyperinflation.

Monetary separation could be desirable – at least in terms of thinking about money

The discussion above in my view illustrates that it is important in separating the different functions of money when we talk about monetary policy and the example with perfect counterfeiting under a credible nominal target shows that we can imagine a situation where the provision of the unit of accounting is produced by a (monopoly) central bank, but where production the medium of exchange and storage is privatized. This is at the core of what used to be know as New Monetary Economics (NME).

The best known NME style policy proposal is the little understood BFH system proposed by Leland Yeager and Robert Greenfield. What Yeager and Greenfield basically is suggesting is that the only task the central bank should provide is the provision media of accounting, while the other functions should be privatised – or should I say it should be left to “counterfeiters”.

While I am skeptical about the practically workings of the BFH system and certainly is not proposing to legalise counterfeiting one should acknowledge that the starting point for monetary policy most be to provide the medium account – or said in another way under a monopoly central bank the main task of the central bank is to provide a numéraire. NGDP level targeting of course is such numéraire.

A more radical solution could of course be to allow private issuance of money denominated in the official medium of account. This effectively would take away the need for a lender of last resort, but would not be a full Free Banking system as the central bank would still set the numéraire, which occasionally would necessitate that the central bank issued its own money or sucked up privated issued money to ensure the NGDP target (or any other nominal target). This is of course not completely different from what is already happening in the sense the private banks under the present system is able to create money – and one can argue that that is in fact what happened in the US during the Great Moderation.

11 Comments
by Lars Christensen on April 8, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Chuck Norris Effect, Free Banking, General economic theory, Inflation, Inflation Targeting, Leland Yeager, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, The Great Depression, The Great Moderation, Transmission mechanism, Tyler Cowen
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Posted by Lars Christensen on April 8, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/04/08/counterfeiting-nazis-and-monetary-separation/

Lets concentrate on the policy framework

Here is Scott Sumner:

I’ve noticed that when I discuss economic policy with other free market types, it’s easier to get agreement on broad policy rules than day-to-day discretionary decisions.

I have noticed the same thing – or rather I find that when pro-market economists are presented with Market Monetarist ideas based on the fact that we want to limit the discretionary powers of central banks then it is much easier to sell our views than when we just argue for monetary “stimulus”. I don’t want central bank to ease monetary policy. I don’t want central banks to tighten monetary policy. I simply want to central banks to stop distorting relative prices. I believe the best way to ensure that is with futures based NGDP targeting as this is the closest we get to the outcome that would prevail under a truly free monetary system with competitive issuance of money.

I have often argued that NGDP level targeting is not about monetary stimulus (See here, here and here) and argued that NGDP level targeting is the truly free market alternative (see here).

This in my view is the uniting view for free market oriented economists. We can disagree about whether monetary policy was too loose in the US and Europe prior to 2008 or whether it became too tight in 2008/9. My personal view is that both US and European monetary policy likely was (a bit!) too loose prior to 2008, but then turned extremely tight in 2008/09. The Great Depression was not caused by too easy monetary policy, but too tight monetary policy. However, in terms of policy recommendations is that really important? Yes it is important in the sense of what we think that the Fed or the ECB should do right now in the absence of a clear framework of NGDP targeting (or any other clear nominal target). However, the really important thing is not whether the Fed or the ECB will ease a little bit more or a little less in the coming month or quarter, but how we ensure the right institutional framework to avoid a future repeat of the catastrophic policy response in 2008/9 (and 2011!). In fact I would be more than happy if we could convince the ECB and the Fed to implement NGDP level target at the present levels of NGDP in Europe and the US – that would mean a lot more to me than a little bit more easing from the major central banks of the world (even though I continue to think that would be highly desirable as well).

What can Scott Sumner, George Selgin, Pete Boettke, Steve Horwitz, Bob Murphy and John Taylor all agree about? They want to limit the discretionary powers of central banks. Some of them would like to get rid of central banks all together, but as long as that option is not on the table they they all want to tie the hands of central bankers as much as possible. Scott, Steve and George all would agree that a form of nominal income targeting would be the best rule. Taylor might be convinced about that I think if it was completely rule based (at least if he listens to Evan Koeing). Bob of course want something completely else, but I think that even he would agree that a futures based NGDP targeting regime would be preferable to the present discretionary policies.

So maybe it is about time that we take this step by step and instead of screaming for monetary stimulus in the US and Europe start build alliances with those economists who really should endorse Market Monetarist ideas in the first place.

Here are the steps – or rather the questions Market Monetarists should ask other free market types (as Scott calls them…):

1) Do you agree that in the absence of Free Banking that monetary policy should be rule based rather than based on discretion?

2) Do you agree that markets send useful and appropriate signals for the conduct of monetary policy?

3) Do you agree that the market should be used to do forecasting for central banks and to markets should be used to implement policies rather than to leave it to technocrats? For example through the use of prediction markets and futures markets. (See my comments on prediction markets and market based monetary policy here and here).

4) Do you agree that there is good and bad inflation and good and bad deflation?

5) Do you agree that central banks should not respond to non-monetary shocks to the price level?

6) Do you agree that monetary policy can not solve all problems? (This Market Monetarists do not think so – see here)

7) Do you agree that the appropriate target for a central bank should be to the NGDP level?

I am pretty sure that most free market oriented monetary economists would answer “yes” to most of these questions. I would of course answer “yes” to them all.

So I suggest to my fellow Market Monetarists that these are the questions we should ask other free market economists instead of telling them that they are wrong about being against QE3 from the Fed. In fact would it really be strategically correct to argue for QE3 in the US right now? I am not sure. I would rather argue for strict NGDP level targeting and then I am pretty sure that the Chuck Norris effect and the market would do most of the lifting. We should basically stop arguing in favour of or against any discretionary policies.

PS I remain totally convinced that when economists in future discuss the causes of the Great Recession then the consensus among monetary historians will be that the Hetzelian-Sumnerian explanation of the crisis was correct. Bob Hetzel and Scott Sumner are the Hawtreys and Cassels of the day.

11 Comments
by Lars Christensen on April 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Bob Murphy, Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris Effect, Evan Koeing, Free Banking, George Selgin, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Peter Boettke, Robert Hetzel, Scott Sumner, Selgin's Monetary Credo, Steven Horwitz, The Great Recession
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Posted by Lars Christensen on April 2, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/04/02/lets-concentrate-on-the-policy-framework/

The Close Connection Between Evan Koenig and Market Monetarism

Evan Koenig – who is a long-time defender of NGDP targeting – is out with a new paper: “All in the Family: The Close Connection Between Nominal-GDP Targeting and the Taylor Rule”. Evan of course is a Senior Economist and Vice President at the Dallas Fed.

Frankly speaking I have not yet have time to read the paper, but I wanted to share the link with my readers nonetheless.

Here is the abstract:

“The classic Taylor rule for adjusting the stance of monetary policy is formally a special case of nominal- gross-domestic-product (GDP) targeting. Suitably implemented, moreover, nominal-GDP targeting satisfies the definition of a flexible inflation targeting policy rule. However, nominal-GDP targeting would require more discipline from policymakers than some analysts think is realistic.”

So what Koeing is basically arguing that we should not see NGDP level targeting as something so fundamentally different from the Taylor rule – at least in relation to Federal Reserve’s mandate. I am not sure I totally agree, but I would certainly agree that if a Taylor rule can be said to be within the Fed’s mandate so can a NGDP level target.

I have two earlier posts relating to NGDP targeting and Fed’s mandate:

Let the Fed target a Quasi-Real PCE Price Index (QRPCE)

NGDP level targeting and the Fed’s mandate

I hope I will be able to read all of Evan’s paper in the coming days and I highly recommend to read Evan’s other papers on NGDP targeting. He has written a few. See here and here.

Our friend Bill Woolsey also has great post on on Evan’s paper.

3 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 29, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Bill Woolsey, Evan Koeing, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting
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Posted by Lars Christensen on March 29, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/03/29/the-close-connection-between-evan-koenig-and-market-monetarism/

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