Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 23.
(refine search)
Discussion Paper
All in the family: the close connection between nominal-GDP targeting and the Taylor Rule
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.
Discussion Paper
Measuring core inflation: notes from a 2007 Dallas Fed conference
In May 2007, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas hosted a conference, organized with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, titled "Price Measurement for Monetary Policy." The conference broadly focused on two issues - the measurement of core inflation and the measurement of inflation expectations. This paper summarizes the conference papers on core inflation.
Discussion Paper
Openness and inflation
This paper reviews the evidence on the relationship between openness and inflation. There is a robust negative relationship across countries, first documented by Romer (1993), between a country's openness to trade and its long-run inflation rate. However, a key part of the standard explanation for this relationship?that central banks have a smaller incentive to engineer surprise inflations in more-open economies because the Phillips curve is steeper?seems at odds with the facts. While the United States is still not a very open economy by conventional measures, there are channels through which ...
Discussion Paper
The globalization of U.S. business investment
This paper documents some key facts about foreign direct investment flows by U.S. businesses overseas and foreign businesses in the United States. We show how the pattern of flows has evolved, examine the sources and destination of these flows, document associated employment and productivity gains, and show how investment-related sales compare with traditional exports. While the United States is a net debtor to the rest of the world, direct investment overseas by U.S. businesses exceeds direct investment in the U.S. by foreign businesses. Furthermore, U.S. businesses seem to earn more on ...
Discussion Paper
Estimating the output gap in real time
I propose a novel method of estimating the potential level of U.S. GDP in real time. The proposed wage-based measure of economic potential remains virtually unchanged when new data are released. The distance between current and potential output ? the output gap ? satisfies Okun?s law and outperforms many other measures of slack in forecasting inflation. Thus, I provide a robust statistical tool useful for understanding current economic conditions and guiding policymaking.
Discussion Paper
The global slack hypothesis
We illustrate the analytical content of the global slack hypothesis in the context of a variant of the widely used New Open-Economy Macro model of Clarida, Gal, and Gertler (2002) under the assumptions of both producer currency pricing and local currency pricing. The model predicts that the Phillips curve for domestic CPI inflation will be flatter under most plausible parameterizations, the more important international trade is to the domestic economy. The model also predicts that foreign output gaps will matter for inflation dynamics, along with the domestic output gap. We also show that the ...
Discussion Paper
Understanding the risks inherent in shadow banking: a primer and practical lessons learned
Examinations of the 2007?09 financial crisis often use the term shadow banking. This paper explains the form and functioning of the shadow banking system, how it relates to systemic risk and the recent financial crisis, and what particular aspects should be highlighted to benefit policymakers as they implement new regulations designed to enhance financial market resiliency. The paper is divided into two parts: The first serves as a primer on shadow banking; the second provides a narrative of how the system froze during the financial crisis and pertinent lessons learned for the current reform ...
Discussion Paper
Excluding items from personal consumption expenditures inflation
Core inflation measures constructed by excluding particularly volatile items from the price index have a long history. The most common such measures are indexes excluding the prices of food and energy items. This paper attempts to shed some statistical light on the impact of excluding certain items from the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. In particular, I am interested in the trade-off between reducing shortrun volatility (relative to the volatility of the headline index) and possibly distorting the measurement of inflation over longer horizons. Some of the questions this ...
Discussion Paper
Inflation, slack, and Fed credibility
It is generally agreed that slack has some impact on inflation. There is much less agreement on what form the relationship takes and whether it is stable enough to reliably help predict inflation. This analysis focuses on the Great Moderation period. We find that slack (as measured by the unemployment rate) and changes in slack are negatively correlated with changes in inflation and also deviations of inflation from long-forward inflation expectations.> ; These relationships could have been exploited to produce forecasts of trimmed mean PCE inflation more accurate than rule-of-thumb ...
Discussion Paper
Cross-country variation in the anchoring of inflation expectations
This paper develops a method for measuring the anchoring of long-run inflation expectations that does not require estimates of long-run inflation expectations. Such estimates exist for only a few developed economies, and even then only a short time series is available. By not requiring estimates of long-term inflation expectations, this method is able to measure the anchoring of inflation expectations in sixty-four different developed and developing countries. In addition, with rolling-window estimations we can measure the anchoring of expectations across time within a country, and thus we ...