The Great Inflation

The Great Inflation PDF Author: Michael D. Bordo
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226066959
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

The Great Inflation

The Great Inflation PDF Author: Michael D. Bordo
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226066959
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

Inflation Expectations

Inflation Expectations PDF Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135179778
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Get Book Here

Book Description
Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Why Inflation Targeting?

Why Inflation Targeting? PDF Author: Charles Freedman
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 145187233X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 27

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the second chapter of a forthcoming monograph entitled "On Implementing Full-Fledged Inflation-Targeting Regimes: Saying What You Do and Doing What You Say." We begin by discussing the costs of inflation, including their role in generating boom-bust cycles. Following a general discussion of the need for a nominal anchor, we describe a specific type of monetary anchor, the inflation-targeting regime, and its two key intellectual roots-the absence of long-run trade-offs and the time-inconsistency problem. We conclude by providing a brief introduction to the way in which inflation targeting works.

Inflation Crises and Long-run Growth

Inflation Crises and Long-run Growth PDF Author: Michael Bruno
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 64

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recent literature suggests that long-run averages of growth and inflation are only weakly correlated and such correlation is not robust to exclusion of extreme inflation observations; inclusion of time series panel data has improved matters, but an aggregate parametric approach remains inconclusive. We propose a nonparametric definition of high inflation crises as periods when inflation is above 40 percent annually. Excluding countries with high inflation crises, we find no evidence of any consistent relationship between growth and inflation at any frequency. However, we find that growth falls sharply during discrete high inflation crises, then recovers surprisingly strongly after inflation falls. The fall in growth during crisis and recovery of growth after crisis tend to average out to close to zero (even slightly above zero), hence the lack of a robust cross-section correlation. Our findings could be consistent either with trend stationarity of output, in which inflation crises are purely cyclical phenomena, or with models in which crises have a favorable long-run purgative effect. Our findings do not support the view that reduction of high inflation carries heavy short-to-medium run output costs.

NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003

NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003 PDF Author: Mark Gertler
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262572217
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Get Book Here

Book Description
The NBER Macroeconomics Annual presents pioneering work in macroeconomics by leading academic researchers to an audience of public policymakers and the academic community. Each commissioned paper is followed by comments and discussion. This year's edition provides a mix of cutting-edge research and policy analysis on such topics as productivity and information technology, the increase in wealth inequality, behavioral economics, and inflation.

Uncertainty and Unemployment

Uncertainty and Unemployment PDF Author: Sangyup Choi
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498356303
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 26

Get Book Here

Book Description
We study the role of uncertainty shocks in explaining unemployment dynamics, separating out the role of aggregate and sectoral channels. Using S&P500 data from the first quarter of 1957 to third quarter of 2014, we construct separate indices to measure aggregate and sectoral uncertainty and compare their effects on the unemployment rate in a standard macroeconomic vector autoregressive (VAR) model. We find that aggregate uncertainty leads to an immediate increase in unemployment, with the impact dissipating within a year. In contrast, sectoral uncertainty has a long-lived impact on unemployment, with the peak impact occurring after two years. The results are consistent with a view that the impact of aggregate uncertainty occurs through a “wait-and-see” mechanism while increased sectoral uncertainty raises unemployment by requiring greater reallocation across sectors.

Is There a Debt-threshold Effect on Output Growth?

Is There a Debt-threshold Effect on Output Growth? PDF Author: Mr.Alexander Chudik
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513555901
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 59

Get Book Here

Book Description
This paper studies the long-run impact of public debt expansion on economic growth and investigates whether the debt-growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness. Our contribution is both theoretical and empirical. On the theoretical side, we develop tests for threshold effects in the context of dynamic heterogeneous panel data models with cross-sectionally dependent errors and illustrate, by means of Monte Carlo experiments, that they perform well in small samples. On the empirical side, using data on a sample of 40 countries (grouped into advanced and developing) over the 1965- 2010 period, we find no evidence for a universally applicable threshold effect in the relationship between public debt and economic growth, once we account for the impact of global factors and their spillover effects. Regardless of the threshold, however, we find significant negative long-run effects of public debt build-up on output growth. Provided that public debt is on a downward trajectory, a country with a high level of debt can grow just as fast as its peers in the long run.

The Costs and Benefits of Price Stability

The Costs and Benefits of Price Stability PDF Author: Martin Feldstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226241769
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Get Book Here

Book Description
In recent years, the Federal Reserve and central banks worldwide have enjoyed remarkable success in their battle against inflation. The challenge now confronting the Fed and its counterparts is how to proceed in this newly benign economic environment: Should monetary policy seek to maintain a rate of low-level inflation or eliminate inflation altogether in an effort to attain full price stability? In a seminal article published in 1997, Martin Feldstein developed a framework for calculating the gains in economic welfare that might result from a move from a low level of inflation to full price stability. The present volume extends that analysis, focusing on the likely costs and benefits of achieving price stability not only in the United States, but in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom as well. The results show that even small changes in already low inflation rates can have a substantial impact on the economic performance of different countries, and that variations in national tax rules can affect the level of gain from disinflation.

A Simple Multivariate Filter for Estimating Potential Output

A Simple Multivariate Filter for Estimating Potential Output PDF Author: Patrick Blagrave
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1475565135
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 30

Get Book Here

Book Description
Estimates of potential output are an important ingredient of structured forecasting and policy analysis. Using information on consensus forecasts, this paper extends the multivariate filter developed by Benes and others (2010). Although the estimates in real time are more robust relative to those of naïve statistical filters, there is still significant uncertainty surrounding the estimates. The paper presents estimates for 16 countries and provides an example of how the filtered estimates at the end of the sample period can be improved with additional information.

IMF Staff Papers

IMF Staff Papers PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451956029
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
This paper discusses effects of inflation on economic development. A mild inflation may well encourage little, or no, evasion of the “inflation tax.” On the other hand, a strong inflation, and frequently a mild one also, will lead to community reactions which have effects like those of widespread tax evasion. A development policy may have wider aims than the encouragement of a high level of investment. Inflation has two effects on the desire for liquidity, which are related to the two basic reasons why individuals and businesses wish to hold liquid assets—the speculative and precautionary motives. Inflation increases the value of effective liquidity, thereby raising the community's desire for it, but it makes the most generally accepted store of liquidity unacceptable sources of protection. The control of inflation is only one of the problems facing a government wishing to encourage rapid economic development. The fight against illiteracy, the reform of bureaucratic practices, the building of basic sanitary facilities for the eradication of endemic diseases, the substitution of competitive for monopolistic trade practices, the encouragement of a widespread spirit of entrepreneurship, and the creation of an adequate amount of social capital, may be important prerequisites for rapid growth.