[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1889.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Illusion of Stabilization Policy?

Author

Listed:
  • Steven L. Green
  • Herschel I. Grossman
Abstract
For the period 1959-1972 money growth in the United States was positively correlated with past inflation and negatively correlated with past unemployment, whereas for the period 1973-1984 this correlation pattern was reversed. International data, moreover, show that the eight largest western economies exhibit a wide variety of patterns for these correlations, and these patterns seem to be unrelated to average inflation. Theoretical analysis reveals that a model in which the monetary authority is concerned only with controlling inflation is consistent with any pattern of sample correlations of money growth with past inflation and past unemployment. This analysis suggests that international differences in these sample correlations result from differences in the sample variances of disturbances to productivity growth and to aggregate demand. Specifically, the analysis suggests that the critical difference between the pre-1973 and post-1973 periods for the United States was a decrease in the importance of transitory disturbances to aggregate demand relative to permanent disturbances to productivity growth. More generally, these results imply that we cannot readily infer the objectives of the monetary authority from observed patterns of monetary policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven L. Green & Herschel I. Grossman, 1986. "The Illusion of Stabilization Policy?," NBER Working Papers 1889, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1889
    Note: EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1889.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Taylor, John B, 1982. "Establishing Credibility: A Rational Expectations Viewpoint," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 81-85, May.
    2. Taylor, John B, 1981. "Stabilization, Accommodation, and Monetary Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 145-149, May.
    3. Nelson, Charles R. & Plosser, Charles I., 1982. "Trends and random walks in macroeconmic time series : Some evidence and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 139-162.
    4. Fischer, Stanley, 1977. "Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 191-205, February.
    5. Barro, Robert J & Gordon, David B, 1983. "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 589-610, August.
    6. Toma, Mark, 1982. "Inflationary bias of the Federal Reserve System : A bureaucratic perspective," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 163-190.
    7. Brunner, Karl & Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H., 1980. "Stagflation, persistent unemployment and the permanence of economic shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 467-492, October.
    8. Brunner, Karl & Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H., 1983. "Money and economic activity, inventories and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 281-319.
    9. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Herschel I. Grossman, 1988. "The Political Economy of War Debts and Inflation," NBER Working Papers 2743, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Rotondi, Zeno, 2000. "Time consistent monetary policy reconsidered: may we have a deflationary bias too?," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 4, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    3. Rotondi, Zeno, 2000. "Time consistent monetary policy reconsidered: may we have a deflationary bias too?," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 0004, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    4. Froyen, Richard T & Waud, Roger N, 1988. "Real Business Cycles and the Lucas Paradigm," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(2), pages 183-201, April.
    5. Bordo, Michael D., 1986. "Explorations in monetary history: A survey of the literature," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 339-415, October.
    6. Aurélien Goutsmedt, 2021. "From the Stagflation to the Great Inflation: Explaining the US economy of the 1970s," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 131(3), pages 557-582.
    7. Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2007. "Macroeconomic Modeling for Monetary Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 25-46, Fall.
    8. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    9. Bennett T. McCallum, 1984. "Credibility and monetary policy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 105-135.
    10. David Kiefer, 2013. "Are governments able to lean against the macroeconomic wind?," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2013_14, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    11. Guido Tabellini, 2005. "Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott's Contribution to the Theory of Macroeconomic Policy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 107(2), pages 203-216, June.
    12. Hartley, Peter R. & Whitt Jr, Joseph A., 2003. "Macroeconomic fluctuations: Demand or supply, permanent or temporary?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 61-94, February.
    13. van Lelyveld, Iman, 1999. "Inflation or unemployment? Who cares?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 463-484, September.
    14. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    15. J.M. Berk, 1998. "Monetary transmission: what do we know and how can we use it?," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 51(205), pages 145-170.
    16. Francisco Rosende, 1997. "La Autonomía del Banco Central una Vez Más," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 34(101), pages 3-26.
    17. Libich, Jan, 2008. "An explicit inflation target as a commitment device," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 43-68, March.
    18. Ernesto Dal Bo, 2002. "Supermajority Voting Rules: Balancing Commitment and Flexibility," Economics Series Working Papers 132, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    19. Burton Abrams & William Dougan, 1986. "The effects of constitutional restraints on governmental spending," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 101-116, January.
    20. Dal Bo, Ernesto, 2006. "Committees with supermajority voting yield commitment with flexibility," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 573-599, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1889. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.