William T. Gavin

Endogenous Money Supply and the Business Cycle

An empirical and theoretical analysis of how changes in the monetary policy function affect the covariance structure of macroeconomic data.

Evaluating FOMC forecasts

Federal Reserve policymakers began reporting their economic forecasts to Congress in 1979. These forecasts are important because they indicate what the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members think will be the likely consequence of their policies. We evaluate the accuracy of the FOMC forecasts relative to private sector forecasts, the forecasts of the Research Staff at the Board of Governors, and a naive alternative forecast. The Fed reports both the range (high and low) of the individual policymakers forecasts and a truncated central tendency. We find no reason to consider the truncated version. We find that the FOMC output forecasts were better than the naive model and at least as good as those of the private sector and the Fed staff. The FOMC inflation forecasts were more accurate than the private sector forecasts and the naive model. For the period ending in 1996, however, they were not as accurate as Fed staff inflation forecasts.

The inflation-output variability tradeoff and price-level targets

In this article, the authors describe a popular monetary policy framework based on a neoclassical Phillips Curve model. Here, the choice between an inflation target and a price-level target depends on characteristics of real output. If the output gap is relatively persistent, then targeting the price level results in a better set of policy options for the central bank. The authors present evidence from the G-10 countries showing that conventionally measured output gaps are highly persistent. The policy implication of assuming rational expectations and this Phillips Curve model is that central banks should set objectives for a price level, not an inflation rate.

The Monetary Instrument Matters

This paper revisits the debate over the money supply versus the interest rate as the instrument of monetary policy. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework, the authors examine the effects of alternative monetary policy rules on inflation persistence, the information content of monetary data, and real variables. They show that inflation persistence and the variability of inflation relative to money growth depend on whether the central bank follows a money growth rule or an interest rate rule. With a money growth rule, inflation is not persistent and the price level is much more volatile than the money supply. Those counterfactual implications are eliminated by the use of interest rate rules whether prices are sticky or not. A central banks use of interest rate rules, however, obscures the information content of monetary aggregates and also leads to subtle problems for econometricians trying to estimate money demand functions or to identify shocks to the trend and cycle components of the money stock.

The Zero Lower Bound, the Dual Mandate, and Unconventional Dynamics

This paper examines monetary policy when it is constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rate. Our analysis uses a nonlinear New Keynesian model with technology and discount factor shocks. Specifically, we investigate why technology shocks may have unconventional effects at the ZLB, what factors affect the likelihood of hitting the ZLB, and the implications of alternative monetary policy rules. We initially focus on a New Keynesian model without capital (Model 1) and then study that model with capital (Model 2). The advantage of including capital is that it introduces another mechanism for intertemporal substitution that strengthens the expectational effects of the ZLB. Four main findings emerge: (1) In Model 1, the choice of output target in the Taylor rule may reverse the effects of technology shocks when the ZLB binds; (2) When the central bank targets steady-state output in Model 2, a positive technology shock at the ZLB leads to more pronounced unconventional dynamics than in Model 1; (3) The presence of capital changes the qualitative effects of demand shocks and alters the impact of a monetary policy rule that emphasizes output stability; and (4) In Model 1, the constrained linear solution is a decent approximation of the nonlinear solution, but meaningful differences exist between the solutions in Model 2.

Forecasting Inflation and Output: Comparing Data-Rich Models with Simple Rules

Decision makers, both public and private, use forecasts of economic growth and inflation to make plans and implement policies. In many situations, reasonably good forecasts can be made with simple rules of thumb that are extrapolations of a single data series. In principle, information about other economic indicators should be useful in forecasting a particular series like inflation or output. Including too many variables makes a model unwieldy and not including enough can increase forecast error. A key problem is deciding which other series to include. Recently, studies have shown that Dynamic Factor Models (DFMs) may provide a general solution to this problem. The key is that these models use a large data set to extract a few common factors (thus, the term #data-rich*). This paper uses a monthly DFM model to forecast inflation and output growth at horizons of 3, 12 and 24 months ahead. These forecasts are then compared to simple forecasting rules.

Gold, Fiat Money and Price Stability

The classical gold standard has long been associated with long-run price stability. But short-run price variability led critics of the gold standard to propose reforms that look much like modern versions of price-path targeting. This paper uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to examine price dynamics under alternative policy regimes. In the model, a pure inflation target provides more short-run price stability than does the gold standard and, although it introduces a unit root into the price level, it leads to as much long-term price stability as does the gold standard for horizons shorter than 20 years. Relative to these regimes, Fishers compensated dollar (or pure price-path targeting) reduces inflation uncertainty by an order of magnitude at all horizons. A Taylor rule, with its relatively large weight on output, leads to large uncertainty about inflation at long horizons. This long-run inflation uncertainty can be largely eliminated by introducing an additional response to the deviation of the price level from a desired path.

Inflation Targeting: Why It Works and How To Make It Work Better

Inflation targeting has worked so well because it leads policymakers to debate, decide on, and communicate the inflation objective. In practice, this process has led the public to believe that the central bank has a long-term inflation objective. Inflation targeting has been successful, then, because the central bank decides on an objective and announces it, not because of a change in its day-to-day behavior in money markets or the way it reacts to news about unemployment or real GDP. By deciding on an inflation rate and announcing it, the central bank is providing information the public needs to concentrate expectations on a common trend. The central bank gains control indirectly by creating information that makes it more likely that people will price things in a way that is consistent with the central banks goal. The way to improve inflation targeting is to be more explicit about the average inflation rate expected over all relevant horizons. Building a target path for the price level, growing at the desired inflation rate, is the best way to institutionalize a low-inflation environment. In a wide variety of economic models, a price-path target mitigates the zero lower bound problem, eliminates worries about deflation, and improves the central banks ability to stabilize the real economy.

Using Extraneous Information to Analyze Monetary Policy in Transition Economies

Empirical macroeconomics is plagued by small sample size and large idiosyncratic variation. This problem is especially severe in the case of the transition economies. We utilize a mixed-estimation method incorporating prior information from OECD country data to estimate the parameters of a reduced-form transition economy model. An exactly identified structural VAR model is constructed to analyze monetary policy in the transition economies. The OECD information increases the precision of the impulse response functions in the transition economies. The method provides a systematic way to analyze monetary policy in the transition economies where data availability is limited.

Inflation-Targeting, Price-Path Targeting and Indeterminacy

In this paper, we examine the areas of indeterminacy in a flexible price RBC model with shopping time role for money and a central bank that uses an interest rate rule to target inflation and/or the price level. We present analytical results showing that, although inflation targeting often results in real indeterminacy, a price level target generally delivers a unique equilibrium for a relevant range of policy parameters.