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Working Paper
Drifting inflation targets and stagflation
The 1970s provided the United States its first experience with the phenomenon of stagflation?simultaneously high inflation and poor economic performance in terms of unemployment and GDP. Economists continue to debate the root causes of stagflation. The conventional view is that sharp increases in the price of oil during the decade were to blame: large increases in oil prices raise inflation, which saps purchasing power from consumers and businesses and thus hurts economic activity. But a number of economists also point to a role for monetary policy in generating stagflation, in particular ...
Journal Article
How do households respond to uncertainty shocks?
Economic disruptions generally coincide with heightened uncertainty. In the United States, uncertainty increased sharply with the recent housing market crash, financial crisis, deep recession, and uneven recovery. In July 2010 Congressional testimony, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke described conditions as "unusually uncertain." The uncertain landscape was also cited as a factor in the slow recovery from the 2001 recession, when the March 2003 Federal Open Market Committee statement highlighted the "unusually large uncertainties" at the time. ; Uncertainty is a standard feature of most ...
Working Paper
Drifting Inflation Targets and Monetary Stagflation
This paper revisits the phenomenon of stagflation. Using a standard New Keynesian dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model, we show that stagflation from monetary policy alone is a very common occurrence when the economy is subject to both deviations from the policy rule and a drifting inflation target. Once the inflation target is fixed, the incidence of stagflation in the baseline model is essentially eliminated. In contrast with several other recent papers that have focused on the connection between monetary policy and stagflation, we show that while high uncertainty about monetary ...