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Working Paper
The opportunistic approach to disinflation
This paper explores the theoretical foundations of a new approach to monetary policy. Proponents of this approach hold that when inflation is moderate but still above the long-run objective, the Fed should not take deliberate anti-inflation action, but rather should wait for external circumstances-such as favorable supply shocks and unforeseen recessions-to deliver the desired reduction in inflation. While waiting for such circumstances to arise, the Fed should aggressively resist incipient increases in inflation. This strategy has come to be known as "the opportunistic approach to ...
Working Paper
Why do firms offer risky defined benefit pension plans?
Even risky pension sponsors could offer essentially riskless pension promises by contributing a sufficient level of resources to their pension trust funds and by investing those resources in fixed-income securities designed to deliver their payoffs just as pension obligations are coming due. However, almost no firm has chosen to fund its plan in this manner. We study the optimal funding choice for plan sponsors by developing a simple model of pension financing in which the total compensation offered to workers must clear the labor market. We find that if workers understand the implications of ...
Working Paper
Aggregate supply in the United States: recent developments and implications for the conduct of monetary policy
The recent financial crisis and ensuing recession appear to have put the productive capacity of the economy on a lower and shallower trajectory than the one that seemed to be in place prior to 2007. Using a version of an unobserved components model introduced by Fleischman and Roberts (2011), we estimate that potential GDP is currently about 7 percent below the trajectory it appeared to be on prior to 2007. We also examine the recent performance of the labor market. While the available indicators are still inconclusive, some indicators suggest that hysteresis should be a more present concern ...
Conference Paper
Four images of Ned Gramlich
Working Paper
A quantitative exploration of the opportunistic approach to disinflation
A number of observers have advocated recently that the Federal Reserve take an ``opportunistic'' approach to the conduct of monetary policy. A hallmark of this approach is that the central bank focuses on fighting inflation when inflation is high, but focuses on stabilizing output when inflation is low. The implied policy rule is nonlinear. This paper compares the behavior of inflation and output under opportunistic and conventional linear policies. Using stochastic simulations of a small-scale rational expectations model, we study the cost and time required to achieve a given disinflation, ...
Working Paper
Okun Revisited: Who Benefits Most from a Strong Economy
Previous research has shown that the labor market experiences of less advantaged groups are more cyclically sensitive than the labor market experiences of more advantaged groups; in other words, less advantaged groups experience a high-beta version of the aggregate fluctuations in the labor market. For example, when the unemployment rate of whites increases by 1 percentage point, the unemployment rates of African Americans and Hispanics rise by well more than 1 percentage point, on average. This behavior is observed across other labor-market indicators, and is roughly reversed when the ...