Economic outlook

Presented by Charles I. Plosser, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Business Leaders Forum, Villanova School of Business, September 29, 2011>Monetary policy ; Inflation (Finance) ; Consumers

Commentary on "Economic projections and rules of thumb for monetary policy"

Monetary policy

The Behavior of Money, Credit, and Prices in a Real Business Cycle

This paper analyzes the interaction of money and the price level with a business cycle that is fully real in origin, adopting a view which differs sharply from traditional theories that assign a significant causal influence to monetary movements. The theoretical analysis focuses on a banking system that produces transaction. services on demand and thus reflects market activity. Under one regime of bank regulation and fiat money supply by the monetary authority, the real business cycle theory predicts that (i)movements in external monetary measures should be uncorrelated with real activity and(ii) movements in internal monetary measures should be positively correlated with real activity. Preliminary empirical analysis provides general support for this focus on the banking sector since much of the correlation between monetary measures and real activity is apparently with inside money.

Real Business Cycles and the Test of the Adelmans

This paper conducts a modern variant of the test proposed and carried out by Adelman and Adelman (1959). Using the methods developed by Burns and Mitchell (1946). we see if we can distinguish between the economic series generated by an actual economy and those analogous artificial series generated by a stochastically perturbed economic model. In the case of the Adelmans, the model corresponded to the Klein-Goldberger equations. In our case, the model corresponds to a simple real business cycle model. The results indicate a fairly high degree of coincidence in key economic aggregates between the business cycle characteristics identified in actual data and those found in our simulated economy.

Stochastic Trends and Economic Fluctuations

Recent developments in macroeconomic theory emphasize that transient economic fluctuations can arise as responses to changes in long run factors -- in particular, technological improvements -- rather than short run factors. This contrasts with the view that short run fluctuations and shifts in long run trends are largely unrelated. We examine empirically the effect of shifts in stochastic trends that are common to several macroeconomic series. Using a linear time series model related to a VAR, we consider first a system with GNP, consumption and investment with a single common stochastic trend; we then examine this system augmented by money and prices and an additional stochastic trend. Our results suggest that movements in the "real" stochastic trend account for one-half to two-thirds of the variation in postwar U.S. GNP.