Is increased price flexibility stabilizing? The role of the permanent income hypothesis

Prices ; Income

Forecasting M2 growth: an exploration in real time

Evan Koenig presents a model that has proved successful at reproducing the pattern of M2 growth over the first half of the decade of the 1990s. The model suggests that a large gap between long-term bond yields and M2 deposit rates contributed importantly to the slow money growth that persisted through the end of 1994. The increased availability of bond market mutual funds may also have played a role in the money growth slowdown. The model can be combined with real-time published forecasts of spending and interest rates to yield predictions of future changes in money growth. It has generally performed well in this regard. However, in 1995 a sharp flattening of the yield curve led to a more-pronounced-than-expected acceleration of M2 growth, calling the future forecasting performance of the model into question. Results for an M2 aggregate expanded to include household bond funds are similar.Money supply

Is there a persistence problem? Part 2: Maybe not

In Part 1 of this two-part series, Evan Koenig explains why some economists are skeptical that staggered price adjustment can account for monetary policy's sustained effects on aggregate economic activity. In Part 2, Koenig looks at labor-market imperfections as a possible source of persistence. He concludes that persistence is much easier to obtain if either labor cannot move freely from firm to firm or wages are set in overlapping wage contracts.Monetary policy ; Employment (Economic theory)

Using the Purchasing Managers' Index to assess the economy's strength and the likely direction of monetary policy

When economists are concerned that the economy may be about to change direction, one of the indicators to which they give special scrutiny is the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), released monthly by the Institute for Supply Management. This article discusses the construction and interpretation of the PMI and presents evidence of its usefulness as an indicator of growth in the manufacturing sector and the economy as a whole, and as a predictor of changes in Federal Reserve policy. PMI values above 47 generally signal expansion in manufacturing, while the critical value for positive GDP growth is around 40. Over the past fifteen years, PMI values above 52.5 have tended to be associated with rising short-term interest rates.> When economists are concerned that the economy may be about to change direction, one of the indicators to which they give special scrutiny is the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), released monthly by the Institute for Supply Management. This article discusses the construction and interpretation of the PMI and presents evidence of its usefulness as an indicator of growth in the manufacturing sector and the economy as a whole, and as a predictor of changes in Federal Reserve policy. PMI values above 47 generally signal expansion in manufacturing, while the critical value for positive GDP growth is around 40. Over the past fifteen years, PMI values above 52.5 have tended to be associated with rising short-term interest rates.>Economic indicators ; Manufactures ; Interest rates

What's new about the new economy? : some lessons from the current expansion

Economic conditions - United States ; Economic stabilization

Through a glass, darkly: how data revisions complicate monetary policy

Employment ; Inflation (Finance) ; Productivity ; Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index ; Federal Reserve banks ; Consumer price indexes ; Gross domestic product ; Greenspan, Alan

Monetary policy, financial stability, and the distribution of risk

In an economy in which debt obligations are fixed in nominal terms, but there are otherwise no nominal rigidities, a monetary policy that targets inflation inefficiently concentrates risk, tending to increase the financial distress that accompanies adverse real shocks. Nominal-income targeting spreads risk more evenly across borrowers and lenders, reproducing the equilibrium that one would observe if there were perfect capital markets. Empirically, inflation surprises have no independent influence on measures of financial strain once one controls for shocks to nominal GDP.Debt ; Inflation risk

Capacity utilization as a real-time predictor of manufacturing output

In this article, Evan F. Koenig demonstrates that the Federal Reserve Board's initial estimate of manufacturing capacity utilization is helpful in predicting subsequent growth in manufacturing output. Together with lagged real-time output growth and growth in the composite index of leading indicators, capacity utilization explains more than 50 percent of the variation in output growth at a four-quarter horizon. Based on data available at the beginning of the year, the forecasting equation predicts little or no growth in manufacturing output during 1996.Industrial capacity ; Manufactures

Monetary policy: on the right track?

Federal funds rate ; Employment (Economic theory) ; Inflation (Finance)

Is there a persistence problem? Part I: maybe

Empirical studies suggest that monetary policy shocks can have a sustained impact on aggregate output. How is it possible for nominal shocks to have persistent real effects? One popular explanation centers on overlapping price contracts. However, recent theoretical work has cast doubt on the price-contract story. It turns out to be extremely difficult to obtain long-lasting output effects from policy shocks in a world with staggered price setting, except under unrealistic assumptions about household tastes.Business cycles ; Prices