Monetary policy - United States ; Monetary policy ; Banks and banking, Central

James Tobin

English

Research Papers in Economics

Panel Discussion
James Tobin*
The question put to this panel was’. How can monetary policy be
improved? We are supposed to consider not only what improvements to
recommend but also how to reconcile public and central bank prefer-
ences.
I agree with several previous speakers who have commented that
monetary policy did pretty well in the Volcker era. I refer not just to the
conquest of inflation between 1979 and 1982 but to the Fed’s wisdom in
declaring victory at the brink of an economic and financial abyss when
inflation was still about 5 percent. If Senator Aiken’s formula for ending
the Vietnam Warmdeclare victory and get outmhad been adopted, the
world would be a better place today.
In the 1982-83 period, Paul Volcker saved us from a prolonged and
ever deeper recession. At the same time, Volcker’s Fed interred inter-
mediate monetary aggregates as a guide to policy. Thus were we spared
unnecessary and wasteful fluctuations in economic activity due to
shocks in the velocity of one or another M1. In their place, the Fed
focused on intrinsically important macroeconomic objectives: real GNP
and its growth, employment and unemployment, prices and inflation.
The main operating instrument became the federal funds rate. As the
Fed fine-tuned the 1983-89 recovery, unemployment fell below what
had been regarded in 1980 as the lowest inflation-safe rate, yet inflation
continued to subside.
*Sterling Professor of Economics Emeritus, Yale University.PANEL DISCUSSION 233
Business Cycles Are Not Symmetrical Deviations
from Equilibrium
Yesterday, several speakers described business cycles as symmetri-
cal fluctuations of real GNP around its equilibrium trend. This symmetry
was particularly explicit in John Taylor’s ingenious circle diagram. I do
not think it is realistically correct. I observe that the economy spends
many more years with GNP falling short of potential GNP than with
GNP exceeding potential. Full employment, as most economists esti-
mate it, is not a central value but a ceiling seldom reached. Consider
quarterly estimates of the "Okun gap" from 1946 to 1992. The average
gap is 2.1 percent of potential per capita GNP if negative gaps are
counted or 2.7 if they are counted as zeros. The task of macroeconomic
policy is not just to moderate fluctuations around the mean but to raise
the mean itself.
Some asymmetry is understandable. To bring inflation down a
point may take a cut in aggregate demand bigger than the expansionary
dose that previously raised it a point. Yet as the 1980s cycle shows, and
probably the 1990s cycle also, a Federal Reserve-engineered recession
cure for inflation seems to take a shorter time than a Fed fine-tuned
recovery from that recession.
The misleading semantics of business cycles probably contributes to
complacency about the pace of "recoveries." The NBER arbiters of
cyclical dating use zero real growth as the dividing line between
recession and recovery. Consequently, positive real GNP change is
"recovery," even if it is less than the trend growth of potential and the
GNP gap is thus increasing. Naturally, reporters and politicians follow
the NBER practice, and pressure for expansionary policy on the Fed and
the government in general vanishes once the quarterly real growth
report is positive rather than negative. There were 34 recession quarters
and 123 recovery quarters over the period 1955:IV to 1994:II by NBER
reckoning, but 76 recession quarters and 81 recovery quarters by growth
accounting. The NBER committee turns a deaf ear to my protestations.
The semantic illusion seems particularly costly in Europe. It is not
too farfetched to say that Europe chose never really to recover from the
two worldwide oil-shock, anti-inflation recessions of the decade 1973 to
1982. Europe seems content to return to sustainable growth rates at
lower and lower rates of utilization, without ever recapturing the
ground lost in those recessions. With chronic double-digit unemploy-
ment rates in several members of the European Union, the policy might
be described as cutting out of the economy large fractions of the
population, buying their acquiescence by welfare-state transfers, and
then blaming the "structural" unemployment on the transfers.
I make this point to explain why I am not enthralled by the
recommendations I heard this morning, that the United States follow234 James Tobin
the European example and gear monetary policy exclusively to price
stability. This orientation of monetary policy has been very cosily in
Europe, and it is likely to be even more costly if it is enshrined as dogma
by the Maastricht Treaty.
Improving the Central Bank’s Control of
Aggregate Demand
I have some modest suggestions for improving Federal Reserve
power to manage aggregate demand. Whatever its goals, the Fed can
realize them only by affecting agg~regate demand for goods and services.
I wish the conference had discussed more fully the mechanisms of
transmission of monetary policies these days.
The Fed has chosen the shortest interest rate as its operating
instrument, presumably in order to minimize its interventions in the
economic and financial markets. What is the linkage from the federal
funds rate to aggregate demand? The funds rate itself has little direct
impact. Its influence is indirect, via interest rates on assets of longer
duration and maturity, bank loan rates and lending policies, and equity
values. The funds rate seems to be a tiny tail wagging a huge dog. It
often works, but how? and how reliably?
The term structure is a weak and erratic link, as illustrated earlier
this year by the surprisingly large response of long rates to Fed increases
in the funds rate. It seemed that the bond market was making monetary
policy and the third and fourth moves by the Fed were just catching up.
Cannot the Fed intervene closer to the points of meaningful contact
between the financial and real economies?
With the help of the Treasury, the Fed could conduct open market
operations in longer maturities. Private debtors have different expecta-
tions of inflation and of future interest rates from those of lenders, and
certainly different views of the risks of movements in bond values. In
symmetrical markets, debtors’ views would be a counterweight to the
expectations and fears of the lenders’ side of the markets. For example,
debtors could use opportunities to buy back their debts when bond
prices are low. But one big debtor, the Treasury, is inert, and its
passivity surrenders power to the lenders.
I would like to see the Treasury issue indexed bonds. They would
be closer substitutes for equities and real capital than fixed-dollar
securities, and the Fed could buy and sell them. My reason for favoring
indexed bond issues is not the same as Alan Greenspan°s. He thinks he
would be able to read inflation expectations off the rate differential
between indexed and ordinary bonds. The trouble is that those are the
inflation expectations, along with the risk aversion premiums, of a very
nervous group of people whose interests and worries do not coincide
with those of ordinary Americans.PANEL DISCUSSION 235
The Fed Must Have Discretion and Be
Accountable for Its Use
Should the Fed commit itself to certain formal rules? I think not. The
reason is that blind rules, like Friedman’s k percent growth of M1,
independent of the state of the economy and of events affecting the
impacts of monetary operations, are bound to go wrong. If there are to
be rules, they have to allow for feedbacks from observations and
forecasts of economic circumstances. But you cannot hope to cover all
contingencies. The central bank has to retain a good bit of discretion to
decide how to meet unforeseen circumstances.
Neither is it possible to prescribe quantitative goals in legislation.
The Humphrey-Hawkins Act does so, but since its unemployment and
inflation goals are incompatible, they are simply ignored.
In practice, I think, we have no choice but to give the central bank
a broad mandate, with considerable discretion about both goals and
instruments. That makes the issue of accountability particularly acute.
The Humphrey-Hawkins reports include what are described as
macroeconomic projections by members of the Federal Open Market
Committee. The captain of a ship controls its course and speed. If he
estimates the ship’s position tomorrow noon, that is hardly a projection.
It is a plan--subject, to be sure, to weather and other events beyond the
skipper’s control. It is disingenuous for the FOMC to forecast or
"project" the economy, pretending that they have no control over it. I
would like to see the report contain the consensus of the FOMC as to the
macroeconomic path they will use their powers to achieve over coming
quarters and years.
I also believe (1) that all voting members of the FOMC should be,
like the Governors, federal officials appointed by the President and
confirmed by the Senate; (2) that a President should have the opportu-
nity early in his term to designate the Fed Chairman; and (3) that the
Secretary of the Treasury and the Chair of the Council of Economic
Advisers should be present at FOMC deliberations and allowed to
express their views even if they do not have votes.
After all, it is the President who pays the political price for any
adverse consequences of the central bank’s management of the econ-
omy. The prospectus for this panel mentions the problem of reconciling
public and central bank "preferences." I am not sure of the political
legitimacy of central bank preferences.
The Fed Should Not Aim Solely at Price Goals,
Certainly Not at Zero Inflation
I was appalled this morning at the support in this conference for
central banks to ignore employment and real growth and to aim236 James Tobin
single-mindedly at inflation stability or, what is more appalling, price
level stability. Who, if not the central bank, is supposed to worry about
real macroeconomic outcomes? Fiscal policy confronts increasing barri-
ers to its use in management of aggregate demand. Insisting on fiscal
prudence in bad weather and good, the Maastricht Treaty formally rules
out the use of fiscal policy for macroeconomic stabilization. I do not see
evidence that markets by themselves will do the job. The record of
Europe in the 1980s is discouraging.
What is the desirable trend rate of price inflation? This is an old
issue, and I would remind you of three arguments against literal zero
inflation and in favor of a moderate positive trend of prices. We are
talking, of course, about single-digit inflation rates, higher or lower or
zero, not about choices between hyperinflation and one- or two-digit rates.
First, it is harder and more traumatic to reduce individuals’ nominal
salaries and wages than to keep them from rising. Maybe some
irrationality is involved here, but an actual cut in dollar wages is an
outright insult. If markets dictate a fall in the real salaries of some or all
Harvard and MIT professors, I think less strain would be imposed on the
social fabric if it happens by a bit of inflation than by cutting dollar salaries.
Second is a similar argument on adjustment of real interest rates.
There are times, believe it or not, when the appropriate real rates on safe
short assets are negative. But you cannot get there from here, given the
floor of zero on nominal rates, if trend inflation, actual and expected, is
zero or negative.
Third, considerable ambiguity remains about what price indexes
measure, and how well they fit the motivations in the minds of
advocates Of zero inflation. Most economists agree, I think, that the U.S.
Consumer Price Index overstates annual inflation by at least 2 percent-
age points, because of unmeasured quality improvements in existing
goods and services. Taking account of additions to the menu of goods
and services available is an even thornier problem. If the central bank
tries to stabilize the CPI, it may actually be deflating indexes of product
prices. It would not be wise to freeze into constitutions, treaties, or
statutes any particular price index, statistical or conceptual.
One final comment: As Jacob Marschak gently reminded Henry
Wallich in a memorable Yale seminar years ago, prices are not in
anybody’s utility function. Price or inflation stability is not an ultimate
social good, but must be justified as an instrument that will deliver more
utility-laden goodies to the society. The evidence that it will is weak.
Recently Chairman Greenspan has suggested that lowering the trend
inflation rate, presumably by monetary policy, will raise long-term
productivity growth, a dubious hypothesis yet to be successfully tested.

How can monetary policy be improved?

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How can monetary policy be improved?

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