IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ijc/ijcjou/y2021q2a3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Central Bank Communication and Disagreement about the Natural Rate Hypothesis

Author

Listed:
  • Carola Conces Binder

    (Haverford College)

Abstract

About half of professional forecasters report that they use the natural rate of unemployment (u∗) to forecast. I show that forecasters' reported use of and estimates of u∗ are informative about their expectations-formation process, including their use of a Phillips curve. Those who report not using u∗ have higher and less anchored inflation expectations, and seem to have found the Federal Reserve's state-based forward guidance less credible. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) publishes participants' projections of longer-run unemployment in the Summary of Economic Projections. I document how and when the FOMC participants have disagreed with each other and with the private sector, discussing possible sources of disagreement and implications for credibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Carola Conces Binder, 2021. "Central Bank Communication and Disagreement about the Natural Rate Hypothesis," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 17(2), pages 81-123, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ijc:ijcjou:y:2021:q:2:a:3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb21q2a3.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb21q2a3.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hayo, Bernd & Neuenkirch, Matthias, 2013. "Do Federal Reserve presidents communicate with a regional bias?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 62-72.
    2. Olivier Blanchard, 2018. "Should We Reject the Natural Rate Hypothesis?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 97-120, Winter.
    3. Beqiraj, Elton & Di Bartolomeo, Giovanni & Di Pietro, Marco, 2019. "Beliefs formation and the puzzle of forward guidance power," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 20-32.
    4. William A. Branch & John Carlson & George W. Evans & Bruce McGough, 2009. "Monetary Policy, Endogenous Inattention and the Volatility Trade‐off," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 123-157, January.
    5. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "What Can Survey Forecasts Tell Us about Information Rigidities?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(1), pages 116-159.
    6. Katharine G. Abraham & John Haltiwanger & Kristin Sandusky & James R. Spletzer, 2019. "The Consequences of Long-Term Unemployment: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(2), pages 266-299, March.
    7. Andrade, Philippe & Le Bihan, Hervé, 2013. "Inattentive professional forecasters," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 967-982.
    8. Saten Kumar & Hassan Afrouzi & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Inflation Targeting Does Not Anchor Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Firms in New Zealand," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 46(2 (Fall)), pages 151-225.
    9. Arturo Estrella & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1999. "Rethinking the Role of NAIRU in Monetary Policy: Implications of Model Formulation and Uncertainty," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 405-436, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. R. Jason Faberman & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2012. "Is there a skills mismatch in the labor market?," Chicago Fed Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Jul.
    11. Binder, Carola Conces & Wetzel, Samantha, 2018. "The FOMC versus the staff, revisited: When do policymakers add value?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 72-75.
    12. Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 964-985, September.
    13. Holston, Kathryn & Laubach, Thomas & Williams, John C., 2017. "Measuring the natural rate of interest: International trends and determinants," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(S1), pages 59-75.
    14. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & KennethF. Wallis, 2008. "Uncertainty and Disagreement in Economic Prediction: The Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 1107-1127, July.
    15. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & Kenneth F. Wallis, 2008. "Uncertainty and Disagreement in Economic Prediction: The Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 1107-1127, July.
    16. John C. Williams, 2006. "Robust estimation and monetary policy with unobserved structural change," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-16.
    17. Brent Bundick & Trenton Herriford, 2017. "How Do FOMC Projections Affect Policy Uncertainty?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q II, pages 5-22.
    18. Stephen J. Cole, 2021. "Learning and the Effectiveness of Central Bank Forward Guidance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(1), pages 157-200, February.
    19. Detmers, Gunda-Alexandra, 2016. "Forward Guidance under Disagreement - Evidence from the Fed’s dot projections," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145768, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Christina D. Romer & David Romer, 2002. "The evolution of economic understanding and postwar stabilization policy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 11-78.
    21. repec:zbw:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201504091146 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Danny Yagan, 2019. "Employment Hysteresis from the Great Recession," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(5), pages 2505-2558.
    23. Adriana Cornea-Madeira & Cars Hommes & Domenico Massaro, 2019. "Behavioral Heterogeneity in U.S. Inflation Dynamics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 288-300, April.
    24. Jung, Alexander & Latsos, Sophia, 2015. "Do federal reserve bank presidents have a regional bias?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PA), pages 173-183.
    25. Reis Ricardo, 2003. "Where Is the Natural Rate? Rational Policy Mistakes and Persistent Deviations of Inflation from Target," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-40, September.
    26. J. Scott Davis, 2012. "Inflation expectations have become more anchored over time," Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, vol. 7(13), December.
    27. Carl E. Walsh, 1998. "The natural rate, NAIRU, and monetary policy," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue sep18.
    28. Dräger, Lena & Lamla, Michael J. & Pfajfar, Damjan, 2016. "Are survey expectations theory-consistent? The role of central bank communication and news," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 84-111.
    29. Thomas Sargent & Noah Williams & Tao Zha, 2006. "Shocks and Government Beliefs: The Rise and Fall of American Inflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1193-1224, September.
    30. Philippe Andrade & Gaetano Gaballo & Eric Mengus & Benoît Mojon, 2019. "Forward Guidance and Heterogeneous Beliefs," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 1-29, July.
    31. Gunda-Alexandra Detmers, 2016. "Forward Guidance under Disagreement - Evidence from the Fed's Dot Projections," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2016-041, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    32. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    33. Marco A. Espinosa-Vega & Steven Russell, 1997. "History and theory of the NAIRU: a critical review," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 82(Q 2), pages 4-25.
    34. Daniel L. Thornton, 2003. "Monetary policy transparency: transparent about what?," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 71(5), pages 478-497, September.
    35. Giuseppe Ferrero & Alessandro Secchi, 2010. "Central bank’s macroeconomic projections and learning," NBP Working Papers 72, Narodowy Bank Polski.
    36. Seppo Honkapohja & Kaushik Mitra, 2015. "Comparing Inflation and Price-Level Targeting: The Role of Forward Guidance and Transparency," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 83, pages 27-59, December.
    37. Gavin Goy & Cars Homme & Kostas Mavromatis, 2018. "Forward Guidance and the Role of Central Bank Credibility," DNB Working Papers 614, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    38. Falck, Elisabeth & Hoffmann, Mathias & Hürtgen, Patrick, 2017. "Disagreement and monetary policy," Discussion Papers 29/2017, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    39. Boneva, Lena & Harrison, Richard & Waldron, Matt, 2018. "Threshold-based forward guidance," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 138-155.
    40. Murat Tasci & Randal J. Verbrugge, 2014. "How Much Slack Is in the Labor Market? That Depends on What You Mean by Slack," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Oct.
    41. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1, March.
    42. Binder, Carola, 2017. "Fed speak on main street: Central bank communication and household expectations," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 238-251.
    43. Laurence M. Ball, 2009. "Hysteresis in Unemployment: Old and New Evidence," NBER Working Papers 14818, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    44. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
    45. Simon, Herbert A., 1984. "On the behavioral and rational foundations of economic dynamics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 35-55, March.
    46. Katharine G. Abraham, 2015. "Is Skill Mismatch Impeding U.S. Economic Recovery?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 68(2), pages 291-313, March.
    47. Patton, Andrew J. & Timmermann, Allan, 2010. "Why do forecasters disagree? Lessons from the term structure of cross-sectional dispersion," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 803-820, October.
    48. Rülke, Jan-Christoph, 2012. "Do professional forecasters apply the Phillips curve and Okun's law? Evidence from six Asian-Pacific countries," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 317-324.
    49. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2015_009 is not listed on IDEAS
    50. Richard H. Clarida, 2019. "Sustaining Maximum Employment and Price Stability : a speech at the Economic Club of New York, New York, New York, May 30, 2019," Speech 1067, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arai, Natsuki, 2023. "The FOMC’s new individual economic projections and macroeconomic theories," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    2. Carola Conces Binder & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2023. "Central Bank Forecasting: A Survey," Staff Working Papers 23-18, Bank of Canada.
    3. Francesco Salsano, 2022. "Monetary policy when the objectives of central bankers are imperfectly observable," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 69(4), pages 396-415, September.
    4. An, Zidong & Zheng, Xinye, 2023. "Diligent forecasters can make accurate predictions despite disagreeing with the consensus," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    5. Thomas L. Hogan, 2022. "The calculus of dissent: Bias and diversity in FOMC projections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 105-135, April.
    6. Philipp F. M. Baumann & Enzo Rossi & Alexander Volkmann, 2020. "What Drives Inflation and How: Evidence from Additive Mixed Models Selected by cAIC," Papers 2006.06274, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gavin Goy & Cars Homme & Kostas Mavromatis, 2018. "Forward Guidance and the Role of Central Bank Credibility," DNB Working Papers 614, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    2. Goy, Gavin & Hommes, Cars & Mavromatis, Kostas, 2022. "Forward guidance and the role of central bank credibility under heterogeneous beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1240-1274.
    3. Andrade, Philippe & Crump, Richard K. & Eusepi, Stefano & Moench, Emanuel, 2016. "Fundamental disagreement," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 106-128.
    4. Stephen J. Cole & Enrique Martínez García, 2019. "The Effect of Central Bank Credibility on Forward Guidance in an Estimated New Keynesian Model," Globalization Institute Working Papers 375, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, revised 20 Mar 2021.
    5. Richard K. Crump & Stefano Eusepi & Emanuel Moench & Bruce Preston, 2021. "The Term Structure of Expectations," Staff Reports 992, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    6. repec:zbw:bofrdp:037 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Snezana Eminidou & Marios Zachariadis & Elena Andreou, 2020. "Inflation Expectations and Monetary Policy Surprises," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(1), pages 306-339, January.
    8. Ehrmann, Michael & Gaballo, Gaetano & Hoffmann, Peter & Strasser, Georg, 2019. "Can more public information raise uncertainty? The international evidence on forward guidance," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 93-112.
    9. Ambrocio, Gene, 2017. "The real effects of overconfidence and fundamental uncertainty shocks," Research Discussion Papers 37/2017, Bank of Finland.
    10. Chini, Emilio Zanetti, 2023. "Can we estimate macroforecasters’ mis-behavior?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    11. Bernardo Candia & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2020. "Communication and the Beliefs of Economic Agents," NBER Working Papers 27800, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2017_037 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Paul Hubert, 2014. "FOMC Forecasts as a Focal Point for Private Expectations," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(7), pages 1381-1420, October.
    14. Cole, Stephen J., 2020. "The influence of learning and price-level targeting on central bank forward guidance," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    15. Christopher S. Sutherland, 2020. "Forward Guidance and Expectation Formation: A Narrative Approach," Staff Working Papers 20-40, Bank of Canada.
    16. Robert Rich & Joseph Tracy, 2021. "A Closer Look at the Behavior of Uncertainty and Disagreement: Micro Evidence from the Euro Area," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(1), pages 233-253, February.
    17. Tomasz Łyziak & Xuguang Simon Sheng, 2023. "Disagreement in Consumer Inflation Expectations," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(8), pages 2215-2241, December.
    18. Ehrmann, Michael & Blinder, Alan & De Haan, Jakob & ,, 2022. "Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?," CEPR Discussion Papers 17441, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Francesco Salsano, 2022. "Monetary policy when the objectives of central bankers are imperfectly observable," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 69(4), pages 396-415, September.
    20. Bernardo Candia & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2021. "The Inflation Expectations of U.S. Firms: Evidence from a new survey," NBER Working Papers 28836, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3v5mev848s8148gjqcbf4mva5q is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Krüger, Fabian & Nolte, Ingmar, 2016. "Disagreement versus uncertainty: Evidence from distribution forecasts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(S), pages 172-186.
    23. Philippe Andrade & Gaetano Gaballo & Eric Mengus & Benoît Mojon, 2019. "Forward Guidance and Heterogeneous Beliefs," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 1-29, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ijc:ijcjou:y:2021:q:2:a:3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bank for International Settlements (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ijcb.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.