IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/2000-013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The nominal facts and the October 1979 policy change

Author

Listed:
  • William T. Gavin
  • Finn E. Kydland

Abstract

Gavin and Kydland (1999) calculated the cyclical properties of money and prices for the periods before and after the October 1979 policy change. In this article, we extend that work by adding four more years of data and including a study of nominal interest rates and inflation. The adoption of a disinflation policy in October 1979 does not appear to have had a measurable impact on the cyclical properties of real variables. However, it made a dramatic difference in the cyclical properties of nominal variables. We also examine the covariance structure of several nominal relationships: the autocovariance of inflation, the lag from money growth to inflation, and lag from money growth to nominal GDP growth. Generally, the monetary policy in the early period allowed the average inflation rate to ratchet upward with each business cycle. This policy was associated with high variances, high autocorrelations, and high cross-correlations among nominal variables. The moderate inflation policy followed in the second period was associated with lower mean growth rates, less volatility, and lower cross-correlations between money growth and inflation.

Suggested Citation

  • William T. Gavin & Finn E. Kydland, 2000. "The nominal facts and the October 1979 policy change," Working Papers 2000-013, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2000-013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2000-013
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2000/2000-013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Clarida & Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 147-180.
    2. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles L., 1999. "Monetary policy shocks: What have we learned and to what end?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 65-148, Elsevier.
    3. Richard G. Anderson & Robert H. Rasche, 1996. "A revised measure of the St. Louis adjusted monetary base," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 78(Mar), pages 3-13.
    4. Backus, David K & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1992. "International Evidence of the Historical Properties of Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 864-888, September.
    5. Glenn Rudebusch & Lars E.O. Svensson, 1999. "Policy Rules for Inflation Targeting," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 203-262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Business cycle fluctuations in us macroeconomic time series," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 3-64, Elsevier.
    7. William Poole, 1999. "Monetary policy rules?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Mar, pages 3-12.
    8. Arthur J. Rolnick & Warren E. Weber, 1998. "Money, inflation, and output under fiat and commodity standards," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 22(Spr), pages 11-17.
    9. William T. Gavin & Finn E. Kydland, 1999. "Endogenous Money Supply and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 2(2), pages 347-369, April.
    10. Finn E. Kydland & Edward C. Prescott, 1990. "Business cycles: real facts and a monetary myth," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 14(Spr), pages 3-18.
    11. Bryan, Michael F. & Gavin, William T., 1994. "A different kind of money illusion: The case of long and variable lags," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 529-540, October.
    12. Wilbur John Coleman & Christian Gilles & Pamela Labadie, 1993. "Identifying monetary policy with a model of the federal funds rate," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 93-24, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Friedman, Benjamin M & Kuttner, Kenneth N, 1992. "Money, Income, Prices, and Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 472-492, June.
    14. Pakko, Michael R, 2000. "The Cyclical Relationship between Output and Prices: An Analysis in the Frequency Domain," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 32(3), pages 382-399, August.
    15. King, Robert G. & Watson, Mark W., 1994. "The post-war U.S. phillips curve: a revisionist econometric history," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 157-219, December.
    16. Daniel L. Thornton, 1988. "The borrowed-reserves operating procedures: theory and evidence," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 30-54.
    17. Sharon Kozicki, 1999. "How useful are Taylor rules for monetary policy?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 84(Q II), pages 5-33.
    18. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C & Moore, George R, 1995. "Monetary Policy Trade-offs and the Correlation between Nominal Interest Rates and Real Output," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 219-239, March.
    19. Milton Friedman, 1961. "The Lag in Effect of Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 69, pages 447-447.
    20. Leonall C. Andersen & Jerry L. Jordan, 1968. "Monetary and fiscal actions: a test of their relative importance in economic stabilization," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 50(Nov), pages 11-23.
    21. Salemi, Michael K, 1995. "Revealed Preference of the Federal Reserve: Using Inverse-Control Theory to Interpret the Policy Equation of a Vector Autoregression," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(4), pages 419-433, October.
    22. Brian Motley, 1988. "Should M2 be redefined?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Win, pages 33-51.
    23. Holger C. Wolf, 1991. "Procyclical prices: a demi-myth?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 15(Spr), pages 25-28.
    24. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1, March.
    25. Yash P. Mehra, 1999. "A forward-looking monetary policy reaction function," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 33-54.
    26. Lembke B., 1918. "√ a. p," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 111(1), pages 709-712, February.
    27. Stephen K. McNees, 1992. "A forward-looking monetary policy reaction function: continuity and change," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 3-13.
    28. Richard G. Anderson & Robert H. Rasche, 2000. "The domestic adjusted monetary base," Working Papers 2000-002, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    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. Gavin, William T. & Kydland, Finn E. & Pakko, Michael R., 2007. "Monetary policy, taxes, and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1587-1611, September.
    2. William T. Gavin & Athena T. Theodorou, 2005. "A common model approach to macroeconomics: using panel data to reduce sampling error," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(3), pages 203-219.
    3. Goran Petrevski & Borce Trenovski & Biljana Tashevska, 2019. "The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies in a small open economy – the case of Macedonia," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(6), pages 805-821, November.
    4. Finn E. Kydland & Peter Rupert & Roman Šustek, 2016. "Housing Dynamics Over The Business Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1149-1177, November.
    5. Goran Petrevski & Jane Bogoev & Dragan Tevdovski, 2016. "Fiscal and monetary policy effects in three South Eastern European economies," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 415-441, March.

    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. Rudebusch, Glenn D., 2002. "Term structure evidence on interest rate smoothing and monetary policy inertia," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1161-1187, September.
    2. William T. Gavin & Finn E. Kydland, 1999. "Endogenous Money Supply and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 2(2), pages 347-369, April.
    3. Andrew Ang & Sen Dong & Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "No-arbitrage Taylor rules," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    4. Ireland, Peter N., 2003. "Endogenous money or sticky prices?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(8), pages 1623-1648, November.
    5. Coenen, Gunter & Wieland, Volker, 2005. "A small estimated euro area model with rational expectations and nominal rigidities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1081-1104, July.
    6. Clémentine Florens & Eric Jondeau & Hervé Le Bihan, 2001. "Assessing GMM Estimates of the Federal Reserve Reaction Function," Econometrics 0111003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Glenn D. Rudebusch & Tao Wu, 2008. "A Macro‐Finance Model of the Term Structure, Monetary Policy and the Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 906-926, July.
    8. Linde, Jesper, 2005. "Estimating New-Keynesian Phillips curves: A full information maximum likelihood approach," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(6), pages 1135-1149, September.
    9. Lansing, Kevin J. & Trehan, Bharat, 2003. "Forward-looking behavior and optimal discretionary monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 249-256, November.
    10. Gatti, Domenico Delli & Gallegati, Marco & Gallegati, Mauro, 2005. "On the nature and causes of business fluctuations in Italy, 1861-2000," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 81-100, January.
    11. Richard Dennis, 2006. "The policy preferences of the US Federal Reserve," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 55-77.
    12. Nicoletta Batini & Edward Nelson, 2001. "The Lag from Monetary Policy Actions to Inflation: Friedman Revisited," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(3), pages 381-400.
    13. Luca Benati, 2005. "U.K. Monetary Regimes and Macroeconomic Stylised Facts," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 107, Society for Computational Economics.
    14. Robert Tchaidze & Alina Carare, 2004. "The Use and Abuse of Taylor Rules: How precisely can we estimate them?," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 132, Econometric Society.
    15. Robert L. Hetzel, 2000. "The Taylor rule : is it a useful guide to understanding monetary policy?," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 1-33.
    16. Lindé, Jesper, 2001. "The Empirical Relevance of Simple Forward- and Backward-looking Models: A View from a Dynamic General Equilibrium Model," Working Paper Series 130, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    17. Michael Paetz, 2007. "Robust Control and Persistence in the New Keynesian Economy," Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers 20711, Hamburg University, Department of Economics.
    18. Batini, Nicoletta & Harrison, Richard & Millard, Stephen P., 2003. "Monetary policy rules for an open economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(11-12), pages 2059-2094, September.
    19. Jean Boivin & Marc P. Giannoni, 2006. "Has Monetary Policy Become More Effective?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(3), pages 445-462, August.
    20. Ang, Andrew & Piazzesi, Monika & Wei, Min, 2006. "What does the yield curve tell us about GDP growth?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 359-403.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business cycles; Monetary policy; Inflation (Finance);
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedlwp:2000-013. 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: Anna Oates (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    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.