IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ukb/wpaper/01-2017.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Secular Stagnation: Policy Options and the Cyclical Sensitivity in Estimates of Potential Output

Author

Listed:
  • Olivier Coibion

    (University of Texas at Austin; The National Bureau of Economic Research)

  • Yuriy Gorodnichenko

    (University of California, Berkeley; The National Bureau of Economic Research)

  • Mauricio Ulate

    (University of California, Berkeley)

Abstract

The fact that most of the persistent declines in output since the Great Recession have parlayed into equivalent declines in measures of potential output is commonly interpreted as implying that output will not return to previous trends. Using a variety of estimates of potential output for the U.S. and other countries, we show that these estimates respond gradually not only to supply-side shocks but also respond to demand shocks that have only transitory effects on output. Observing a revision in measures of potential output therefore says little about whether concurrent changes in actual output are likely to be permanent or not.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Mauricio Ulate, 2017. "Secular Stagnation: Policy Options and the Cyclical Sensitivity in Estimates of Potential Output," Working Papers 01/2017, National Bank of Ukraine.
    • Handle: RePEc:ukb:wpaper:01/2017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/wp_nbu_2017_eng.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "Measuring the Output Responses to Fiscal Policy," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 1-27, May.
    2. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    3. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, November.
    4. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "The quest for prosperity without inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 633-663, April.
    5. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2010. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 763-801, June.
    6. 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.
    7. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    8. Fatás, Antonio & Summers, Lawrence H., 2018. "The permanent effects of fiscal consolidations," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 238-250.
    9. Andres, Javier & Lopez-Salido, J. David & Nelson, Edward, 2005. "Sticky-price models and the natural rate hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 1025-1053, July.
    10. Congressional Budget Office, 2014. "Revisions to CBO's Projection of Potential Output Since 2007," Reports 45150, Congressional Budget Office.
    11. Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 964-985, September.
    12. Lutz Kilian, 2009. "Not All Oil Price Shocks Are Alike: Disentangling Demand and Supply Shocks in the Crude Oil Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1053-1069, June.
    13. Laurence Ball, 2014. "Long-term damage from the Great Recession in OECD countries," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 11(2), pages 149-160, September.
    14. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2004. "A New Measure of Monetary Shocks: Derivation and Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1055-1084, September.
    15. J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), 2016. "Handbook of Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    16. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Mauricio Ulate, 2018. "The Cyclical Sensitivity in Estimates of Potential Output," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 49(2 (Fall)), pages 343-441.
    17. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Kueng, Lorenz & Silvia, John, 2017. "Innocent Bystanders? Monetary policy and inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 70-89.
    18. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Information Rigidity and the Expectations Formation Process: A Simple Framework and New Facts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2644-2678, August.
    19. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    20. Congressional Budget Office, 2014. "Revisions to CBO's Projection of Potential Output Since 2007," Reports 45150, Congressional Budget Office.
    21. Barsky, Robert B. & Sims, Eric R., 2011. "News shocks and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 273-289.
    22. Paul Beaudry & Franck Portier, 2006. "Stock Prices, News, and Economic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1293-1307, September.
    23. Lutz Kilian, 2008. "Exogenous Oil Supply Shocks: How Big Are They and How Much Do They Matter for the U.S. Economy?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 216-240, May.
    24. Congressional Budget Office, 2014. "Revisions to CBO's Projection of Potential Output Since 2007," Reports 45150, Congressional Budget Office.
    25. Rochelle M. Edge & Jeremy B. Rudd, 2016. "Real-Time Properties of the Federal Reserve's Output Gap," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(4), pages 785-791, October.
    26. Robert B. Barsky & Eric R. Sims, 2012. "Information, Animal Spirits, and the Meaning of Innovations in Consumer Confidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1343-1377, June.
    27. Kuttner, Kenneth N, 1994. "Estimating Potential Output as a Latent Variable," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(3), pages 361-368, July.
    28. Charles A. Fleischman & John M. Roberts, 2011. "From many series, one cycle: improved estimates of the business cycle from a multivariate unobserved components model," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-46, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    29. Lawrence H Summers, 2014. "U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 49(2), pages 65-73, April.
    30. Congressional Budget Office, 2014. "Revisions to CBO's Projection of Potential Output Since 2007," Reports 45150, Congressional Budget Office.
    31. Eric R. Sims, 2016. "Differences in Quarterly Utilization-Adjusted TFP by Vintage, with an Application to News Shocks," NBER Working Papers 22154, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Bhattarai, Saroj & Schwartzman, Felipe & Yang, Choongryul, 2021. "Local scars of the US housing crisis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 40-57.
    2. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2019_021 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Francesco Simone Lucidi, 2023. "The misalignment of fiscal multipliers in Italian regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(10), pages 2073-2086, October.
    4. Croushore, Dean & van Norden, Simon, 2019. "Fiscal Surprises at the FOMC," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1583-1595.
    5. Schmöller, Michaela & Spitzer, Martin, 2019. "Endogenous TFP, business cycle persistence and the productivity slowdown," Research Discussion Papers 21/2019, Bank of Finland.
    6. Panovska, Irina & Ramamurthy, Srikanth, 2022. "Decomposing the output gap with inflation learning," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    7. Jing Lian Suah, 2024. "The "plucking" model of the unemployment rate floor: Corss-country estimates and empirics," BIS Working Papers 1159, Bank for International Settlements.
    8. Antonio Fatás, 2019. "Fiscal Policy, Potential Output, and the Shifting Goalposts," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 67(3), pages 684-702, September.
    9. Mr. Alvar Kangur & Koralai Kirabaeva & Jean-Marc Natal & Simon Voigts, 2019. "How Informative Are Real Time Output Gap Estimates in Europe?," IMF Working Papers 2019/200, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Kabundi, Alain & De Simone, Francisco Nadal, 2022. "Euro area banking and monetary policy shocks in the QE era," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    11. Schmöller, Michaela & Spitzer, Martin, 2019. "Endogenous TFP, business cycle persistence and the productivity slowdown," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 21/2019, Bank of Finland.
    12. Omar Licandro & Francesca Vinci, 2021. "Potential output, the Taylor Rule and the Fed," Discussion Papers 2021/03, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    13. Saroj Bhattarai & Choongryul Yang & Felipe Schwartzman, 2019. "The Persistent Employment E ffects of the 2006-09 U.S. Housing Wealth Collapse," 2019 Meeting Papers 671, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Iana Paliova, 2021. "Bulgaria’s Fiscal Sustainability and Policy Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak," Global Economic Observer, "Nicolae Titulescu" University of Bucharest, Faculty of Economic Sciences;Institute for World Economy of the Romanian Academy, vol. 9(1), pages 31-38, June.
    15. Francesca Vinci & Omar Licandro, 2020. "Switching-track after the Great Recession," Discussion Papers 2020/02, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    16. Elfsbacka Schmöller, Michaela & Spitzer, Martin, 2020. "Endogenous TFP, business cycle persistence and the productivity slowdown in the euro area," Working Paper Series 2401, European Central Bank.
    17. Sébastien Charles & Thomas Dallery & Jonathan Marie, 2018. "Some Thoughts and Proposals Concerning the Concept of Output Gap [Réflexions et suggestions autour du concept d’output gap]," Post-Print hal-02335667, HAL.

    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. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Mauricio Ulate, 2018. "The Cyclical Sensitivity in Estimates of Potential Output," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 49(2 (Fall)), pages 343-441.
    2. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    3. 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.
    4. Zeno Enders & Michael Kleemann & Gernot J. Muller, 2021. "Growth Expectations, Undue Optimism, and Short-Run Fluctuations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(5), pages 905-921, December.
    5. Stock, J.H. & Watson, M.W., 2016. "Dynamic Factor Models, Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressions, and Structural Vector Autoregressions in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 415-525, Elsevier.
    6. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    7. Nadav Ben Zeev, 2019. "Is There A Single Shock That Drives The Majority Of Business Cycle Fluctuations?," Working Papers 1906, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    8. Herwartz, Helmut & Rohloff, Hannes & Wang, Shu, 2020. "Proxy SVAR identification of monetary policy shocks: MonteCarlo evidence and insights for the US," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 404, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    9. Metiu, Norbert, 2021. "Anticipation effects of protectionist U.S. trade policies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    10. Martin Geiger & Marios Zachariadis, 2019. "Assessing Expectations as a Monetary/Fiscal State-Dependent Phenomenon," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 01-2019, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    11. George‐Marios Angeletos & Fabrice Collard & Harris Dellas, 2018. "Quantifying Confidence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1689-1726, September.
    12. Nadav Ben Zeev & Christopher Gunn & Hashmat Khan, 2020. "Monetary News Shocks," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(7), pages 1793-1820, October.
    13. Bachmann, Rüdiger & Zorn, Peter, 2020. "What drives aggregate investment? Evidence from German survey data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    14. Adrien Auclert & Ludwig Straub & Matthew Rognlie, 2019. "Micro Jumps, Macro Humps: monetary policy and business cycles in an estimated HANK model," 2019 Meeting Papers 1449, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Vegard H�ghaug Larsen & Leif Anders Thorsrud, 2018. "Business cycle narratives," Working Papers No 6/2018, Centre for Applied Macro- and Petroleum economics (CAMP), BI Norwegian Business School.
    16. U. Devrim Demirel, 2020. "Labor Market Effects of Tax Changes in Times of High and Low Unemployment: Working Paper 2020-05," Working Papers 56522, Congressional Budget Office.
    17. Di Casola, Paola & Sichlimiris, Spyridon, 2018. "Towards Technology-News-Driven Business Cycles," Working Paper Series 360, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    18. Dominik Bertsche & Robin Braun, 2022. "Identification of Structural Vector Autoregressions by Stochastic Volatility," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 328-341, January.
    19. Andrew C. Chang & Phillip Li, 2018. "Measurement Error In Macroeconomic Data And Economics Research: Data Revisions, Gross Domestic Product, And Gross Domestic Income," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(3), pages 1846-1869, July.
    20. Clements, Michael P. & Galvão, Ana Beatriz, 2021. "Measuring the effects of expectations shocks," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    potential output; output persistence; secular stagnation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

    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:ukb:wpaper:01/2017. 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: Research Unit (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nbugvua.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.