IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v86y2004i3p824-832.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Recent U.S. Macroeconomic Stability: Good Policies, Good Practices, or Good Luck?

Author

Listed:
  • Shaghil Ahmed

    (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System)

  • Andrew Levin

    (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System)

  • Beth Anne Wilson

    (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System)

Abstract

The volatility of U.S. real GDP growth since 1984 has been markedlylowerthanoverthepreviousquartercentury.Weutilizefrequency-domain and VAR methods to distinguish among competing explanations for this reduction: improvements in monetary policy, better business practices, and a fortuitous reduction in exogenous disturbances. We find that reduced innovation variances account for much of the decline in aggregate output volatility, suggesting that good luck is the most likely explanation. Good practices and good policy appear to have played a more important role in explaining the post-1984 decline in the volatility of consumer price inflation. © 2004 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Shaghil Ahmed & Andrew Levin & Beth Anne Wilson, 2004. "Recent U.S. Macroeconomic Stability: Good Policies, Good Practices, or Good Luck?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(3), pages 824-832, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:86:y:2004:i:3:p:824-832
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0034653041811662
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    2. 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.
    3. John Ryding, 1990. "Housing finance and the transmission of monetary policy," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 15(Sum), pages 42-55.
    4. Margaret M. McConnell & Patricia C. Mosser & Gabriel Perez-Quiros, 1999. "A decomposition of the increased stability of GDP growth," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 5(Aug).
    5. 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.
    6. Sims, Christopher A, 1980. "Macroeconomics and Reality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(1), pages 1-48, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Aymeric Ortmans, 2020. "Evolving Monetary Policy in the Aftermath of the Great Recession," Documents de recherche 20-01, Centre d'Études des Politiques Économiques (EPEE), Université d'Evry Val d'Essonne.
    2. Mandler, Martin, 2009. "In search of robust monetary policy rules - Should the Fed look at money growth or stock market performance?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 345-361, June.
    3. Marek Rusnak & Tomas Havranek & Roman Horvath, 2013. "How to Solve the Price Puzzle? A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(1), pages 37-70, February.
    4. Leeper, Eric M. & Zha, Tao, 2003. "Modest policy interventions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(8), pages 1673-1700, November.
    5. Nicholas Apergis & Stephen M. Miller, 2007. "Total Factor Productivity and Monetary Policy: Evidence from Conditional Volatility," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 131-152, July.
    6. Mustafa Caglayan & Kostas Mouratidis & Elham Saeidinezhad, 2011. "Monetary policy effects on output and exchange rates: Results from US, UK and Japan," Working Papers 2011016, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    7. 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.
    8. Giuseppe De Arcangelis & Giorgio Di Giorgio, 1999. "Monetary policy shocks and transmission in Italy: A VAR analysis," Economics Working Papers 446, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    9. Ignazio Angeloni & Anil K. Kashyap & Benoit Mojon & Daniele Terlizzese, 2003. "The Output Composition Puzzle: A Difference in the Monetary Transmission Mechanism in the Euro Area and U.S," NBER Working Papers 9985, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Bjørnland, Hilde C., 2009. "Monetary policy and exchange rate overshooting: Dornbusch was right after all," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 64-77, September.
    11. Paul Beaudry & Franck Portier, 2018. "Real Keynesian Models and Sticky Prices," 2018 Meeting Papers 61, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Bjørnland, Hilde C. & Leitemo, Kai, 2009. "Identifying the interdependence between US monetary policy and the stock market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 275-282, March.
    13. Emanuele Bacchiocchi & Efrem Castelnuovo & Luca Fanelli, 2014. "Gimme a break! Identification and estimation of the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy shocks in the U.S," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0181, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    14. Hilde C. Bjørnland, 2005. "Monetary policy and the illusionary exchange rate puzzle," Working Paper 2005/11, Norges Bank.
    15. Kim, Soyoung & Roubini, Nouriel, 2008. "Twin deficit or twin divergence? Fiscal policy, current account, and real exchange rate in the U.S," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 362-383, March.
    16. Benoit Mojon, 2007. "Monetary policy, output composition and the Great Moderation," Working Paper Series WP-07-07, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    17. Mertens, Elmar, 2010. "Structural shocks and the comovements between output and interest rates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1171-1186, June.
    18. Imran H. Shah & Ian Corrick & Abdul Saboor, 2018. "How should Central Banks Respond to Non-neutral Inflation Expectations?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 321-351, April.
    19. Lubos Hanus & Lukas Vacha, 2018. "Time-Frequency Response Analysis of Monetary Policy Transmission," Working Papers IES 2018/30, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Oct 2018.
    20. Andreas Beyer & Roger E.A. Farmer, 2005. "Measuring the Effects of Real and Monetary Shocks in a Structural New-Keynesian Model," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 172, Society for Computational Economics.

    More about this item

    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:tpr:restat:v:86:y:2004:i:3:p:824-832. 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.