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From Deviations to Shortfalls: The Effects of the FOMC's New Employment Objective

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Abstract

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) recently revised its interpretation of its maximum employment mandate. In this paper, we analyze the possible effects of this policy change using a theoretical model with frictional labor markets and nominal rigidities. A monetary policy which stabilizes “shortfalls” rather than “deviations” of employment from its maximum level leads to higher inflation and more hiring at all times due to expectations of more accommodative future policy. Thus, offsetting only shortfalls of employment results in higher nominal policy rates on average which provide more policy space and better outcomes during a zero lower bound episode. Our model suggests that the FOMC's reinterpretation of its employment mandate could alter the business-cycle and longer-run properties of the economy and result in a steeper reduced-form Phillips curve.

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  • Brent Bundick & Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau, 2021. "From Deviations to Shortfalls: The Effects of the FOMC's New Employment Objective," Working Paper Series 2021-18, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:92920
    DOI: 10.24148/wp2021-18
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    Cited by:

    1. Gomes, Sandra & Jacquinot, Pascal & Lozej, Matija, 2023. "A single monetary policy for heterogeneous labour markets: the case of the euro area," Research Technical Papers 3/RT/23, Central Bank of Ireland.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary Policy; Equilibrium Unemployment; Nominal Rigidities; Zero Lower Bound;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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