IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2024-41.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Continuity and Change in the Federal Reserve’s Perspective on Price Stability

Author

Abstract

By examining statements made by the Federal Reserve leadership since the early 1950s, we establish that there has been considerable continuity in policymakers’ perceptions of the benefits of price stability. Policymakers have consistently contended that deviations from price stability give rise to greater cyclical instability, and they have also frequently suggested that potential output is significantly lowered by inflation. The recurrent support for price stability that comes through in these statements implies that it is invalid to take periods in the U.S. record of deviations from price stability as indicating a policymaker belief in the desirability of inflation.

Suggested Citation

  • J. David López-Salido & Emily J. Markowitz & Edward Nelson, 2024. "Continuity and Change in the Federal Reserve’s Perspective on Price Stability," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-041, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2024-41
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2024.041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024041pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2024.041?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nelson Edward, 2005. "The Great Inflation of the Seventies: What Really Happened?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-50, July.
    2. Michael R. Darby & James R. Lothian, 1983. "Conclusions on the International Transmission of Inflation," NBER Chapters, in: The International Transmission of Inflation, pages 491-524, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. William B English & J David López-Salido & Robert J Tetlow, 2015. "The Federal Reserve’s Framework for Monetary Policy: Recent Changes and New Questions," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 63(1), pages 22-70, May.
    4. Lars E. O. Svensson, 2003. "What Is Wrong with Taylor Rules? Using Judgment in Monetary Policy through Targeting Rules," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 426-477, June.
    5. 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.
    6. Julio J. Rotemberg, 2013. "Shifts in US Federal Reserve Goals and Tactics for Monetary Policy: A Role for Penitence?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 65-86, Fall.
    7. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2006. "Monetary Policy with Imperfect Knowledge," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(2-3), pages 366-375, 04-05.
    8. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2004. "Choosing the Federal Reserve Chair: Lessons from History," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 129-162, Winter.
    9. Martin Feldstein & Lawrence Summers, 1983. "Inflation and the Taxation of Capital Income in the Corporate Sector," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation, pages 116-152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Taeyoung Doh, 2012. "What Does the Yield Curve Tell Us about the Federal Reserve’s Implicit Inflation Target?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(2‐3), pages 469-486, March.
    11. Michael R. Darby & James R. Lothian & Arthur E. Gandolfi & Anna J. Schwartz & Alan C. Stockman, 1983. "The International Transmission of Inflation," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number darb83-1.
    12. Allan Sproul, 1956. "Reflections Of A Central Banker," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, March.
    13. Ben S. Bernanke & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1997. "Inflation Targeting: A New Framework for Monetary Policy?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 97-116, Spring.
    14. Ireland, Peter N., 1999. "Does the time-consistency problem explain the behavior of inflation in the United States?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 279-291, October.
    15. Edmund S. Phelps, 1965. "Anticipated Inflation and Economic Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(1), pages 1-1.
    16. Robert J. Gordon, 1986. "The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gord86-1, February.
    17. Bordo, Michael D. & Orphanides, Athanasios (ed.), 2013. "The Great Inflation," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226066950, June.
    18. Athanasios Orphanides, 2006. "The Road to Price Stability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 178-181, May.
    19. Robert J. Gordon, 1986. "Front matter, The American Business Cycle. Continuity and Change," NBER Chapters, in: The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, pages -15, 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. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2024. "The Federal Reserve's evolving interpretation and implementation of its mandate," IMFS Working Paper Series 213, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).

    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. Riccardo DiCecio & Edward Nelson, 2013. "The Great Inflation in the United States and the United Kingdom: Reconciling Policy Decisions and Data Outcomes," NBER Chapters, in: The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, pages 393-438, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Nelson, Edward, 2008. "Ireland and Switzerland: The jagged edges of the Great Inflation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 700-732, May.
    3. Sarah S. Baker & J. David López-Salido & Edward Nelson, 2018. "The Money View Versus the Credit View," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-042, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Singleton,John, 2010. "Central Banking in the Twentieth Century," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521899093, November.
    5. Brian Snowdon, 2007. "The New Classical Counter-Revolution: False Path or Illuminating Complement?," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 541-562, Fall.
    6. Michael D. Bordo & Athanasios Orphanides, 2013. "Introduction to "The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking"," NBER Chapters, in: The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, pages 1-22, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ricardo Reis, 2013. "Central Bank Design," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 17-44, Fall.
    8. Edward Nelson, 2021. "The Emergence of Forward Guidance As a Monetary Policy Tool," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-033, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Suda, Jacek & Zervou, Anastasia S., 2018. "International Great Inflation And Common Monetary Policy," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(6), pages 1428-1461, September.
    10. Michael D. Bordo & Christopher J. Erceg & Andrew T. Levin & Ryan Michaels, 2007. "Three great American disinflations," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    11. Naveen Srinivasan, 2014. "Testing the Expectations Trap Hypothesis: A Time-Varying Parameter Approach," Working Papers 2014-089, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    12. David Laidler, 2007. "Successes and Failures of Monetary Policy Since the 1950s," University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers 20072, University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute.
    13. Lothian, James R. & McCarthy, Cornelia H., 2009. "The behavior of money and other economic variables: Two natural experiments," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(7), pages 1204-1220, November.
    14. David Kiefer, 2008. "New Keynesian Endogenous Stabilization in a Panel of Countries," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2008_19, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    15. Gbaguidi, David, 2012. "La courbe de Phillips : temps d’arbitrage et/ou arbitrage de temps," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 88(1), pages 87-119, mars.
    16. Bordo, Michael D. & Schwartz, Anna J., 1999. "Monetary policy regimes and economic performance: The historical record," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 149-234, Elsevier.
    17. Edward Nelson, 2022. "How Did It Happen?: The Great Inflation of the 1970s and Lessons for Today," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-037, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Nelson, Edward & Nikolov, Kalin, 2004. "Monetary Policy and Stagflation in the UK," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(3), pages 293-318, June.
    19. Lothian, James R., 2016. "Comment on Rudebusch and Williams, “A wedge in the dual mandate: Monetary policy and long-term unemployment”," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 47(PA), pages 19-25.
    20. Andrew Levin & John B. Taylor, 2013. "Falling Behind the Curve: A Positive Analysis of Stop-Start Monetary Policies and the Great Inflation," NBER Chapters, in: The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, pages 217-244, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dual mandate; Federal Reserve; Price stability; Costs of inflation; Phillips curve; Superneutrality; Monetary policy objectives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • 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

    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:fedgfe:2024-41. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.