IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed013/973.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Indeterminacy and Learning: An Analysis of Monetary Policy in the Great Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Matthes

    (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

  • Thomas Lubik

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)

Abstract

We estimate the full model using Bayesian methods and allow for both determinate and indeterminate equilibria. Our estimates of the resulting equilibria during the Great Inflation of the 1970s reveal that the Fed’s optimal policy response was seen by the private sector as leading to an indeterminate equilibrium although it was based on mismeasured data, not a deliberately soft policy response. Whereas, the Volcker disinflation suffered from fewer measurement issues and quickly led the Fed to a determinate policy path.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Matthes & Thomas Lubik, 2013. "Indeterminacy and Learning: An Analysis of Monetary Policy in the Great Inflation," 2013 Meeting Papers 973, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed013:973
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2006. "Why Inflation Rose and Fell: Policy-Makers' Beliefs and U. S. Postwar Stabilization Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 121(3), pages 867-901.
    2. Sungbae An & Frank Schorfheide, 2007. "Bayesian Analysis of DSGE Models—Rejoinder," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2-4), pages 211-219.
    3. Richard Clarida & Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 115(1), pages 147-180.
    4. Bullard, James & Mitra, Kaushik, 2002. "Learning about monetary policy rules," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1105-1129, September.
    5. Thomas A. Lubik & Frank Schorfheide, 2004. "Testing for Indeterminacy: An Application to U.S. Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 190-217, March.
    6. James Bullard & Stefano Eusepi, 2005. "Did the Great Inflation Occur Despite Policymaker Commitment to a Taylor Rule?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(2), pages 324-359, April.
    7. Christian Matthes & Argia M. Sbordone & Timothy Cogley, 2011. "Optimal Disinflation Under Learning," 2011 Meeting Papers 74, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Bhattarai, Saroj & Lee, Jae Won & Park, Woong Yong, 2014. "Price indexation, habit formation, and the Generalized Taylor Principle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 218-225.
    9. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2011. "Monetary Policy, Trend Inflation, and the Great Moderation: An Alternative Interpretation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 341-370, February.
    10. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C., 2005. "The decline of activist stabilization policy: Natural rate misperceptions, learning, and expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1927-1950, November.
    11. Thomas A. Lubik & Paolo Surico, 2010. "The Lucas critique and the stability of empirical models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 177-194.
    12. Lubik, Thomas A. & Schorfheide, Frank, 2003. "Computing sunspot equilibria in linear rational expectations models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 273-285, November.
    13. Francesco Bianchi, 2013. "Regime Switches, Agents' Beliefs, and Post-World War II U.S. Macroeconomic Dynamics," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 80(2), pages 463-490.
    14. Lubik, Thomas A. & Matthes, Christian, 2016. "Indeterminacy and learning: An analysis of monetary policy in the Great Inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 85-106.
    15. Sungbae An & Frank Schorfheide, 2007. "Bayesian Analysis of DSGE Models," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2-4), pages 113-172.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 964-985, September.
    19. Troy Davig & Eric M. Leeper, 2007. "Generalizing the Taylor Principle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 607-635, June.
    20. Cukierman, Alex & Lippi, Francesco, 2005. "Endogenous monetary policy with unobserved potential output," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1951-1983, November.
    21. Farmer, Roger E.A. & Waggoner, Daniel F. & Zha, Tao, 2009. "Understanding Markov-switching rational expectations models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 1849-1867, September.
    22. Fabrice Collard & Harris Dellas, 2010. "Monetary Misperceptions, Output, and Inflation Dynamics," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(2-3), pages 483-502, March.
    23. John Geweke, 1999. "Using Simulation Methods for Bayesian Econometric Models," Computing in Economics and Finance 1999 832, Society for Computational Economics.
    24. Seth Pruitt, 2012. "Uncertainty Over Models and Data: The Rise and Fall of American Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44, pages 341-365, March.
    25. S. Boragan Aruoba, 2008. "Data Revisions Are Not Well Behaved," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(2-3), pages 319-340, March.
    26. Sims, Christopher A, 2002. "Solving Linear Rational Expectations Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 20(1-2), pages 1-20, October.
    27. Tetlow, Robert J. & von zur Muehlen, Peter, 2009. "Robustifying learnability," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 296-316, February.
    28. Givens, Gregory E. & Salemi, Michael K., 2015. "Inferring monetary policy objectives with a partially observed state," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 190-208.
    29. Stefano Neri & Tiziano Ropele, 2012. "Imperfect Information, Real‐Time Data and Monetary Policy in the Euro Area," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(561), pages 651-674, June.
    30. Andreas Beyer & Roger E. A. Farmer, 2007. "Testing for Indeterminacy: An Application to U.S. Monetary Policy: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 524-529, March.
    31. Collard, Fabrice & Dellas, Harris & Smets, Frank, 2009. "Imperfect information and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 38-56.
    32. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C., 2007. "Robust monetary policy with imperfect knowledge," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 1406-1435, July.
    33. Thomas J. Sargent & Paolo Surico, 2011. "Two Illustrations of the Quantity Theory of Money: Breakdowns and Revivals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 109-128, February.
    34. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 2006. "Were There Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 54-81, March.
    35. Hetzel,Robert L., 2008. "The Monetary Policy of the Federal Reserve," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521881326, April.
    36. Carboni, Giacomo & Ellison, Martin, 2009. "The Great Inflation and the Greenbook," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 831-841, September.
    37. Timothy Cogley & Thomas J. Sargent, 2008. "Anticipated Utility And Rational Expectations As Approximations Of Bayesian Decision Making," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(1), pages 185-221, February.
    38. Frank Smets & Raf Wouters, 2003. "An Estimated Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model of the Euro Area," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1123-1175, September.
    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. Claudio Borio & Piti Disyatat & Mikael Juselius & Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul, 2019. "Monetary Policy in the Grip of a Pincer Movement," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Álvaro Aguirre & Markus Brunnermeier & Diego Saravia (ed.),Monetary Policy and Financial Stability: Transmission Mechanisms and Policy Implications, edition 1, volume 26, chapter 10, pages 311-356, Central Bank of Chile.
    2. Qazi Haque & Nicolas Groshenny & Mark Weder, 2018. "Do We Really Know that U.S. Monetary Policy was Destabilizing in the 1970s?," School of Economics Working Papers 2018-03, University of Adelaide, School of Economics.
    3. Amir-Ahmadi, Pooyan & Matthes, Christian & Wang, Mu-Chun, 2017. "Measurement errors and monetary policy: Then and now," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 66-78.
    4. Makin, Anthony J. & Robson, Alex & Ratnasiri, Shyama, 2017. "Missing money found causing Australia's inflation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 156-162.
    5. Elmar Mertens & Christian Matthes & Thomas Lubik, 2017. "Indeterminacy and Imperfect Information," 2017 Meeting Papers 337, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Qureshi, Irfan, 2016. "The Role of Money in Federal Reserve Policy," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1133, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    7. Lubik, Thomas A. & Matthes, Christian, 2016. "Indeterminacy and learning: An analysis of monetary policy in the Great Inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 85-106.
    8. Berardi, Michele & Galimberti, Jaqueson K., 2017. "On the initialization of adaptive learning in macroeconomic models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 26-53.
    9. Qureshi, Irfan, 2018. "Money Aggregates and Determinacy : A Reinterpretation of Monetary Policy During the Great Inflation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1156, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    10. Milani, Fabio, 2017. "Sentiment and the U.S. business cycle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 289-311.
    11. Lubik, Thomas A. & Matthes, Christian & Verona, Fabio, 2019. "Assessing U.S. aggregate fluctuations across time and frequencies," Research Discussion Papers 5/2019, Bank of Finland.
    12. Qureshi, Irfan, 2016. "Monetarism, Indeterminacy and the Great Inflation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1123, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    13. Bonam, Dennis & Goy, Gavin, 2019. "Home biased expectations and macroeconomic imbalances in a monetary union," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 25-42.
    14. Dmitry Kreptsev & Sergei Seleznev, 2018. "Forecasting for the Russian Economy Using Small-Scale DSGE Models," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 77(2), pages 51-67, June.
    15. Imamudin Yuliadi, 2020. "The Implementation of a Dual Monetary System in Indonesia," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(3), pages 28-39.
    16. Yasuo Hirose & Takushi Kurozumi & Willem Van Zandweghe, 2020. "Monetary Policy and Macroeconomic Stability Revisited," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 255-274, July.
    17. Kobielarz, Michal, 2018. "The economics of monetary unions," Other publications TiSEM b0293536-68ec-4905-bffd-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Guido Ascari & Paolo Bonomolo & Hedibert Lopes, 2018. "Walk on the wild side: Multiplicative sunspots and temporarily unstable paths," DNB Working Papers 597, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    19. Best, Gabriela & Hur, Joonyoung, 2019. "Bad luck, bad policy, and learning? A Markov-switching approach to understanding postwar U.S. macroeconomic dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 55-78.
    20. Claudio Borio & Piti Disyatat & Mikael Juselius & Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul, 2018. "La política monetaria cercada por un movimiento de pinzas," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 21(2), pages 004-044, August.
    21. Gavin Goy & Cars Homme & Kostas Mavromatis, 2018. "Forward Guidance and the Role of Central Bank Credibility," DNB Working Papers 614, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    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:red:sed013:973. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Christian Zimmermann). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.