Policy action is needed, with all deliberate speed.
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
Representative Ryan on Conditional Macroeconomic Prediction
Are You Better Off Than You Were at the End of the Bush Administration? A Data-Based Assessment
I’ve heard a lot about the “four years ago” comparison. Four years ago, we were on the cusp of Don Luskin’s famous prediction (“… we’re on the brink not of recession, but of accelerating prosperity.”), and Phill Gramm had two months earlier decried the ongoing “mental recession”. [0] It seems to me the more appropriate marker is the last election, in 2008Q4. We can then assess what the data tells us about 2012Q2 vis a vis 2008Q4.
Expectations, Uncovered Interest Parity, and the Zero Interest Bound: New Results
One of the most robust findings in international finance is that interest differentials do not point in the right direction for subsequent exchange rate changes. This means that dollar returns on say one year certificates of deposit in the US and in the UK are not on average equalized. In Chinn and Meredith (2004), we show that this anomaly — if it is one — disappears as one goes to longer horizons. This finding was discussed previously here.
A Debate in Foreign Affairs: Stimulus or Reform
From an exchange in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, with Raghuram Rajan, Karl Smith and myself. I write in my comment:
Guest Contribution: “Sticky Prices, Store-Switching, and Effective Price Flexibility”
Today, we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Olivier Coibion (UT Austin), Yuriy Gorodnichenko (UC Berkeley), and Gee Hee Hong (Bank of Canada); it is based on The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications.
Romney Campaign on the Tax Policy Center study: “Objective, Third-Party Analysis”
Or, he was for the Tax Policy Center before he was against the Tax Policy Center, and how to assess think tank research.
Central Bank Balance Sheets and Inflation
Given several prominent policymakers have worried about central bank actions leading to high inflation, (e.g. Representative Ryan) it seems reasonable to see how expansions in central bank balance sheets correlate with inflation.
Representative Paul Ryan’s Economic Weltanschauung
Recapping my analyses of his budgetary and macroeconomic views, including supply side, interest and inflation rates, and command of economic history.
Guest Contribution: Innocent Bystanders? Monetary Policy in the U.S. and Inequality
Today, we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Olivier Coibion (UT Austin) [interviewed here by Prakash Loungani], Yuriy Gorodnichenko (UC Berkeley), Lorenz Kueng (Northwestern) and John Silvia (Wells Fargo); it is based on IMF Working Paper No. 199