The Media, Risk Assessment and Numbers: They Don\u27t Add Up

Professor Friedman argues that, for risks to be reported accurately, journalism educators must help their students understand science, numbers and statistics

Recent Perspectives in and on Macroeconomics

The experience of costly disinflation in the early 1980s has contradicted the central policy promise of the new classical macroeconomics just as sharply as the experience of accelerating inflation in the l970s contradicted the chief promise of earlier thinking. Much of the attractive appeal of each approach rested on its holding out the prospect of successfully dealing with the foremost macroeconomic policy issue of its time -unemployment in the earlier case, and inflation more recently -without incurring the costs that previous thinking associated with effective solutions. Inflation did accelerate in the 1970s, however, and now the real economic costs of disinflation have proved remarkably in line with conventional estimates antedating the new classical macroeconomics. The implication of this unfortunate outcome is not, of course, simply to return to earlier approaches,but to retain what is theoretically appealing about the methodology of the new classical macroeconomics i a form that does not lead to falsified policy conclusions.

Deficits and Debt in the Short and Long Run

This paper begins by examining the persistence of movements in the U.S. Government%u2019s budget posture. Deficits display considerable persistence, and debt levels (relative to GDP) even more so. Further, the degree of persistence depends on what gives rise to budget deficits in the first place. Deficits resulting from shocks to defense spending exhibit the greatest persistence and those from shocks to nondefense spending the least; deficits resulting from shocks to revenues fall in the middle. The paper next reviews recent evidence on the impact of changes in government debt levels (again, relative to GDP) on interest rates. The recent literature, focusing on expected future debt levels and expected real interest rates, indicates impacts that are large in the context of actual movements in debt levels: for example, an increase of 94 basis points due to the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio during 1981-93, and a decline of 65 basis point due to the decline in the debt-to-GDP ratio during 1993-2001. The paper next asks why deficits would exhibit the observed negative correlation with key elements of investment. One answer, following the analysis presented earlier, is that deficits are persistent and therefore lead to changes in expected future debt levels, which in turn affect real interest rates. A different reason, however, revolves around the need for markets to absorb the increased issuance of Government securities in a setting of costly portfolio adjustment. The paper concludes with some reflections on %u201Cthe Perverse Corollary of Stein%u2019s Law%u201D: that is, the view that in the presence of large government deficits nothing need be done because something will be done.

Debt and Economic Activity in the United States

This paper documents a long-standing stability in the relationship between outstanding debt and economic activity in the United States, and explores the implications for capital formation of several hypotheses that could explain this observed phenomenon. The aggregate of outstanding credit liabilities of all nonfinancial borrowers in the United States bears as close a relationship to U.S. non- financial economic activity as do the more familiar asset aggregates like the money stock (however measured) or the monetary base. This stability in the debt-to-income relationship reflects the net outcome of pronounced but offsetting movements of the public and private components of the total debt aggregate. Three different hypotheses provide potential explanations for this phenomenon. Two of these, one emphasizing taxpayers' actions and one based on credit market borrowing constraints, carry the implication that increases in government debt outstanding associated with financing budget deficits crowd out private financing and hence private capital formation. The third hypothesis, which emphasizes the portfolio preferences of lenders, implies that increased government financing will not crowd out private capital formation but will cause the private sector to shift from debt to equity financing.

The role of interest rates in Federal Reserve policymaking

Monetary policy - United States ; Interest rates ; Monetary policy

Money, credit, and Federal Reserve Policy : reply to Porter and Offenbacher

An abstract for this article is not available.Monetary policy

The Greenspan Era: Discretion, Rather Than Rules

What stands out in retrospect about U.S. monetary policy during the Greenspan Era is the ongoing movement away from mechanistic restrictions on the conduct of policy, together with a willingness on occasion to depart even from what more flexible guidelines dictated by contemporary conventional wisdom would imply, in the interest of carrying out the Federal Reserve System%u2019s dual mandate to pursue both stable prices and maximum employment. Part of this change was procedural %u2013 for example, the elimination of money growth targets. The most substantive demonstration of policy flexibility came in the latter half of the 1990s, as unemployment fell below 6% (in 1994), then below 5% (in 1997), and then remained below 5% for more than four years, yet the Federal Reserve did not tighten monetary policy. This policy stance was consistent with a view of the economy, including faster productivity growth and increased exposure to international competition, that Chairman Greenspan had articulated nearly a decade before.