The FOMC in 1989: walking a tightrope

Federal Open Market Committee

The economic consequences of reducing military spending

Defense contracts ; Economic policy

What is an "acceptable" rate of inflation?--a review of the issues

Inflation (Finance)

The causes and consequences of leveraged buyouts

Leveraged buyouts

The FOMC in 1988: uncertainty's effects on monetary policy

Federal Open Market Committee ; Monetary policy

When and how much to talk: credibility and flexibility in monetary policy with private information

This paper analyzes how noisy or imprecise announcements might partially remove the inefficiencies resulting from the credibility problem in monetary policy when the presence of non-verifiable private information adds another dimension to that problem. The analysis finds that imprecise or noisy announcements can be a meaningful form of communication only if it is possible to "tie" the hands of the monetary authority somehow. To the extent that it is otherwise efficient for policy to react to the monetary authority?s private information, such announcements can be extremely costly in terms of the sacrifice in flexibility required to make them relevant. Suprisingly, the conditions under which the monetary authority can make more precise announcements are identical to those under which the monetary authority is less likely to prefer the noisy announcement equilibrium.Monetary policy

Economics of Conflict: An Overview

In this chapter, we review the recent literature on conflict and appropriation. Allowing for the possibility of conflict, which amounts to recognizing the possibility that property rights are not perfectly and costlessly enforced, represents a significant departure from the traditional paradigm of economics. The research we emphasize, however, takes an economic perspective. Specifically, it applies conventional optimization techniques and game-theoretic tools to study the allocation of resources among competing activities— productive and otherwise appropriative, such as grabbing the product and wealth of others as well as defending one’s own product and wealth. In contrast to other economic activities in which inputs are combined cooperatively through production functions, the inputs to appropriation are combined adversarially through technologies of conflict. A central objective of this research is to identify the effects of conflict on economic outcomes: the determinants of the distribution of output (or power) and how an individual party’s share can be inversely related to its marginal productivity; when settlement in the shadow of conflict and when open conflict can be expected to occur, with longer time horizons capable of inducing conflict instead of settlement; how conflict and appropriation can reduce the appeal of trade; the determinants of alliance formation and the importance of intra-alliance commitments; how dynamic incentives for capital accumulation and innovation are distorted in the presence of conflict; and the role of governance in conflict management.Anarchy; Bargaining; Conflict technology; Economic growth; Exchange; Governance; Group formation; Open conflict; Power; Shadow of the future

Strategic discipline in monetary policy with private information: optimal targeting periods

This paper analyzes the optimal choice of the length of time over which the monetary authority targets money growth, in a setting where the monetary authority’s lack of credibility potentially gives rise to an inflationary bias. When the monetary authority has some private information-e.g. a private forecast-that obscures the relevance of reputational considerations and the effectiveness of legislation to enforce the efficient policy, the targeting procedure serves as a device to diminish the inflationary bias while providing the monetary authority limited flexibility to react to its private information. The analysis strengthens the monetarist proposition that the monetary authority should follow a strict rule. Even when the monetary authority has a fairly accurate forecasting technology, the optimal targeting period can be very short, implying that limited or no flexibility in monetary policy would be optimal.Monetary policy ; Inflation (Finance)

Alternative measures of the monetary base: what are the differences and are they important?

Monetary policy

Arming in the global economy: The importance of trade with enemies and friends

We analyze how trade openness matters for interstate conflict over productive resources. Our analysis features a terms-of-trade channel that makes security policies trade-regime dependent. Specifically, trade between two adversaries reduces each one's incentive to arm given the opponent's arming. If these countries have a sufficiently similar mix of initial resource endowments, greater trade openness brings with it a reduction in resources diverted to conflict and thus wasted, as well as the familiar gains from trade. Although a move to trade can otherwise induce greater arming by one country and thus need not be welfare improving for both, aggregate arming falls. By contrast, when the two adversaries do not trade with each other but instead trade with a third (friendly) country, a move from autarky to trade intensifies conflict between the two adversaries, inducing greater arming. With data from the years surrounding the end of the Cold War, we exploit the contrasting implications of trade costs between enemies versus trade costs between friends to provide some suggestive evidence in support of the theory