During the initial shock from COVID-19, it was understandable that governments and central banks would respond with massive injections of liquidity. But now policymakers need to take a step back and consider which forms of stimulus are really needed, and which risk doing more harm than good.
Economists use different models to estimate the neutral rate. Widely cited
estimates from Federal Reserve economists Kathryn Holston, Thomas Laubach and John Williams put the real (or inflation-adjusted) neutral rate at about 0.6% in the United States as of the second quarter of 2018. This measure has declined over time. The chart below shows the Holston, Laubach, Williams (HLW) estimate of the long-run neutral rate for the US since the 1970s. Since 1972, the estimated neutral rate has declined by 2.8 percentage points.
My proposal to fund the US with perpetuities comes from a paper, here. (Sorry regular readers for the repeated plug.) The rest is standard fiscal theory of the price level, spread over too many papers to give one more plug.
In a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) virtual meeting, the ageing heir to the British monarchy, Prince Charles spoke with IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva. Charles’s speech was part of a launch event for The Great Reset, a project involving the WEF and the Prince of Wales’s Sustainable Markets Initiative, aimed at rebuilding the economic and social system…
Justin Trudeau’s government made every effort on Wednesday to convince Canadians the country can afford a budget deficit that will soar to 16% of economic output this year. Its actions suggest there’s some worry.
Consumer price inflation decreased by 0.3 percentage points to 0.5 per cent in the year to May 2020, as per data released by the ONS. Our new analysis of 89,142 locally collected goods and services indicates price declines in the transport, recreation and culture, and hotels and restaurants categories. By contrast, underlying inflation, which excludes the most extreme price changes, increased in 11 UK regions, with only London recording a reduction in underlying inflation. The broad-based increase in underlying inflation led to a 0.2 percentage point increase in the national figure, to 1.2 per cent in May. This is the third month of increase in underlying inflation and for that reason our forecast suggests headline CPI inflation above 2 per cent in the 12 months to May 2021.
Rapid economic growth in the emerging worlds has placed downward pressure of manufacturing wages in the advanced world. With increasingly lower real interest rates putting upwards pressure on asset prices, these twin forces have the propensity to accelerate income inequality. What do the facts say?
The merits of investing in private versus public equity have generated considerable debate, often fueled by concerns about data quality. In this paper, we use