IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jmacro/v34y2012i3p626-630.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Federal Reserve (almost) 100

Author

Listed:
  • Meltzer, Allan H.

Abstract

As the Federal Reserve reaches its hundredth anniversary, understanding its achievements and failures serves as a useful guide to needed reforms. My paper is an invited comment on the analysis by Selgin, White, and Lastrapes who conclude that the Federal Reserve’s performance is not an improvement on pre-Federal Reserve policy. I draw a slightly different conclusion. The only periods in which the Federal Reserve achieved relatively steady growth and low inflation are the two periods in which if acted as if guided by a rule. The years are 1923–1928 under a modified gold standard and 1985–2003 when it acted as if it followed a Taylor rule.

Suggested Citation

  • Meltzer, Allan H., 2012. "The Federal Reserve (almost) 100," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 626-630.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:34:y:2012:i:3:p:626-630
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2012.02.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164070412000316
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jmacro.2012.02.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 964-985, September.
    2. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    3. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    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. Peter J. Boettke & Daniel J. Smith, 2016. "Evolving views on monetary policy in the thought of Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 29(4), pages 351-370, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patrick Lünnemann & Abdelaziz Rouabah, 2003. "Règle de Taylor: estimation et interprétation pour la zone euro et pour le Luxembourg," BCL working papers 9, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    2. Michael Woodford, 1999. "Optimal Monetary Policy Inertia," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 67(s1), pages 1-35.
    3. Teryoshin, Yevgeniy, 2023. "Historical performance of rule-like monetary policy," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    4. Cortes, Gustavo S. & Paiva, Claudio A.C., 2017. "Deconstructing credibility: The breaking of monetary policy rules in Brazil," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 31-52.
    5. Gerard H. Kuper, 2018. "The powers that are: central bank independence in the Greenspan era," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 485-499, March.
    6. Levy Yeyati, Eduardo & Sturzenegger, Federico, 2010. "Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4215-4281, Elsevier.
    7. Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, Alex & Papell, David H. & Prodan, Ruxandra, 2021. "Policy Rules and Economic Performance," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    8. Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, Alex & Papell, David H. & Prodan, Ruxandra, 2014. "Deviations from rules-based policy and their effects," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 4-17.
    9. Jensen Henrik, 2011. "Estimated Interest Rate Rules: Do they Determine Determinacy Properties?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-22, May.
    10. Mehrotra, Aaron & Sánchez-Fung, José R., 2011. "Assessing McCallum and Taylor rules in a cross-section of emerging market economies," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 207-228, April.
    11. Narek Ohanyan & Aleksandr Grigoryan, 2021. "Measuring monetary policy: rules versus discretion," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 35-60, July.
    12. Andrés Felipe Giraldo Palomino, 2008. "Aversión a la inflación y regla de Taylor en Colombia 1994-2005," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID, December.
    13. Ralf Fendel, 2004. "Perspektiven und Grenzen der Verwendung geldpolitischer Regeln," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 5(2), pages 169-192, May.
    14. Rageh, Rania, 2010. "Interest rate rule for the conduct of monetary policy: analysis for Egypt (1997:2007)," MPRA Paper 26639, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Kui-Wai Li, 2013. "The US monetary performance prior to the 2008 crisis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(24), pages 3450-3461, August.
    16. Evans, Charles L. & Marshall, David A., 2007. "Economic determinants of the nominal treasury yield curve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 1986-2003, October.
    17. Esanov, Akram & Merkl, Christian & Vinhas de Souza, Lucio, 2005. "Monetary policy rules for Russia," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 484-499, September.
    18. repec:zbw:bofitp:2008_015 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Pelin Ilbas, 2006. "Optimal Monetary Policy rules for the Euro area in a DSGE framework," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces0613, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    20. Frederick H. Wallace & Gary L. Shelley & Luis F. Cabrera Castellanos, 2004. "Pruebas de la neutralidad monetaria a largo plazo: el caso de Nicaragua," Monetaria, CEMLA, vol. 0(4), pages 407-418, octubre-d.
    21. Siami-Namini, Sima & Hudson, Darren & Trindade, A. Alexandre & Lyford, Conrad, 2018. "Commodity Prices, Monetary Policy and the Taylor Rule," 2018 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida 266719, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Federal Reserve; Monetary policy; Recessions; Inflations; Financial regulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    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:eee:jmacro:v:34:y:2012:i:3:p:626-630. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622617 .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.