IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/13-24.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An evaluation of the Federal Reserve estimates of the natural rate of unemployment in real time

Author

Listed:
  • Fabia Gumbau-Brisa
  • Giovanni P. Olivei

Abstract

The authors derive an estimate of the Federal Reserve's assessment of the natural rate of unemployment in real time from the Greenbook forecast of inflation. The estimated natural rate starts to rise noticeably in the second half of the mid-1970s. It stays relatively high in the 1980s, and then declines noticeably in the second half of the 1990s. They compare the Greenbook estimates with the estimates obtained in real time from simple relationships that extract information about the natural rate of unemployment from the dynamics of inflation, aggregate demand, and the functioning of the labor market. When differences between these measures and the Greenbook arise, the improvement to the Greenbook inflation forecast that would have been achieved by using a different estimate of the natural rate of unemployment is typically small.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabia Gumbau-Brisa & Giovanni P. Olivei, 2013. "An evaluation of the Federal Reserve estimates of the natural rate of unemployment in real time," Working Papers 13-24, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:13-24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2013/wp1324.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jay L. Zagorsky, 1998. "Job Vacancies In The United States: 1923 To 1994," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 338-345, May.
    2. Robert J. Gordon, 1997. "The Time-Varying NAIRU and Its Implications for Economic Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 11-32, Winter.
    3. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, November.
    4. Mary C. Daly & Bart Hobijn & Aysegül Sahin & Robert G. Valletta, 2012. "A Search and Matching Approach to Labor Markets: Did the Natural Rate of Unemployment Rise?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 3-26, Summer.
    5. Thomas Laubach, 2001. "Measuring The NAIRU: Evidence From Seven Economies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(2), pages 218-231, May.
    6. Robert J. Tetlow & Brian Ironside, 2007. "Real‐Time Model Uncertainty in the United States: The Fed, 1996–2003," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1533-1561, October.
    7. Douglas O. Staiger & James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1997. "How Precise Are Estimates of the Natural Rate of Unemployment?," NBER Chapters, in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 195-246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Arabinda Basistha & Richard Startz, 2008. "Measuring the NAIRU with Reduced Uncertainty: A Multiple-Indicator Common-Cycle Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 805-811, November.
    9. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Modeling inflation after the crisis," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 173-220.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. De la Serve, M-E. & Lemoine, M., 2011. "Measuring the NAIRU: a complementary approach," Working papers 342, Banque de France.
    2. Berger, Tino & Everaert, Gerdie & Vierke, Hauke, 2016. "Testing for time variation in an unobserved components model for the U.S. economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 179-208.
    3. Kajuth, Florian, 2012. "Identifying the Phillips curve through shifts in volatility," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 975-991.
    4. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2005 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Richard K. Crump & Stefano Eusepi & Marc Giannoni & Aysegul Sahin, 2019. "A Unified Approach to Measuring u," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 50(1 (Spring), pages 143-238.
    6. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/1904 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Givens, Gregory E. & Salemi, Michael K., 2015. "Inferring monetary policy objectives with a partially observed state," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 190-208.
    8. Laurence Boone & Michel Juillard & Doug Laxton & Papa N'Diaye, 2002. "How Well Do Alternative Time-Varying Parameter Models of the NAIRU Help Policymakers Forecast Unemployment and Inflation in the OECD Countries?," Computing in Economics and Finance 2002 359, Society for Computational Economics.
    9. Kajuth Florian, 2016. "NAIRU Estimates for Germany: New Evidence on the Inflation–Unemployment Tradeoff," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 104-125, February.
    10. Heyer, Eric & Reynes, Frederic & Sterdyniak, Henri, 2007. "Structural and reduced approaches of the equilibrium rate of unemployment, a comparison between France and the United States," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 42-65, January.
    11. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "The quest for prosperity without inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 633-663, April.
    12. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "Historical monetary policy analysis and the Taylor rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 983-1022, July.
    13. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7349 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Sven Schreiber, 2012. "Estimating the natural rate of unemployment in euro-area countries with co-integrated systems," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(10), pages 1315-1335, April.
    15. Cayen, Jean-Philippe & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The reliability of Canadian output-gap estimates," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 373-393, December.
    16. Hongmei Zhao & Vincent Hogan, 2011. "Measuring the NAIRU — A structural VAR approach," Frontiers of Economics in China, Springer;Higher Education Press, vol. 6(1), pages 76-91, March.
    17. John C. Williams, 2006. "Robust estimation and monetary policy with unobserved structural change," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-16.
    18. Beissinger, Thomas, 2003. "Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in Europa: Eine Bestandsaufnahme," University of Regensburg Working Papers in Business, Economics and Management Information Systems 389, University of Regensburg, Department of Economics.
    19. Victor Bystrov, 2020. "Identification and Estimation of Initial Conditions in Non-Minimal State-Space Models," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 12(4), pages 413-429, December.
    20. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2002. "Robust Monetary Policy Rules with Unknown Natural Rates," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 63-146.
    21. Gian Luigi Mazzi & Frédéric Reynès & Matthieu Lemoine & Paola Veroni, 2008. "Real Time Estimation of Potential Output and Output Gap for the Euro-Area : Comparing Production Function with Unobserved Components and SVAR Approaches," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01027422, HAL.
    22. Éric Heyer & Frédéric Reynès & Henri Sterdyniak, 2005. "Variables observables et inobservables dans la théorie du taux de chômage d'équilibre. Une comparaison France/États-Unis," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 56(3), pages 593-603.
    23. Arabinda Basistha & Richard Startz, 2004. "Measuring the NAIRU with Reduced Uncertainty: A Multiple Indicator-Common Component Approach," Working Papers UWEC-2004-22, University of Washington, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedbwp:13-24. 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 Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    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.