IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11346.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Remains from the Volcker Experiment?

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin M. Friedman

Abstract

Under conventional representations of economic policymaking, any innovation is either (1) a change in the objectives that policymakers are seeking to achieve, (2) a change in the choice of policy instrument, or (3) a change in the way auxiliary aspects of economic activity are used to steer policy in the context of time lags. Most public discussion of the 1979 Volcker experiment at the time, and likewise most of the subsequent academic literature, emphasized either the role of quantitative targets for money growth (3) or the use of an open market operating procedure based on a reserves quantity rather than a short-term interest rate (2). With time, however, neither has survived as part of U.S. monetary policymaking. What remains is the question of whether 1979 brought a new, greater weight on the Federal Reserve's objective of price stability vis-a-vis its objective of output growth and high employment (1). That is certainly one interpretation of the historical record. But the historical evidence is also consistent with the view that the 1970s were exceptional, rather than that the experience since 1979 has differed from what went before as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin M. Friedman, 2005. "What Remains from the Volcker Experiment?," NBER Working Papers 11346, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11346
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11346.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1997. "The Rise and Fall of Money Growth Targets as Guidelines for US Monetary Policy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Iwao Kuroda (ed.), Towards More Effective Monetary Policy, chapter 6, pages 137-175, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2004. "Monetary Policy Rules, Macroeconomic Stability, and Inflation: A View from the Trenches," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(2), pages 151-175, April.
    3. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2004. "Why the Federal Reserve Should Not Adopt Inflation Targeting," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(1), pages 129-136, March.
    4. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2004. "Why the Federal Reserve Should Adopt Inflation Targeting," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(1), pages 117-127, March.
    5. Barro, Robert J., 1989. "Interest-rate targeting," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 3-30, January.
    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. Lina El‐Jahel & Robert Macculloch & Hamed Shafiee, 2023. "How Does Monetary Policy Affect Welfare? Some New Estimates Using Data on Life Evaluation and Emotional Well‐Being," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(8), pages 2001-2025, December.
    2. Andrej Srakar & Marilena Vecco, 2017. "Ex-ante versus ex-post: comparison of the effects of the European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012 on tourism and employment," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 41(2), pages 197-214, May.

    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. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2005. "What remains from the Volcker experiment?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Mar), pages 323-328.
    2. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2006. "The Greenspan Era: Discretion, Rather than Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 174-177, May.
    3. Jan Libich & Andrew Hughes Hallett & Petr Stehlik, 2007. "Monetary And Fiscal Policy Interaction With Various Degrees And Types Of Commitment," CAMA Working Papers 2007-21, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    4. Manfred Borchert, "undated". "The Impact of Banking Behaviour on Monetary Strategy in Europe," Working Papers 201160, Institute of Spatial and Housing Economics, Munster Universitary.
    5. Daniel Daianu & Laurian Lungu, 2007. "Inflation Targeting, Between Rhetoric and Reality. The Case of Transition Economies," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 4(1), pages 39-64, June.
    6. Andrew Hallett & Jan Libich, 2012. "Explicit inflation targets and central bank independence: friends or foes?," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 45(4), pages 271-297, November.
    7. Troy Davig & Eric M. Leeper, 2007. "Generalizing the Taylor Principle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 607-635, June.
    8. Brian Snowdon, 2007. "The New Classical Counter-Revolution: False Path or Illuminating Complement?," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 541-562, Fall.
    9. Libich, Jan & Stehlík, Petr, 2011. "Endogenous monetary commitment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 103-106, July.
    10. Liu, Zheng & Waggoner, Daniel F. & Zha, Tao, 2007. "Asymmetric Expectation Effects of Regime Shifts and the Great Moderation," Kiel Working Papers 1357, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    11. Otmar Issing, 2005. "Communication, transparency, accountability: monetary policy in the twenty-first century," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Mar), pages 65-83.
    12. Libich Jan, 2011. "Inflation Nutters? Modelling the Flexibility of Inflation Targeting," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-36, June.
    13. Libich, Jan, 2008. "An explicit inflation target as a commitment device," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 43-68, March.
    14. Giuseppe Fontana & Alfonso Palacio‐Vera, 2007. "Are Long‐Run Price Stability And Short‐Run Output Stabilization All That Monetary Policy Can Aim For?," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 269-298, May.
    15. Ftiti, Zied & Hichri, Walid, 2014. "The price stability under inflation targeting regime: An analysis with a new intermediate approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 23-32.
    16. Roger E. A. Farmer & Daniel F. Waggoner & Tao Zha, 2007. "Understanding the New Keynesian model when monetary policy switches regimes," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2007-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    17. Dániel Felcser & Kristóf Lehmann, 2012. "The Fed’s inflation target and the background of its announcement," MNB Bulletin (discontinued), Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary), vol. 7(3), pages 28-37, October.
    18. L. Randall Wray, 2005. "Monetary Policy Strategies of the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the U.S," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_431, Levy Economics Institute.
    19. Drakos, Anastassios A. & Kouretas, Georgios P., 2015. "The conduct of monetary policy in the Eurozone before and after the financial crisis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 83-92.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    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:nbr:nberwo:11346. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.