IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1277.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetarist Rules in the Light of Recent Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Bennett T. McCallum

Abstract

Recent experience does not include a "monetarist experiment," as some have argued, but may slightly reinforce preexisting reasons for doubting that the best way of formulating monetarist policy prescriptions is in the form of a constant growth rule for the money stock.A more desirable rule would pertain to the monetary base, which is much more directly under Fed control. While a constant base growth rule might provide good macroeconomic performance, better results should be obtainable from a rule that at regular intervals adjusts the base growth rate upward or downward depending on whether nominal GNP is below or above a target path that specifies constant, non-inflationary growth for that variable. This type of rule is activist, to an extent, but is non-discretionary.The implied absence of policy-making flexibility is desirable for reasons explained in the literature on dynamic inconsistency.

Suggested Citation

  • Bennett T. McCallum, 1984. "Monetarist Rules in the Light of Recent Experience," NBER Working Papers 1277, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1277
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1277.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCallum, Bennett T & Hoehn, James G, 1983. "Instrument Choice for Money Stock Control with Contemporaneous and Lagged Reserve Requirements: A Note," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 15(1), pages 96-101, February.
    2. Brunner, Karl & Meltzer, Allan H., 1983. "Strategies and tactics for monetary control," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 59-103, January.
    3. Barro, Robert J & Gordon, David B, 1983. "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 589-610, August.
    4. McCallum, Bennett T, 1981. "Monetarist Principles and the Money Stock Growth Rule," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 134-138, May.
    5. 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)

    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. Cukierman, Alex & Lippi, Francesco, 2001. "Labour Markets and Monetary Union: A Strategic Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(473), pages 541-565, July.
    2. Bill Dupor, 2005. "Keynesian Conundrum: Multiplicity and Time Consistent Stabilization," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(1), pages 154-177, January.
    3. Alex Cukierman & Anton Muscatelli, 2001. "Do Central Banks have Precautionary Demands for Expansions and for Price Stability?," Working Papers 2002_4, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow, revised Mar 2002.
    4. Corinne Aaron-Cureau & Hubert Kempf, 2006. "Bargaining over monetary policy in a monetary union and the case for appointing an independent central banker," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(1), pages 1-27, January.
    5. Martin, Fernando M., 2015. "Debt, inflation and central bank independence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 129-150.
    6. Fabrice Capoen & Henri Sterdyniak & Pierre Villa, 1994. "Indépendance des banques centrales, politiques monétaire et budgétaire : une approche stratégique," Revue de l'OFCE, Programme National Persée, vol. 50(1), pages 65-102.
    7. Pierpaolo Benigno & Luca Antonio Ricci, 2011. "The Inflation-Output Trade-Off with Downward Wage Rigidities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1436-1466, June.
    8. Bordo, Michael D., 1986. "Explorations in monetary history: A survey of the literature," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 339-415, October.
    9. Bennett T. McCallum & Edward Nelson, 2004. "Timeless perspective vs. discretionary monetary policy in forward-looking models," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 86(Mar), pages 43-56.
    10. Nessen, Marianne & Vestin, David, 2005. "Average Inflation Targeting," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 837-863, October.
    11. Aurélien Goutsmedt, 2021. "From the Stagflation to the Great Inflation: Explaining the US economy of the 1970s," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 131(3), pages 557-582.
    12. Christoph S. Weber, 2020. "The unemployment effect of central bank transparency," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 2947-2975, December.
    13. Berlemann, Michael & Hielscher, Kai, 2009. "Measuring Effective Monetary Policy Conservatism," Working Paper 89/2009, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg.
    14. Richard Mash, 2000. "The Time Inconsistency of Monetary Policy with Inflation Persistence," Economics Series Working Papers 15, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. Cavallari, Lilia, 2001. "Inflationary performance in a monetary union with large wage setters," ZEI Working Papers B 11-2001, University of Bonn, ZEI - Center for European Integration Studies.
    16. Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2007. "Macroeconomic Modeling for Monetary Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 25-46, Fall.
    17. Richard Newell & William Pizer & Jiangfeng Zhang, 2005. "Managing Permit Markets to Stabilize Prices," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 31(2), pages 133-157, June.
    18. Stefania Albanesi & V. V. Chari & Lawrence J. Christiano, 2003. "Expectation Traps and Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(4), pages 715-741.
    19. Adriana Arreaza Coll & Luis Enrique Pedauga, 2007. "Instituciones, estructura económica y política económica: ¿qué hay detrás de la inflación en América Latina?," Monetaria, CEMLA, vol. 0(1), pages 7-48, enero-mar.
    20. Donato Masciandaro, 1995. "Designing a central bank: Social player, monetary agent, or banking agent?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 399-410, October.

    More about this item

    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:1277. 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.