Macro-Economics of Balance-Sheet Problems and the Liquidity Trap
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Causes and Remedies for Japan's Long-Lasting Recession
ADBI Working Paper Series Causes and Remedies for Japan’s Long-Lasting Recession: Lessons for the People’s Republic of China Naoyuki Yoshino and Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary No. 554 December 2015 Asian Development Bank Institute Naoyuki Yoshino is Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute. Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary is Assistant Professor of Economics at Keio University, Tokyo and a research assistant to the Dean of the Asian Development Bank Institute. The views expressed in this paper are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of ADBI, ADB, its Board of Directors, or the governments they represent. ADBI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequences of their use. Terminology used may not necessarily be consistent with ADB official terms. Working papers are subject to formal revision and correction before they are finalized and considered published. The Working Paper series is a continuation of the formerly named Discussion Paper series; the numbering of the papers continued without interruption or change. ADBI’s working papers reflect initial ideas on a topic and are posted online for discussion. ADBI encourages readers to post their comments on the main page for each working paper (given in the citation below). Some working papers may develop into other forms of publication. Suggested citation: Yoshino, N., and F. Taghizadeh-Hesary. 2015. Causes and Remedies for Japan’s Long- Lasting Recession: Lessons for the People’s Republic of China. ADBI Working Paper 554. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. -
The US Economy Since the Crisis: Slow Recovery and Secular Stagnation*
The US economy since the crisis: slow recovery and secular stagnation* Robert A. Blecker Professor of Economics, American University, Washington, DC 20016, USA Revised, March 2016 Abstract: The US economy has experienced a slowdown in its long-term growth and job creation that predates the Great Recession. The stagnation of output growth stems mainly from the depressing effects of rising inequality on aggregate demand, while both increased inequality and the delinkage of employment from output have their roots in profound structural changes to the US industrial structure and international position. Stagnation tendencies were temporarily offset by debt-financed household spending before the financial crisis, after which households became more financially constrained. Meanwhile, fiscal policy has shifted toward austerity while business investment has failed to keep up with the boom in corporate profits in spite of low interest rates. Slower US growth in turn exacerbates the global slowdown as it implies smaller injections of demand into global export markets. Keywords: US economy, secular stagnation, jobless recovery, financial crisis, Great Recession JEL codes: E20, E32, O51 *An earlier version of this paper was presented at the session on ‘Varieties of Stagnation? Europe, Japan and the US’, Conference on ‘The Spectre of Stagnation? Europe in the World Economy’, FMM/IMK/Hans Böckler Foundation, Berlin, Germany, 23 October 2015. Contact email for author: [email protected]. 1 INTRODUCTION The recovery from the Great Recession of 2008–9 has been the slowest and longest of any cyclical upturn in the US economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This slow and prolonged recovery was partly a result of the severity of the financial crisis that provoked the recession and the need to repair balance sheets in its aftermath (Koo 2013) as well as inadequate policy responses that failed to provide sufficient stimulus. -
How Secular Is the Current Economic Stagnation?
How secular is the current economic stagnation? Maria Roubtsova ∗ September 30, 2016 Abstract From the burst of the dotcom bubble in 2000, until the global financial crisis that started in August 2007, the global economy was growing. During that phase, macroe- conomics went through an era of general optimism around the idea of having reached a great moderation, with high steady growth and low stable inflation. Central bankers thought they managed to dampen the economic cycles. This era came to an end fol- lowing the meltdown which started with the global financial crisis of 2007. And as among economic agents, macroeconomists’ general state of mind went from optimism to pessimism. Almost ten years since the beginning of the crisis, growth is not back to its pre-crisis trends. Therefore, macroeconomists are debating the notion of a secular stagnation. Is the economy on a long-term stagnation trend, if so, for what reasons, and how to address this situation? This paper offers a critical review of the debates among macroeconomists around this notion of secular stagnation, a concept which was invented by Alvin Hansen following the global economic crisis of the 1930s, and was brought back into the public debate largely by Lawrence Summers since the end of 2013. This literature review starts with a brief synthesis of the original debate about secular stagnation, launched by Hansen in 1938, and ended in the mid-1950s, since these debates inspired contemporary theorists. The second part highlights the main elements of neoclassical explanations for secular stagnation. The third part focuses on the Minskian idea of the end of a debt super-cycle. -
Inflation, Income Taxes, and the Rate of Interest: a Theoretical Analysis
This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation Volume Author/Editor: Martin Feldstein Volume Publisher: University of Chicago Press Volume ISBN: 0-226-24085-1 Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/feld83-1 Publication Date: 1983 Chapter Title: Inflation, Income Taxes, and the Rate of Interest: A Theoretical Analysis Chapter Author: Martin Feldstein Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c11328 Chapter pages in book: (p. 28 - 43) Inflation, Income Taxes, and the Rate of Interest: A Theoretical Analysis Income taxes are a central feature of economic life but not of the growth models that we use to study the long-run effects of monetary and fiscal policies. The taxes in current monetary growth models are lump sum transfers that alter disposable income but do not directly affect factor rewards or the cost of capital. In contrast, the actual personal and corporate income taxes do influence the cost of capital to firms and the net rate of return to savers. The existence of such taxes also in general changes the effect of inflation on the rate of interest and on the process of capital accumulation.1 The current paper presents a neoclassical monetary growth model in which the influence of such taxes can be studied. The model is then used in sections 3.2 and 3.3 to study the effect of inflation on the capital intensity of the economy. James Tobin's (1955, 1965) early result that inflation increases capital intensity appears as a possible special case. -
Redalyc.Recovering Effectiveness of Monetary Policy Under A
Investigación Económica ISSN: 0185-1667 [email protected] Facultad de Economía México Ferreira de Mendonça, Helder; Caldas Montes, Gabriel Recovering Effectiveness of Monetary Policy under a Deflationary Environment Investigación Económica, vol. LXVII, núm. 265, julio-septiembre, 2008, pp. 121-144 Facultad de Economía Distrito Federal, México Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=60126504 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative investigación económica, vol. LXVII, 265, julio-septiembre de 2008, pp. 121-144 Recovering Effectiveness of Monetary Policy under a Deflationary Environment H����� F������� �� M������� G������ C����� M�����* I����������� In the last decade several countries have adopted a strategy for the conduction of a monetary policy based on central bank independence and inflation targeting. Generally speaking, the results suggest success in controlling inflation in several emerging and industrialized economies. Nonetheless, under this new environment, a new problem emerges: the risk of deflation. The main problem, as shown by the Japanese experience, is that falling prices may lock countries into a spiral of economic decline. The core of the idea is: once consumers expect falling prices, they decide to postpone purchases, implying a decrease in demand and a consequent fall in prices by producers, threatening the start of a spiral of fall in output and demand. Furthermore, based on the results presented by a profit maximizing behavior, both prices and output are influenced by expected future prices. -
Unemployment, Aggregate Demand, and the Distribution of Liquidity
Unemployment, Aggregate Demand, and the Distribution of Liquidity Zach Bethune Guillaume Rocheteau University of Virginia University of California, Irvine Tsz-Nga Wong Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond February 13, 2017 Abstract We develop a New-Monetarist model of unemployment in which distributional considerations matter. Households who lack commitment are subject to both employment and expenditure risk. They self- insure by accumulating real balances and, possibly, claims on firms profits. The distribution of liquidity is endogenous and responds to idiosyncratic risks and monetary policy. Despite the ex-post heterogeneity our model can be solved in closed form in a variety of cases. We show the existence of an aggregate demand channel according to which the distribution of workers across employment states, and their incomes in those states, affects the distribution of liquid wealth and firms’ profits. An increase in unemployment benefits or wages has a positive effect on aggregate demand and can lead to higher employment. Moreover, an increase in productivity has a multiplier effect on firms’ revenue. JEL Classification Numbers: D83 Keywords: unemployment, money, distribution. 1 Introduction We develop a New-Monetarist model of unemployment in which liquidity and distributional considerations matter. Our approach is motivated by the strong empirical evidence that household heterogeneity in terms of income and wealth, together with liquidity constraints, affect aggregate consumption and unemployment (e.g., Mian and Sufi, 2010?; Carroll et al., 2015). There is a recent literature that formalizes search frictions and liquidity constraints in goods markets that reduce the ability of firms to sell their output, their incentives to hire, and ultimately the level of unemployment (e.g., Berentsen, Menzio, and Wright, 2010; Michaillat and Saez, 2015). -
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES IS-LM and MONETARISM Michael
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES IS-LM AND MONETARISM Michael D. Bordo Anna J. Schwartz Working Paper 9713 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9713 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 May 2003 This paper was presented at the 2003 HOPE Conference on “The IS/LM Model: Its Rise, Fall, and Strange Persistence” at Duke University, April 25-27. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. ©2003 by Michael D. Bordo and Anna J. Schwartz. All rights reserved. Short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including © notice, is given to the source. IS-LM and Monetarism Michael D. Bordo and Anna J. Schwartz NBER Working Paper No. 9713 May 2003 JEL No. B22, B31, B41, E12, N12 ABSTRACT This paper discusses monetarist objections to the IS-LM model. We explore the views of two principal spokesmen for monetarism: Milton Friedman and the team of Karl Brunner and Allan Meltzer. Friedman did not explicitly state the reasons he generally chose not to use the IS-LM model in rejecting Keynesian views on the demand function for money, the role of autonomous expenditures in cyclical fluctuations, the potency of fiscal policy as against monetary policy, etc. He presented statistical findings, historical evidence, and econometric results to support his alternative analysis of macroeconomics, but his critics were unconvinced. In 1970, in an effort to use his critics’ common language, he set up a model with explicit terms for IS-LM to encompass both the quantity theory and the income-expenditure theory. -
AS-AD and the Business Cycle
Chapter AS-AD and the Business Cycle CHAPTER OUTLINE 1. Provide a technical definition of recession and describe the history of the U.S. business cycle and the global business cycle. A. Dating Business-Cycle Turning Points B. U.S. Business-Cycle History C. Recent Cycles 2. Explain the influences on aggregate supply. A. Aggregate Supply Basics 1. Why the AS Curve Slopes Upward a. Business Failure and Startup b. Temporary Shutdowns and Restarts c. Changes in Output Rate 2. Production at a Pepsi Plant B. Changes in Aggregate Supply 1. Changes in Potential GDP 2. Changes in Money Wage Rate and Other Resource Prices 3. Explain the influences on aggregate demand. A. Aggregate Demand Basics 1. The Buying Power of Money 2. The Real Interest Rate 3. The Real Prices of Exports and Imports B. Changes in Aggregate Demand 1. Expectations 2. Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy 3. The World Economy C. The Aggregate Demand Multiplier 4. Explain how fluctuations in aggregate demand and aggregate supply create the business cycle. A. Aggregate Demand Fluctuations B. Aggregate Supply Fluctuations C. Adjustment Toward Full Employment 710 Part 10 . ECONOMIC FLUCTUATIONS CHAPTER ROADMAP What’s New in this Edition? Chapter 29 is now the first chapter in which the students en‐ counter the AS‐AD model. This chapter now uses some of the material from the second edition’s Chapter 23 introduc‐ tion to AS‐AD to explain the beginning about aggregate supply and aggregate demand. The connection between the AS‐AD model and business cycle has been rewritten and made even more straightforward for the students. -
Some Answers FE312 Fall 2010 Rahman 1) Suppose the Fed
Problem Set 7 – Some Answers FE312 Fall 2010 Rahman 1) Suppose the Fed reduces the money supply by 5 percent. a) What happens to the aggregate demand curve? If the Fed reduces the money supply, the aggregate demand curve shifts down. This result is based on the quantity equation MV = PY, which tells us that a decrease in money M leads to a proportionate decrease in nominal output PY (assuming of course that velocity V is fixed). For any given price level P, the level of output Y is lower, and for any given Y, P is lower. b) What happens to the level of output and the price level in the short run and in the long run? In the short run, we assume that the price level is fixed and that the aggregate supply curve is flat. In the short run, output falls but the price level doesn’t change. In the long-run, prices are flexible, and as prices fall over time, the economy returns to full employment. If we assume that velocity is constant, we can quantify the effect of the 5% reduction in the money supply. Recall from Chapter 4 that we can express the quantity equation in terms of percent changes: ΔM/M + ΔV/V = ΔP/P + ΔY/Y We know that in the short run, the price level is fixed. This implies that the percentage change in prices is zero and thus ΔM/M = ΔY/Y. Thus in the short run a 5 percent reduction in the money supply leads to a 5 percent reduction in output. -
It's BAAACK! Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap
IT’S BAAACK! JAPAN’S SLUMP AND THE RETURN OF THE LIQUIDITY TRAP In the early years of macroeconomics as a discipline, the liquidity trap - that awkward condition in which monetary policy loses its grip because the nominal interest rate is essentially zero, in which the quantity of money becomes irrelevant because money and bonds are essentially perfect substitutes - played a central role. Hicks (1937), in introducing both the IS-LM model and the liquidity trap, identified the assumption that monetary policy was ineffective, rather than the assumed downward inflexibility of prices, as the central difference between “Mr. Keynes and the classics”. It has often been pointed out that the Alice-in-Wonderland character of early Keynesianism, with its paradoxes of thrift, widow's cruses, and so on, depended on the explicit or implicit assumption of an accommodative monetary policy; it has less often been pointed out that in the late 1930s and early 1940s it seemed quite natural to assume that money was irrelevant at the margin. After all, at the end of the 30s interest rates were hard up against the zero constraint: the average rate on Treasury bills during 1940 was 0.014 percent. Since then, however, the liquidity trap has steadily receded both as a memory and as a subject of economic research. Partly this is because in the generally inflationary decades after World War II nominal interest rates stayed comfortably above zero, and central banks therefore no longer found themselves “pushing on a string”. Also, the experience of the 30s itself was reinterpreted, most notably by Friedman and Schwartz (1963); emphasizing broad aggregates rather than interest rates or monetary base, they argued in effect that the Depression was caused by monetary contraction, that the Fed could have prevented it, and implicitly that even after the great slump a sufficiently aggressive monetary expansion could have reversed it. -
How to Escape a Liquidity Trap with Interest Rate Rules Fernando Duarte Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, No
How to Escape a N O . 776 Liquidity Trap with M A Y 2 0 1 6 Interest Rate Rules REVISED JANUARY 2019 Fernando Duarte How to Escape a Liquidity Trap with Interest Rate Rules Fernando Duarte Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 776 May 2016; revised January 2019 JEL classification: E43, E52, E58 Abstract I study how central banks should communicate monetary policy in liquidity trap scenarios in which the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is binding. Using a standard New Keynesian model, I argue that the key to preventing self-fulfilling deflationary spirals and anchoring expectations is to promise to keep nominal interest rates pegged at zero for a length of time that depends on the state of the economy. I derive necessary and sufficient conditions for this type of state contingent forward guidance to implement the welfare-maximizing equilibrium as a globally determinate (that is, unique) equilibrium. Even though the zero lower bound prevents the Taylor principle from holding, determinacy can be obtained if the central bank sufficiently extends the duration of the zero interest rate peg in response to deflationary or contractionary changes in expectations or outcomes. Fiscal policy is passive, so it plays no role for determinacy. The interest rate rules I consider are easy to communicate, require little institutional change and do not entail any unnecessary social welfare losses. Key words: zero lower bound (ZLB), liquidity trap, new Keynesian model, indeterminacy, monetary policy, Taylor rule, Taylor principle, interest rate rule, forward guidance _________________ Duarte: Federal Reserve Bank of New York (email: [email protected]) The author thanks Sushant Acharya, Tobias Adrian, Christine Breiner, Marco Del Negro, Gauti Eggertsson, Marc Giannoni, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Alfonso Irarrazabal, Chris Sims, Rui Yu, and, particularly, Anna Zabai for comments and discussions. -
Aggregate Demand and the Dynamics of Unemployment
Aggregate Demand and the Dynamics of Unemployment Edouard Schaal Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel New York University The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania June 3, 2016 Abstract We introduce an aggregate demand externality into the Mortensen-Pissarides model of equi- librium unemployment. Because firms care about the demand for their products, an increase in unemployment lowers the incentives to post vacancies which further increases unemploy- ment. This positive feedback creates a coordination problem among firms and leads to multiple equilibria. We show, however, that the multiplicity disappears when enough heterogeneity is introduced in the model. In this case, the unique equilibrium still exhibits interesting dynamic properties. In particular, the importance of the aggregate demand channel grows with the size and duration of shocks, and multiple stationary points in the dynamics of unemployment can exist. We calibrate the model to the U.S. economy and show that the mechanism generates ad- ditional volatility and persistence in labor market variables, in line with the data. In particular, the model can generate deep, long-lasting unemployment crises. JEL Classifications: E24, D83 1 1 Introduction The slow recovery that followed the Great Recession of 2007-2009 has revived interest in the long-held view in macroeconomics that episodes of high unemployment can persist for extended periods of time because of depressed aggregate demand. The mechanism seems intuitive: when firms expect lower demand for their products, they refrain from hiring and unemployment increases. In turn, as unemployment rises, aggregate income and spending decline, effectively confirming the low aggregate demand. In this paper, we propose a theory of unemployment and aggregate demand to investigate this mechanism.