Author Archives: John Taylor
Take Off the Muzzle and the Economy Will Roar
In his Saturday Wall Street Journal essay “Why the Economy Doesn’t Roar Anymore”—illustrated with a big lion with its mouth shut—Marc Levinson offers the answer that the “U.S. economy isn’t behaving badly. It is just being ordinary.” But there is … Continue reading
Should the Previous Framework for Monetary Policy Be Fundamentally Reconsidered?
“Did the crisis reveal that the previous consensus framework for monetary policy was inadequate and should be fundamentally reconsidered?” “Did economic relationships fundamentally change after the crisis and if so how?” These important questions set the theme for an excellent … Continue reading
The Statistical Analysis of Policy Rules
My teacher, colleague, and good friend Ted Anderson died this week at the age of 98. Ted was my Ph.D. thesis adviser at Stanford in the early 1970s, and later a colleague when I returned to teach at Stanford in … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching Economics
Leave a comment
Central Banks Going Beyond Their Range
Economist John Eatwell of Cambridge and I published a joint letter in the Financial Times today. We argue that monetary policy is off track and that other policies are sorely needed. I said the same in a CNBC interview from Miami … Continue reading
Posted in Monetary Policy
Leave a comment
Kocherlakota on the Fed and the Taylor Rule
The use of policy rules to analyze monetary policy has been a growing area of research for several decades, and the pace has picked up recently. Last month Janet Yellen presented a policy framework for the future centered around a … Continue reading
Posted in Monetary Policy
Leave a comment
Novel Research on Elections, Policymaking, Economic Uncertainty
The Becker Friedman Institute of the University of Chicago and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University teamed up yesterday to put on a Conference on Elections, Policymaking, and Economic Uncertainty. The conference was held at the Hoover Institution Offices in … Continue reading
Think Again and Again About the Natural Rate of Interest
In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, “Think You Know the Natural Rate of Interest? Think Again,” James Mackintosh warns about the high level of uncertainty in recent estimates of the equilibrium interest rate—commonly called r* or the natural rate—that … Continue reading
Posted in Monetary Policy
Leave a comment
Jackson Hole XXXV
Everyone keeps asking about this year’s Jackson Hole monetary conference and how it compared with the first. Well, I wrote about the first on my way to this conference, and I have to say the thirty fifth lived up to its billing … Continue reading
Posted in Monetary Policy
Leave a comment
A Less Weird Time at Jackson Hole?
I’m on my way to join the world’s central bankers at Jackson Hole for the 35th annual monetary-policy conference in the Grand Teton Mountains. I attended the first monetary-policy conference there in 1982, and I may be the only person … Continue reading
CBO’s New Way to Evaluate Fiscal Consolidation Plans
In its recently released budget outlook, the Congressional Budget Office projects that this year’s federal deficit will increase by 35% from last year to $590 billion, and that the debt will rise from $14 trillion to $23 trillion by 2026, or … Continue reading
Economics One 