Author Archives: John Taylor
Restoring Robust Growth in America
Why has the recovery been so slow? What can we do about it? Alan Greenspan, George Shultz, Ed Prescott, Steve Davis, Nick Bloom, John Cochrane, Bob Hall, Lee Ohanian, John Cogan and I recently met at the Hoover Institution at … Continue reading
Posted in Fiscal Policy and Reforms
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Omitted Facts in a Speech on Omitted Variables
Christina Romer gave a speech at Hamilton College earlier this month which criticizes my findings that recent temporary tax rebates had little or no effect on aggregate consumption. Romer claims that in analyzing this “relationship between two variables” I did … Continue reading
Posted in Fiscal Policy and Reforms
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More on Nominal GDP Targeting
Several people have asked me to comment on nominal GDP targeting, as recently proposed by Scott Sumner, Christina Romer and Paul Krugman. I did research on nominal GDP targeting many years ago and found that such targeting proposals had a … Continue reading
Posted in Monetary Policy
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Price Explosion for Stanford Oregon Tickets
We just finished Week 7, and Lecture 27, in Economics 1 with a midterm exam coming up next week. What a great time to be teaching and learning economics, with the questions about the bailouts and the top 1 percent … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching Economics
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More On Economic Freedom and Monetary Policy
My Wall Street Journal article today is quite critical of recent interventionist fiscal and monetary policies in the United States. In my view, they have not only been unhelpful to the American economy, they have also been unhelpful to the … Continue reading
Posted in Monetary Policy
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The Texts They Are A-Changin’
How should the introductory economics text change in response the financial crisis, the recession and the very slow recovery? The question will be discussed at a big economics teachers’ conference in New Orleans this week. I will be there to … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching Economics
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Congratulations and Thanks to Tom Sargent and Chris Sims
The Nobel Prize committee made an excellent choice in awarding the 2011 economics prize to Tom Sargent and Chris Sims for their influential contributions to macroeconomics. One of the first papers of Tom Sargent I read was his little “Note … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching Economics
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Higher Inflation Is Not the Answer
Today’s NPR Morning Edition presented two sides to the question “Does The Economy Need A Little Inflation?” By “a little” they mean 5 percent per year for a few years. The former IMF chief economist and Harvard professor Ken Rogoff argued in … Continue reading
Posted in Monetary Policy
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The Dangers of Misrepresenting Past Economic Debates
“What’s past is prologue,” says Future, the statue at the National Archives. But in macroeconomic policy—monetary and fiscal—the past is often misrepresented, and that unfortunately leads Future astray. A common misrepresention these days pertains to past views of economists about monetary … Continue reading
Posted in Regulatory Policy
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Good Economics Is Good Politics
My oped today with John Cogan in the Wall Street Journal shows that temporary fiscal stimulus packages are not good politics. Historical evidence reveals that politicians who enact them tend not to get re-elected. Our previous Wall Street Journal articles here and … Continue reading
Posted in Fiscal Policy and Reforms
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Economics One 