Frederic S Mishkin: Does stabilizing inflation contribute to stabilizing
economic activity?
Speech by Mr Frederic S Mishkin, Member of the Board of Governors of the US Federal
Reserve System, at the East Carolina University's Beta Gamma Sigma Distinguished Lecture
Series, Greenville, North Carolina, 25 February 2008.
The original speech, which contains various links to the documents mentioned, can be found on the US Federal
Reserve System's website (www.federalreserve.gov)
* * *
The ultimate purpose of a central bank should be to promote the public good through policies
that foster economic prosperity. Research in monetary economics describes this purpose by
specifying monetary policy objectives in terms of stabilizing both inflation and economic
activity. Indeed, this specification of monetary policy objectives is exactly what is suggested
by the dual mandate that the Congress has given to the Federal Reserve to promote both
price stability and maximum employment.1
We might worry that, under some circumstances, the objectives of stabilizing inflation and
economic activity could conflict, particularly in the short run. However, economic research
over the past three decades suggests that such conflicts may not, in fact, be that serious.
Indeed, stabilizing inflation and stabilizing economic activity are mutually reinforcing not only
in the long run, but in the short run as well. In my remarks today, I would like to outline how
economic researchers came to that conclusion, and in so doing, explain why it is so
important to achieve and maintain price stability.2
The long run
Both economic theory and empirical evidence indicate that the stabilization of inflation
promotes stronger economic activity in the long run.3 Two principles underlie that conclusion.
The first principle is that low inflation is beneficial for economic welfare. Rates of inflation
significantly above the low levels of recent years can have serious adverse effects on
economic efficiency and hence on output in the long run. The distortions from a moderate to
high level of long-run inflation are many. High inflation can cause confusion among
households and firms, thereby distorting savings and investment decisions (Lucas, 1972;
Briault, 1995; Shafir, Diamond, and Tversky, 1997). The interaction of inflation and the tax
code, which is often applied to nominal income, can have adverse effects, especially on the
incentive of firms to invest in productive capital (Feldstein, 1997). Infrequent nominal price
adjustment implies that high inflation results in distorted relative prices, thereby leading to an
inefficient allocation of resources (Woodford, 2003). And high inflation distorts the financial
sector as firms and households demand greater protection from inflation's erosion of the
value of cash holdings (English, 1999).
The second principle is the lack of a long-run tradeoff between unemployment and the
inflation rate. Rather, the long-run Phillips curve is vertical, implying that the economy
gravitates to some natural rate of unemployment in the long run no matter what the rate of
inflation is (Friedman, 1968; Phelps, 1968).4 The natural rate, in turn, is determined by the
structure of labor and product markets, including elements such as the ease with which
people who lose their jobs can find new employment and the pace at which technological
progress creates new industries and occupations while shrinking or eliminating others.
Importantly, those structural features of the economy are outside the control of monetary
policy. As a result, any attempt by a central bank to keep unemployment below the natural
rate would prove fruitless. Such a strategy would only lead to higher inflation that, as the first
principle suggests, would lower economic activity and household welfare in the long run.
Empirical evidence has starkly demonstrated the adverse effects of high inflation (e.g., see
the surveys in Fischer, 1993, and Anderson and Gruen, 1995). In most industrialized
countries, the late 1960s to early 1980s was a period during which inflation rose to high
levels while economic activity stagnated. While many factors contributed to the improved
economic performance of recent decades, policymakers' focus on low and stable inflation
was likely an important factor.5
The short run
Although there is no long-run tradeoff between unemployment and inflation, in the short run,
expansionary monetary policy that raises inflation can lower unemployment and raise
employment. That is, the short-run Phillips curve is not vertical. That fact would seem to
suggest that achieving the dual goals of price stability and maximum sustainable
employment might at times conflict. However, several lines of research provide support for
the view that stabilization of inflation and economic activity can be complementary rather
than in conflict.
Economists have long recognized that some sources of economic fluctuations imply that
output stability and inflation stability are mutually reinforcing. Consider a negative shock to
aggregate demand (such as a decline in consumer confidence) that causes households to
cut spending. The drop in demand leads, in turn, to a decline in actual output relative to its
potential - that is, the level of output that the economy can produce at the maximum
sustainable level of employment. As a result of increased slack in the economy, future
inflation will fall below levels consistent with price stability, and the central bank will pursue
an expansionary policy to keep inflation from falling. The expansionary policy will then result
in an increase in demand that boosts output toward its potential to return inflation to a level
consistent with price stability. Stabilizing output thus stabilizes inflation and vice versa under
these conditions.
For example, the Federal Reserve reduced its target for the federal funds rate a total of 5-1/2
percentage points during the 2001 recession; that stimulus not only contributed to economic
recovery but also helped to avoid an unwelcome decline in inflation below its already low
level. At other times, a tightening of the stance of monetary policy has prevented the
economy from overheating and generating a boom-bust cycle in the level of employment as
well as an undesirable upward spurt of inflation.
One critical precondition for effective central-bank easing in response to adverse demand
shocks is anchored long-run inflation expectations. Otherwise, lowering short-term interest
rates could raise inflation expectations, which might lead to higher, rather than lower,
longterm interest rates, thereby depriving monetary policy of one of its key transmission channels
for stimulating the economy. The role of expectations illustrates two additional basic
principles of monetary policy that help explain why stabilizing inflation helps stabilize
economic activity: First, expectations of future policy actions and accompanying economic
conditions play a crucial role in determining the effects of current policy actions on the
economy. Second, monetary policy is most effective when the central bank is firmly
committed, through its actions and statements, to a "nominal anchor" - such as to keeping
inflation low and stable. A strong commitment to stabilizing inflation helps anchor inflation
expectations so that a central bank will not have to worry that expansionary policy to counter
a negative demand shock will lead to a sharp rise in expected inflation - a so-called inflation
scare (Goodfriend, 1993, 2005). Such a scare would not only blunt the effects of lower
shortterm interest rates on real activity but would also push up actual inflation in the future. Thus,
a strong commitment to a nominal anchor enables a central bank to react more aggressively
to negative demand shocks and, therefore, to prevent rapid declines in employment or
output.
Unlike demand shocks, which drive inflation and economic activity in the same direction and
thus present policymakers with a clear signal for how to adjust policy, supply shocks, such as
the increases in the price of energy that we have been experiencing lately, drive inflation and
output in opposite directions. In this case, because tightening monetary policy to reduce
inflation can lead to lower output, the goal of stabilizing inflation might conflict with the goal of
stabilizing economic activity.
Here again, a strong, previously established commitment to stabilizing inflation can help
stabilize economic activity, because supply shocks, such as a rise in relative energy prices,
are likely to have only a temporary effect on inflation in such circumstances. When inflation
expectations are well anchored, the central bank does not necessarily need to raise interest
rates aggressively to keep inflation under control following an aggregate supply shock.
Hence, the commitment to price stability can help avoid imposing unnecessary hardship on
workers and the economy more broadly.
The experience of recent decades supports the view that a substantial conflict between
stabilizing inflation and stabilizing output in response to supply shocks does not arise if
inflation expectations are well anchored. The oil shocks in the 1970s caused large increases
in inflation not only through their direct effects on household energy prices but also through
their "second round" effects on the prices of other goods that reflected, in part, expectations
of higher future inflation. Sharp economic downturns followed, driven partly by restrictive
monetary policy actions taken in response to the inflation outbreaks. In contrast, the run-up in
energy prices since 2003 has had only modest effects on inflation for other goods; as a
result, monetary policy has been able to avoid responding precipitously to higher oil prices.
More generally, the period from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s was one of relatively high
and volatile inflation; at the same time, real activity was very volatile. Since the early 1980s,
central banks have put greater weight on achieving low and stable inflation, while during the
same period, real activity stabilized appreciably. Many factors were likely at work, but this
experience suggests that inflation stabilization does not have to come at the cost of greater
volatility of real activity; in fact, it suggests that, by anchoring inflation expectations, low and
stable inflation is an important precondition for macroeconomic stability.
Research over the past decade using so-called New Keynesian models has added further
support to the proposition that inflation stabilization may contribute to stabilizing employment
and output at their maximum sustainable levels. This research has also led to a deeper
understanding of the benefits of price stability and the setting of monetary policy in response
to changes in economic activity and inflation.
In particular, research has emphasized the interaction between stabilizing inflation and
economic activity and has found that price stability can contribute to overall economic
stability in a range of circumstances. The intuition that leads to the conclusion that stabilizing
inflation promotes maximum sustainable output and employment is simple, and it holds in a
range of economic models whose policy prescriptions have been dubbed the New
Neoclassical Synthesis. To begin, the prices of many goods and services adjust infrequently.
Accordingly, under general price inflation, the prices of some goods and services are
changing while other prices do not, thus distorting relative prices between different goods
and services. As a consequence, the profitability of producing the various goods and
services no longer reflects the relative social costs of producing them, which in turn yields an
inefficient allocation of resources. A policy of price stability minimizes those inefficiencies
(Goodfriend and King, 1997; Rotemberg and Woodford, 1997; Woodford, 2003).
There are several subtleties here. First, in some circumstance, relative prices should change.
For example, the rapid technological advances in the production of information-technology
goods witnessed over the past decades mean that the prices of these goods relative to other
goods and services should decline, because fewer economic resources are required for their
production. Conversely, shifts in the balance between global demand for, and supply of, oil
require that relative prices change to achieve an appropriate reallocation of resources - in
this case, the reduced use of expensive energy. Thus, the policy prescription refers to
stability of the price level as a whole, not to the stability of each individual price.
Second, the New Neoclassical Synthesis suggests that only those prices that move
sluggishly, referred to as sticky prices, should be stabilized. Indeed, these models indicate
that monetary policy should try to get the economy to operate at the same level that would
prevail if all prices were flexible - that is, at the so-called natural rate of output or
employment. Stabilizing sticky prices helps the economy get close to the theoretical
flexibleprice equilibrium because it keeps sticky prices from moving away from their appropriate
relative level while flexible prices are adjusting to their own appropriate relative level. The
New Neoclassical Synthesis, therefore, does not suggest that headline inflation, in which the
weight on flexible prices is larger, should be stabilized. For example, to the extent that
households directly consume energy goods with flexible prices, such as gasoline, headline
inflation should be allowed to increase in response to an oil price shock. At the same time,
insofar as energy enters as an input in the production of goods whose prices are sticky,
stabilizing the level of sticky prices would require that the increase in energy-intensive goods
prices be offset by declines in the prices of other goods.
That reasoning suggests that monetary policy should focus on stabilizing a measure of "core"
inflation, which is made up mostly of sticky prices. Simulations with FRB/US, the model of the
U.S. economy created and maintained by the staff of the Federal Reserve Board (Mishkin,
2007b), illustrate this point. To keep the simulations as simple as possible, I have assumed
that the economy begins at full employment with both headline and core inflation at desired
levels. The economy is then assumed to experience a shock that raises the world price of oil
about $30 per barrel over two years; the shock is assumed to slowly dissipate thereafter. In
each of two scenarios, a Taylor rule is assumed to govern the response of the federal funds
rate; the only difference between the two scenarios is that in one, the federal funds rate
responds to core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation, whereas in the other, it
responds to headline PCE inflation.6 Figure 1 illustrates the results of those two scenarios.
The federal funds rate jumps higher and faster when the central bank responds to headline
inflation rather than to core inflation, as would be expected (top-left panel). Likewise,
responding to headline inflation pushes the unemployment rate markedly higher than
otherwise in the early going (top-right panel), and produces an inflation rate that is slightly
lower than otherwise, whether measured by core or headline indexes (bottom panels). More
important, even for a shock as persistent as this one, the policy response under headline
inflation has to be unwound in the sense that the federal funds rate must drop substantially
below baseline once the first-round effects of the shock drop out of the inflation data.7
The basic point from these simulations is that monetary policy that responds to headline
inflation rather than to core inflation in response to an oil price shock pushes unemployment
markedly higher than monetary policy that responds to core inflation. In addition, because
this policy has larger swings in the federal funds rate that must be reversed, it leads to more
pronounced swings in unemployment. On the other hand, monetary policy that responds to
core inflation does not lead to appreciably worse performance on stabilizing inflation than
does monetary policy that responds to headline inflation. Stabilizing core inflation, therefore,
leads to better economic outcomes than stabilizing headline inflation.
Although the simplest sticky-price models imply that stabilizing sticky-price inflation and
economic activity are two sides of the same coin, the presence of other frictions besides
sticky prices can lead to instances in which completely stabilizing sticky-price inflation would
not imply stabilizing employment (or output) around their natural rates. For example, in
response to an increase in productivity (a positive technology shock), the real wage has to
rise to reflect the higher marginal product of labor inputs, which requires either prices to fall
or nominal wages to rise for employment to reach its natural rate. If both nominal wages and
prices are sticky, a policy of completely stabilizing prices will force the necessary real wage
adjustment to occur entirely through nominal wage adjustment, thereby impeding the
adjustment of employment to its efficient level (Blanchard, 1997; Erceg, Henderson, and
Levin, 2000). Indeed, if wages are much stickier than prices, the best strategy is to stabilize
nominal wage inflation rather than price inflation, thereby allowing price inflation to decline to
achieve the required increase in real wages.
Fluctuations in inflation and economic activity induced by variation over time in sources of
economic inefficiency, such as changes in the markups in goods and labor markets or
inefficiencies in labor market search, could also drive a wedge between the goals of
stabilizing inflation and economic activity (Blanchard and Galí, 2006; Galí, Gertler, and
López-Salido, 2007). For example, in sectors of the economy subject to little competitive
pressure, prices that firms set tend to be higher and output lower than would prevail under
greater competition. Monetary policy is, of course, unable to offset permanently high
markups because of the principle, mentioned earlier, that the long-run Phillips curve is
vertical. However, a temporary increase in monopoly power that raises markups would exert
upward pressure on prices without, at the same time, reducing the productive potential of the
economy. That would, indeed, be a case of a tradeoff between stabilizing inflation and
stabilizing output.
These examples narrow the degree to which the recent findings of congruence between
stabilizing inflation and economic activity apply in all cases, but they do not necessarily
overturn the findings. The example of sticky wages would not invalidate the view that
stabilizing inflation stabilizes economic activity if wages are sticky, for example, because they
are held constant in order to operate as an "insurance" contract between employers and
workers (Goodfriend and King, 2001). And for many of the inefficient shocks that drive a
wedge between the sustainable level of output and the level of output associated with price
stability, monetary policy may be the wrong tool to offset their effects (Blanchard, 2005).
Of course, central banks at times will still face difficult decisions regarding the short-run
tradeoff between stabilizing inflation and output. For example, judging from the fit of New
Keynesian Phillips curves, a substantial fraction of overall inflation variability seems related
to supply-type shocks that create a tradeoff between inflation and output-gap stabilization
(Kiley, 2007b). But the key insight from recent research - that the interaction between
inflation fluctuations and relative price distortions should lead to a focus on the stability of
nominal prices that adjust sluggishly - will likely prove to have important practical
implications that can help contribute to inflation and employment stabilization.
Stabilizing inflation as a robust policy in the presence of uncertainty
The discussion so far has been based on the premise that the central bank knows the
efficient, or natural, rate of output or employment. However, the natural rates of employment
and output cannot be directly observed and are subject to considerable uncertainty -
particularly in real time. Indeed, economists do not even agree on the economic theory or
econometric methods that should be used to measure those rates. These concerns are
perhaps even more severe in the most recent models, where fluctuations in natural rates of
output or employment can be very substantial (for example, Rotemberg and Woodford, 1997;
Edge, Kiley, and Laforte, forthcoming). Furthermore, because the natural rates in the most
recent models are defined as the counterfactual levels of output and employment that would
be obtained if prices and wages were completely flexible, the estimated fluctuations in
natural rates generated by the research are very sensitive to model specification.
If a central bank errs in measuring the natural rates of output and employment, its attempts
to stabilize economic activity at those mismeasured natural rates can lead to very poor
outcomes. For example, most economists now agree that the natural unemployment rate
shifted up for many years starting in the late 1960s and that the growth of potential output
shifted down for a considerable time after 1970. However, perhaps because those shifts
were not generally recognized until much later (Orphanides and van Norden, 2002;
Orphanides, 2003), monetary policy in the 1970s seems to have been aimed at achieving
unsustainable levels of output and employment. Hence, policymakers may have unwittingly
contributed to accelerating inflation that reached double digits by the end of the decade as
well as undesirable swings in unemployment. And although subsequent monetary policy
tightening was successful in regaining control of inflation, the toll was a severe recession in
1981-82, which pushed up the unemployment rate to around 10 percent.
Uncertainty about the natural rates of economic activity implies that less weight may need to
be put on stabilizing output or employment around what is likely to be a mismeasured natural
rate (Orphanides and Williams, 2002). Furthermore, research with New Keynesian models
has found that overall economic performance may be most efficiently achieved by policies
with a heavy focus on stabilizing inflation (for example, Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe, 2007).
Conclusion
Because monetary policy has not one but two objectives, stabilizing inflation and stabilizing
economic activity, it might seem obvious that those objectives would usually, if not always,
conflict. As so often occurs with the "obvious," however, the impression turns out to be
incorrect. The economic research that I have discussed today demonstrates, rather, that the
objectives of price stability and stabilizing economic activity are often likely to be mutually
reinforcing. Thus, the answer to the title of this speech - "Does stabilizing inflation contribute
to stabilizing economic activity?" - is, for the most part, yes.
A key policy recommendation from the past three decades of research in monetary
economics is that monetary policy makers must always keep their eye on inflation and
emphasize the importance of price stability in their actions and communications. Doing so
does not mean that monetary policy makers are less concerned about stabilizing economic
activity. Rather, by appropriately focusing on stabilizing inflation along the lines I have
outlined here, monetary policy is more likely to better stabilize economic activity.
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Figure 1
Implications of Responding to Core versus Headline PCE Inflation
(Persistent oil price shock with the FRB/US Model, levels relative to baseline)