Tag Archives: Lars Svensson

One more time for the world: There is no simple relationship (if any) between Taylor-rule coefficients and policy preferences

The lack of a relationship between the size of the coefficients in a Taylor rule for monetary policy conduct and the underlying preferences for stabilization of macroeconomic goals is well known. I often have it as a check subject in my exams in monetary economics. When I present the result to students first time—it is fleshed out in Lars Svensson’s “Inflation Forecast Targeting: Implementing and Monitoring Inflation Targets” (European Economic Review 41, 1997, 1111-1141) for a simple backward-looking IS/AS model—I often state that many tend to overlook this, and that it is a common misconception that, e.g., a relatively high coefficient on the output gap in the rule indicates a … Continue reading

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Sveriges Riksbank raises rates again; Svensson dissents again

Yesterday, Sveriges Riksbank (central bank of Sweden) announced that it raised the main policy rate to 1.5%. This is the fifth consecutive 25 basis point increase since last summer. It also marks the twelfth time in a row that Executive Board Member, and Deputy Governor of the Bank, Lars Svensson dissents by voting for a looser stance (in this case he advocated an unchanged rate). The last time he agreed with an interest rate decision was in February 2009. The Inflation-Targeting Riksbank makes all this information publicly available on their web site (see the voting records here). This high degree of transparency is not uncommon among inflation targeting central banks, … Continue reading

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Simple Policy Rules or Simple Consumption Rules? A Semi-serious Comparison Based on Brain Usage

Let me start this post with a warning. As indicated by the title, it will involve semi-serious thoughts, which in this case is equivalent to semi-humorous thoughts. So the contents are intended as a sort of economists’ joke (which may not be funny to that many, if any, besides me). Also, in order to understand the fun, it will require some knowledge about graduate dynamic macroeconomics, more specifically the continuous-time Ramsey-Kass-Koopmans model. With this warning, I proceed. In recent macroeconomic literature on monetary and fiscal stabilization policies, researchers often characterize the optimal stabilization policy in a conventional public-finance fashion. Then, many argue that such a policy is too complicated to … Continue reading

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