تجزیه و تحلیل سیاست های پولی تاریخی و قاعده تیلور

This study examines the usefulness of the Taylor-rule framework as an organizing device for describing the policy debate and evolution of monetary policy in the United States. Monetary policy during the 1920s and since the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord can be broadly interpreted in terms of this framework with rather surprising consistency. In broad terms, during these periods policy has been generally formulated in a forward-looking manner with price stability and economic stability serving as implicit or explicit guides. As early as the 1920s, measures of real economic activity relative to “normal” or “potential” supply appear to have influenced policy analysis and deliberations. Confidence in such measures as guides for activist monetary policy proved counterproductive at times, resulting in excessive activism, such as during the Great Inflation and at the brink of the Great Depression. Policy during the past two decades is broadly consistent with natural growth targeting variants of the Taylor rule that exhibit less activism.

In the decade since John B. Taylor's celebrated essay on “Discretion versus policy rules in practice” was presented at the 39th Carnegie-Rochester Conference on Public Policy in the Fall of 1992, his analysis has had considerable influence on the way monetary economists and practitioners think about the policy debate. Taylor showed that actual monetary policy in the United States could be usefully described in terms of a simple rule that appeared promising on the basis of policy evaluation experiments. Most importantly he described the monetary policy process in terms of the short-term nominal interest rate that was close to the actual decision making process, and described policy directly in terms of the two major operational objectives of monetary policy, inflation and economic growth. My aim in this study is to investigate the usefulness of the Taylor-rule framework as an organizing device for describing the policy debate and evolution of monetary policy in the United States. Key to this undertaking is the examination of interest rate policy decisions linked directly to the Federal Reserve's underlying policy objectives, as these may have been understood over time. In the spirit of Friedman and Schwartz (1963), I rely heavily on narrative descriptions of events and ideas, supplemented, as possible, with information available to policy practitioners when policy was made. A major difference is my reliance on the language of interest-rate-based policies, instead of the stock of money, and some of the resulting analysis can be seen as a re-interpretation of earlier findings using the latter language. The ultimate goal of this effort is to use the historical experience to draw lessons about past policy successes and policy errors. The theme that emerges from this examination is that Federal Reserve policies over many periods, virtually since the founding of the institution, can be broadly interpreted in terms of the Taylor-rule framework with surprising consistency. The Taylor rule serves as a particularly good description of policy, however, both when subsequent economic outcomes were exemplary as well as less than ideal. A recurrent source of errors has been misperceptions of the state of the economy, the result of incorrect assessments of the economy's productive potential. This concept has appeared in policy discussions with different names and in various contexts from the first years of operation of the System. It has often led to false predictions of inflation or disinflation, prompting tightening or easing actions that were only recognized as counterproductive long after the fact. This historical analysis suggests that the Taylor rule appears to serve as a useful organizing device for interpreting past policy decisions and mistakes, but adoption of the Taylor-rule framework for policy analysis is not insurance that past policy mistakes would not have occurred.

This paper provides a broad overview of monetary policy in the United States through the lens of a Taylor-rule framework for policy analysis. The framework proves useful for interpreting past policy decisions and mistakes. Policy during the 1920s, as well as since the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord appears to have been broadly consistent with the Taylor-rule framework. Policy evolved somewhat over time, but when closely examined within the context of the information available and policymaker perceptions in real time, this change is subtler than usually appears at first glance with retrospective analysis. The history reviewed covers eras of stability, including periods of great prosperity such as the 1920s and the 1960s. As we know, during both of these periods, hopes were raised, perhaps inevitably in light of human nature, that prosperity would continue unabated, and that business cycle fluctuations could, perhaps, be largely eliminated with greater refinement of policy actions. Subsequent events were not kind to such hopes. The policy framework in place during these two periods did not avert the subsequent chain of events that led, respectively, to the brink of the Great Depression and the Great Inflation. Evidently, with its relatively blunt instruments, monetary policy does not lend itself to great refinement. On its face, adoption of a Taylor-rule framework as a guide to policy would appear to describe behavior that would be systematic and prudent in practice. And yet history seems to suggest that this is not sufficient to ensure that monetary policy will stay a steady course. The variants of the framework that best describe policy during the 1920s and 1960s, in particular, require accurate assessments of the evolution of trends in the economy and identification of what is the “normal” or “potential” level of economic activity. But policymakers, no matter how good their intentions may be, have only limited information to form the necessary judgments about such concepts. Such concepts, therefore, cannot necessarily provide a reliable guide for steady monetary policy. Over history, efforts at activist control of the economy have been successful at times, but have also led to spectacular failures. Reduced overall activism has been consistent with better outcomes since the Great Inflation, but it is arguably too early to evaluate the recent experiences in great detail. In the end, given the historical experience and our state of knowledge, identification of the best monetary policy practice remains uncertain.