I Hope We All Agree Now: Central Bankers Should Pay Attention to Asset Prices

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“Should Central Banks Target Asset Prices?”   That is the question addressed by the current symposium in The International Economy (2009, no.4).

My answer: 

Alan Greenspan was right to raise the question “How do we know when ‘irrational exuberance’ has unduly escalated stock prices?”, which is what he actually said in 1996.    But he was wrong to conclude subsequently that monetary policy should ignore asset prices (or even that it should take asset prices into account only to the extent that they contain information about future inflation, as the Inflation Targeters would have it).    More specifically,
(1) Identifying in real time that we were in a stock market bubble by 2000 and a real estate bubble by 2006 was not in fact harder than the Fed’s usual job, forecasting inflation 18 months ahead;
(2) Central bankers do have tools that can often prick bubbles; and
(3) The “Greenspan put” policy of mopping up the damage only after run-ups abruptly end probably contributed to the magnitude of the bubbles ex ante, while yet being insufficient ex post to prevent the crisis from becoming the worst recession since the 1930s.    All three points run contrary to what was conventional wisdom among monetary economists and central bankers a mere two years ago. read more

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Border Measures Could Make Climate Policy Better or — More Likely — Worse

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The international press reports, “At Climate Talks, Danger to Free Trade Mounts.”

The Copenhagen negotiations have essentially failed to include, among the many topics covered, one that will be critical in the coming years:   the question of import tariffs or other trade penalties that individual countries apply against the products of other countries that they deem too carbon-intensive.    Such border measures are already in EU and US legislation (the Waxman-Markey bill, not yet passed by the Senate).    Properly designed, they could turn out to be the missing instrument needed to get each country to cut emissions without fear of others taking unfair advantage, via leakage.   More likely, national politics will turn them into protectionist barriers. read more

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Progress on Global Warming Is Not Yet in Evidence in Copenhagen

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I am writing from Copenhagen, the site of the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.     If one were to judge by outward appearances, the prospects look dim for a meaningful global agreement by the end of the week.   

First, most conference participants have been put through an experience that seems designed to convince them that global warming may not be such a bad idea after all:  a registration system that requires waiting in long lines in freezing temperatures.  (Wait times commonly reported this week vary from one hour for China’s negotiator to 8 hours for other participants, such as prominent NGO leaders.  Even 9 or 10 hours.)    
 
Second, there has been little convergence of positions.  The views expressed here cover the same fantastically and unbridgeably wide range as they did at the time of the Kyoto meeting 12 years ago.   At one end of the spectrum, developing countries are still asking for reparations – African delegations boycotted Monday’s meetings;  and demonstrators are still very confused about who they should be trying to persuade and how.   At the other end of the spectrum, the climate change deniers are also represented here.  Recent opinion polls show that the percentage of skeptics among the fickle American public has risen very recently, even though the scientific evidence for anthropogenic warming continues to mount.   (For some reason, many find it easier to deny science than to make any of the less indefensible arguments available to critics: that global warming wouldn’t be all bad, or that cutting emissions enough to prevent it would be too expensive, or that the U.N. is not a competent instrument, or that geo-engineering would be a cheaper approach.)     read more

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