Macroeconomic crises are common as well economically, socially and politically costly. Fiscal policy plays an important role in alleviating the costs of crisis. However, recent experiences suggest that public finances often unprepared for a Deficits debt levels prior to crisis commonly too high, limiting government’s ability support economy through recovery phase. In this article, I argue theor...

Some Thoughts on Macroeconomic Fluctuations and the Timing of Labor Market Reform In this paper, I analyze the pros and cons of implementing structural reforms of the labor market in booms vs. recessions, in light of considerations of social efficiency, political viability, and macroeconomic fine tuning. While the optimal timing of a reform depends on the relative importance of several conflict...

Sovereign risk premia have risen sharply in several European countries, contributed to increased credit spreads in the private sector. If monetary policy cannot offset these credit spreads because it is constrained by the zero lower bound, sovereign risk threatens macroeconomic stability: private-sector beliefs of a weakening economy may become self-fulfilling. In this paper, we put forward a t...

..................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................v TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................ vi LIST OF TABLES ..............................

Proposals for fundamental reform of the federal tax code are receiving increased attention in the business press and among economic analysts and policymakers. President Bush has identified tax reform as a top priority, calling for a tax system that is “pro-growth, easy to understand, and fair to all.” Moreover, the President has appointed a commission to consider different approaches to tax ref...

Central banks and other policy institutions have a long history of using macroeconomic models to help prepare forecasts and to quantify the economic consequences of various policies. Likewise, private sector firms have long depended on models to summarize these complex interactions succinctly and to evaluate the likelihood of specific macroeconomic outcomes; this is especially true for financia...

The text of this book is composed in Baskerville, with display type set in Optima. Macroeconomic policy in a world economy : from econometric design to practical operation / John B. Taylor. p. cm.

Central banks have two core missions: the pursuit of monetary policy to achieve broad macroeconomic objectives and the maintenance of financial stability, including the management of financial crises. The latter mission is closely connected to regulation and supervision of the banking system, so I include this within the central banker's perspective, as well as broader issues related to systemi...

This paper presents a model in which "instrument uncertainty"—that is, an uncertain mapping from monetary policy to macroeconomic outcomes—may mitigate the inflationary bias problem that arises when efficient monetary policy rules are time-inconsistent. If the relation between monetary policy and macroeconomic outcomes is uncertain, the private sector has an incentive to scrutinize the past for...