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국회도서관 홈으로 정보검색 소장정보 검색

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Title page

Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

INTRODUCTION 2

BENEFITS OF RULES-BASED MONETARY POLICY 2

COMPARISON OF FEEDBACK RULE INFORMATION BURDENS 3

STRUCTURAL MACROECONOMIC ANALYSIS 6

CONCLUSION 13

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 14

APPENDIX 14

Table 1. Dickey-Fuller test critical statistics 4

Table 2. Sum of squared forecast errors, individual metrics 5

Table 3. Sum of squared forecast errors, weighted for inclusion in a feedback rule 6

Table 4. Squared and summed impulse responses by shock source and policy rule 10

Table 5. Standard deviation of key macro variables by policy rule 12

Table A1. Squared and summed impulse responses by shock source and policy rule 14

초록보기

Good monetary policy is important because money is the means of payment for all products and services. A central bank’s failures are particularly damaging because they can create inflation and unsustainable economic gains, producing macroeconomic instability. Given the existing framework of centrally managed fiat money in the United States, Congress can greatly improve monetary policy by, among other things, requiring the central bank to follow a policy rule. Requiring the Federal Reserve (Fed) to follow a policy rule would anchor the public’s expectations for monetary policy actions, improve economic outcomes, and increase accountability for both elected and appointed government officials. Properly structured, a policy rule would also provide Fed officials with the ability to change their stance, provided they give Congress a complete explanation of why they deviated from the rule. This paper uses empirical evidence to demonstrate that most commonly accepted monetary policy rules share a similar framework and that each has its own benefits and costs—that is, no one rule is better than all others. Therefore, any disagreements over which rule is best should not prevent Congress from requiring the Fed to adopt and follow one.