Fed Officials Expect Overshooting Unemployment Rate

Following the Fed's March 18-19 meeting, the policy making committee provided a collection of charts showing the projections of macro economic main variables in the coming years. Before discussing the projections, I should note here a little bit of confusion I have. In the projection file, it states that these projections are "based on FOMC participants’ individual assessments of appropriate monetary policy." Therefore, these number's aren't actually projections as done by someone outside of the Fed, but these are the expected values of these economic variables that could be seen according to Fed officials' own appropriate policy. 

In other words, when looking at these projections, we should take into consideration that these projections are influenced by each committee member's policy recommendation.

The recent post on the WSJ touches on how this projection could be misleading the market into expecting that interest rate rise will come sooner than expected. According to the article, some Fed's policy committee members raised their expectation of interest rates in 2015 and 2016. This could signal market that the Fed policy makers are looking at possible rate increase which is sooner than expected prior to March meeting.

 From the above chart we could see what rate Fed officials are expecting fed funds rate target to be in 2014, 2015, 2016 and long-run. In 2014, according to the chart, we see that the policymakers almost unanimously expect the fed funds rate target be at the current level of 0 to 0.25 percent target. In 2015 and 2016, the averages of the Fed officials' expected fed funds rate are around 1 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively. The policy makers expect the rate to be around 4 percent in the long-run. This rate is slightly lower than the historical average of the fed funds rate target since 1990, which is 4.2 percent. In general, the committee members expect to have similar fed funds rate target that it has had since 1990.

Note that, the expected fed funds rate target is still lower than long-run expected rate of 4 percent at around 2.5 percent in 2016. Hence, it is plausible that somewhat easy monetary policy will be taking place until 2016. But we should always remember that low interest rate doesn't always mean expansionary monetary policy as Milton Friedman put it, "After the U.S. experience during the Great Depression, and after inflation and rising interest rates in the 1970s and disinflation and falling interest rates in the 1980s, I thought the fallacy of identifying tight money with high interest rates and easy money with low interest rates was dead. Apparently, old fallacies never die."

The surprise of the projection comes when we look at another chart which was included in the same projection report. The following chart shows how the committee members expect the unemployment rate to be under appropriate policy in coming years and in the long-run.

 The central tendency among the policy makers regarding the expected unemployment rate in 2016 is along with the long-run projection: at 5.2-5.6 percent.

So, what can we conclude about the Fed's future policy from these two charts?

The Fed policy makers are believing (or seems to be) that under appropriate policy, the Fed will be pursuing expansionary policy even after the unemployment rate reaches the long-waited long-run average. In other words, the Fed policy makers think overshooting the unemployment rate is a viable option for the Fed policy in coming years. This is along the line with the worry about low inflation in coming years. Another chart in the projection shows how the policy makers expect inflation to be in coming years.

 As we see from the chart that central tendency among the officials regarding the expected inflation in 2016 is below the Fed's target of 2 percent inflation. It is kinda counter-intuitive; they target 2 percent, but expect it to be below it. Or are they really targeting 2 percent?

Then, given the the below target inflation rate, the Fed officials shouldn't be worried about their fed funds rate target expectation below the long-run expectation.

From the Fed officials' projection, we can conclude that the Fed will be still operating somewhat stimulus policy in 2016 relative to their long-run policy.- if we assume these projections are made with rational expectation

Fed, Raise the Inflation Target

Friday's report of the personal consumption expenditure price index, which the Fed prefers, shows that year-to-year price index grew by 0.9% in February. This means that the inflation rate has been below the Fed's target of 2 percent inflation rate for 21 consecutive months.

While this low inflation rate has been allowing the Fed to pursue its quantitative easing program and low interest rate policy , the Fed policy makers also know that higher inflation rate around their target of 2 percent would make their job easier, simply lowering the real interest rate. But it seems like the Fed has been short of achieving its "target" for 21 months. A question we should ask from ourselves is that: is the Fed unable to hit its target? or is the Fed actually targeting lower than their so-called "target". In my Monday's post, I made a case for the second question getting an answer "yes!". If the Fed is indeed targeting inflation rate lower than its 2 percent "target", the points following are useless since the Fed policymakers want low inflation anyways.

Now if we are in the world where the Fed has actually been unable to hit its inflation "target" given that it wants to hit it so badly, my policy prescription for the Fed is to increase its inflation target from 2 percent to 3 percent or somewhere around that for the duration of the recovery. Note that, I am not suggesting to raise inflation target to 4 percent or other for the long-run as Laurence Ball and Olivier Blanchard suggested, but to raise it until the economy recovers.

The Fed could target this higher inflation rate by declaring in its meeting statements that the Fed will be comfortable with inflation rate considerably higher than 2 percent when deciding when to raise the fed funds rate. Let's look at the Fed's latest statement:

"To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy remains appropriate. In determining how long to maintain the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess progress--both realized and expected--toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments. The Committee continues to anticipate, based on its assessment of these factors, that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the current target range for the federal funds rate for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends, especially if projected inflation continues to run below the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal, and provided that longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored."

The Fed, in my policy prescription, should change "run below the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal" to "run below 3 percent" (or some rate around that). That change should have positive effect on inflation expectation. If the Fed believes the inflation expectation hasn't been responsive to its inflation rate target, that is great for the Fed since it could further state higher inflation target such as 4 percent to raise the expectation more while not actually raising the inflation higher.

But again, raising inflation target makes sense to me if the Fed does want to raise the inflation expectation. But considering its tapering QE even though their desired 2 percent inflation isn't seen to be reached for some time, I am puzzled by what inflation rate the Fed wants. Or are the Fed policymakers actually buying Stephen Williamson's paper?

Factors That Affect Effectiveness of Forward Guidance

The "forwards guidance" has been he FED's one of the novel tools to boost the economy after the recession at the zero lower bound. Forward guidance is the FED's public statement on how it will change or unchange the federal funds rate. We can see the latest forward guidance statement from the FED's January statement:

Committee today reaffirmed its view that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends and the economic recovery strengthens. The Committee also reaffirmed its expectation that the current exceptionally low target range for the federal funds rate of 0 to 1/4 percent will be appropriate at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6-1/2 percent, inflation between one and two years ahead is projected to be no more than a half percentage point above the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal, and longer-term inflation expectations continue to be well anchored.

Essentially, what the FED tries to achieve by such statements is to guide the market expectation of the interest rate. The FED has been using forward guidance to lower the market expectation of interest rate during the period it stated.

I should explain two types of forward guidance as introduced by Campbell et al. (2012). Odyssean type of forward guidance is when the FED commits to low interest rate policy even after the economic condition raises the natural interest rate above zero, and Delphic forward guidance is when the FED publicly forecasts its monetary policy's shape regarding the future shocks in the economy. We can see that the FED has been pursuing the Odyssean forward guidance since September 2012 because it publicly stated then that the the low interest rate policy would stay even after the economy strengthens:

To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee expects that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens. In particular, the Committee also decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate are likely to be warranted at least through mid-2015.

Having talked the basics of the forward guidance, we should study further what factors play a role in effective forward guidance program. First, the FED's credibility decides whether the forward guidance will achieve its goal of lowering the market expectation of interest rate.If the market doesn't believe in the FED's plan for the future interest rate, the forward guidance cannot stimulate the economy as the FED hopes. After all, what the forward guidance's mechanism bases on is the FED's policymakers' hope that the market will take the FED's statement on the future of the monetary policy as granted. Reports are coming in saying that the FED has lost its credibility since the FED is no way raising the federal funds rate even though the unemployment rate is very likely to reach 6.5% very soon. I can understand why this might distort the FED's credibility. If we look at the FED's October meeting's press statement, following statement follows the same statement in the January statement above. October's statement reads:

 ...In determining how long to maintain a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy, the Committee will also consider other information, including additional measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments.

But in December, the FED added one more statement following the above statement. The added statement follows:

...The Committee now anticipates, based on its assessment of these factors, that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the current target range for the federal funds rate well past the time that the unemployment rate declines below 6-1/2 percent, especially if projected inflation continues to run below the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal.

From this change in the forward guidance, one can say that the FED didn't follow what it forward guided previously. But to me, I don't see any credibility problem for the FED. Didn't the FED literally say in the above statement that it will more likely to extend the low interest rate even past the time unemployment rate drops below 6.5%? Didn't the FED have to modify its stand on its future interest rate policy according to the economics condition? Therefore, seeing the FED as not committing to its forward guided policy is like saying the FED has one chance to state what the interest rate will be in the next few years, and if it doesn't follow that, we cannot believe in the FED.

Rather, I think the FED faces credibility problem when it suddenly increases the interest rate when the unemployment rate lowers to 6.5% because current forward guidance tells us that the FED will very likely be pursuing near zero interest rate even after the unemployment rate hits the threshold.

Second factor that determines the effectiveness of the forward guidance is the public's forecast of the recovery. If the public believes that the economy will soon recover, then the public naturally expects a higher interest rate in the future. In that case, when the FED successfully forward guides its low interest rate policy, the consumption and investment will increase because the FED has just lowered the public's interest rate expectation. Hence, the firms and households are more likely to consume and invest more. On the other hand, if the public expects the economy to be still recovering from the recession in the future, it expects the interest rate to be lower as it is now. In that case, even the FED forward guides the economy by promising the persistence of low interest rate, the public's decision on consumption and investment isn't affected that much since its interest rate expectation isn't changed.

The working paper by Gavin et al.(December 2013) concludes following:

The stronger the expected recovery, the more households believe the future nominal interest rate will rise and the larger the stimulative effect of forward guidance on current consumption. We find that news of a −50 basis point shock to the nominal interest rate next period leads to an increase in current consumption of about 0.20 percent.

In summing up the discussion, I believe the FED's current forward guidance policy's stimulative effect is still ambiguous considering the FED's mixed signals on the economic outlook through its bond buying program tapering, which gives the market positive sign, and its reluctance to increase the interest rate even though the unemployment rate is almost at the threshold, which might worry the market. Interesting news to follow in next few months will be the FED's next change in its forward guidance program.

PS. Should the FED and Mrs. Yellen not-forward guide the public as the Chicago Bulls and Derrick Rose do?

Thought on Forward Guidance: Proposal for the Fed

The FED has been pursuing its so called "forward guidance" program hoping it could stimulate economy by convincing the persistence of low interest rate policy. It stated that it sees the current low interest rate appropriate as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5% and the expected inflation in one to two years is below 2.5%. According to the statement, it will consider the broader labor indicators and inflation expectations to decide how long it will continue the near zero interest rate policy once the unemployment rate drops to 6.5%. Therefore, it is very up in the air when the FED is increasing the federal funds rate.

We know that the latest report shows the unemployment rate is 6.6%.  This rate indicates that even though the monthly net number of jobs added hasn't been up to the projections for last two months, the FED will soon be deciding its future policy and writing up its well-into-future forward guidance once the unemployment rate hits 6.5%.

After all, the FED's low interest rate policy has been directed toward increasing investment. But there could be different type of "forward guidance" that could potentially create more investment as the FED wishes. My proposal to the FED is that:

a) It should forward guide the market by putting hard deadline on when it is increasing the federal funds rate and therefore the market interest rates. How this clear deadline for increase in federal funds rate works is following: If the FED successfully (!) convince the market that it will indeed push up the federal funds rate, the investors will have clear expectation of when the overall market interest rates are rising. Therefore, realizing the higher investment cost in the specific future, firms will have incentive to borrow and invest today before the FED raises the interest rate. Hence, the investment could increase as the FED has been wishing. This argument is analogical to the people's consumption when there is very high inflation expectation. If the expected inflation is very high, people would try to buy goods as soon as possible. But the one difference between these two analogies is we don't know what interest rate is very high to be analogy to the high inflation rate.

One might say that then if there is higher demand for loanable funds because of this policy, the interest rate will rise in the loanable funds market. But we have to remember, the FED has control over overall interest rate in the economy (or I believe so), it will pursue its current near zero interest rate policy until the date it forward guided comes.

b) Again, to succeed in increasing investment, the FED must be able convince the market that it is indeed increasing the federal funds rate at that certain date, To convince the market, the FED should set the date to be in near future and interest rate minimally higher in first few periods and commit to what it said.

According to latest report, the expectation of the FED's federal funds rate in June 2015 has lowered in a recent month. This might be showing that the FED's forward guidance indeed successfully convinced the market that the FED will be pursuing near zero interest rate policy. If current forward guidance is indeed somewhat successful, I believe the proposed forward guidance could be also successful.

Remember, at the time when the FED sets the specific date to increase the interest rate, the interest rate will be still zero percent, therefore there will be no negative shock to the total investment.

The problem to implement this forward guidance is that the FED cannot surely know how bad or good the economy will be performing at the time of its forward guided date. The FED could announce its first date to increase the interest rate once the unemployment rate reaches 6.5%. If the FED chooses 3 months to increase the federal funds rate after the unemployment reaches 6.5%, it can study how the investment behaved during this 3 months when the market believes the increase in the interest rate is coming. If the sign turns out to be good, the FED can further implement this "hard deadline for minimal increase in federal funds rate" forward guidance.

Change in Expected Inflation and Its Effect on Investment and Spending

Greg Mankiw explained a possible tool for the FED to stimulate the economy under zero lower bound. He says that even the FED has already lowered the federal funds rate to close to zero, the monetary policy that creates a higher expected inflation in the economy could boost the economy. Mankiw explains that if the expected inflation is increased due to the FED's policy or other reasons, the real interest rate can be lowered. According to this argument, this lower real interest rate induces more investment because of negative correlation between real interest rate and investment. In his words:

"Other economists are skeptical about the relevance of liquidity traps and believe that a central bank continues to have tools to expand the economy, even after its interest rate target hits its lower bound of zero. One possibility is that the central bank could raise inflation expectations by committing itself to future monetary expansion. Even if nominal interest rates cannot fall any further, higher expected inflation can lower real interest rates by making them negative, which would stimulate investment spending."

How I see this argument is this: since a firm expects that the overall price in the economy to increase by more than  what it expected before, the firm would invest more in new capital than it was planning to do for two reasons: first, it would try to take advantage of low price more than it was planning before. In other words, since the firm expects the general price to go higher than it expected before, it will increase its today's investment to avoid paying this higher price in the future to buy capital. It is shifting its investment from the future to today. Second, when the firm's expectation of inflation increases, it would seek to borrow more money than it planned to do because the real interest it will pay in the future decreases. In other words, they just cannot resist this lower real interest rate in the future; therefore, they will borrow money today and invest in whatever plan they could think good.

The part I don't understand in Mankiw's argument is how the change in expected inflation could affect the real interest rate today.

In his General Theory, Keynes writes:

"The expectation of a fall in the value of money stimulates investment, and hence employment generally, because it raises the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital, i.e., the investment demand-schedule; and the expectation of a rise in the value of money is depressing, because it lowers the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital. (p.142)

Keynes says that any possible affect of the increase in expected inflation on the investment is through the higher schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital. What I am understanding as the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital is the firms demand for investment.

Now on the effect of higher expected inflation on consumption spending, it seems to be reasonable to expect that people would spend more today if their expectation on the general price rises. Of course, whether it is true or not depends on in what time period we are talking about the inflation expectation. If people raises their expectation of inflation in the near future, they try to adjust their spending accordingly. Also, the effect on consumption differs for durable goods and non-durable goods since the absolute change in the prices of durable goods tend to be higher than that of non-durable goods. Because of this possible effect on the spending, there could be increase in overall prices today. In other words, a higher expected inflation could cause increase in prices today. However, this possible positive relation between the change in expected inflation and spending isn't clear. In their paper in 2012, Bachmann et al concludes following: 

"We find that the impact of inflation expectations on the reported readiness to spend on durable goods is statistically insignificant and small in absolute value when compared to other variables, such as household income or expected business conditions. Moreover, it appears that higher expected price changes have an adverse impact on the reported readiness to spend. A one percent increase in expected inflation reduces the probability that households have a positive attitude towards spending by about 0.1 percentage points. At the zero lower bound this small adverse effect remains, and is, if anything, slightly stronger."

We still lack empirical study on the effect of the change in expected inflation on the spending. In my curiosity, I looked over some data on the monthly change in the expected inflation, quarterly percent change in the investment and monthly percent change in consumption spending.  From this graph, we cannot tell whether the higher expected inflation induces more investment or higher consumption spending. Of course, we need to do empirical research to claim whether it is true or not. In conclusion, I don't see or understand the stimulating effect of the higher expected inflation on the economy as Mankiw and others see it. Therefore in my opinion,  the effect of raising inflation expectation by monetary policy, which is one of the two main tools that some people suggest in today's case of zero lower bound problem, isn't clear. The other tool, quantitative easing, seems to be more effective under zero lower bound.

Reverse Repurchase Program and Its Use in American "Abenomics"

We all have been aware of the FED's latest decision to taper its bond-buying program by $10 billion from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting this week. Another interesting decision that came out, at least to me, was the decision to extend its reverse repurchase program (also known as reverse repo) by a year. By implementing reverse repurchase program, the FED aims to be able to control the short-term interest rate when it needs to raise it in the future. The advantage of this program is that the FED doesn't have to pull money out of the economy to raise the interest rate when it wants. This advantage of not having to lower the money supply in the future explains how this program can be implemented to achieve a shift in the FED's monetary policy. This shift is to follow permanent increase in the monetary base, which is what the Bank of Japan has been doing under Abenomics.

In the US, QE1 and QE2 and Japan's first QE during 2001-2006 were seen by the public as a temporary increase in the money supply by the central banks rather than permanent one. On the other hand, QE policy the BOJ has been employing since April 2013 is to double the money supply permanently. David Beckworth explained how the way public sees an easy monetary policy as temporary vs permanent money supply increase affects the performance of these QE programs. In his words:

"I have long argued, along with other Market Monetarists, that the Fed could solve this problem by adopting a NGDP leveltarget. Why would this help? The key reason is that it would create an expectation that some portion of the monetary base growth from the asset purchases would be permanent (and non-sterilized by IOER). That, in turn, would mean a permanently higher price level and nominal income in the future. Such knowledge would cause current investors to rebalance their portfolios away from highly liquid, low-yielding assets towards less liquid, higher yielding assets. The portfolio rebalancing, in turn, would raise asset prices, lower risk premiums, increase financial intermediation, spur more investment spending, and ultimately catalyze a robust recovery in aggregate demand."

In short, when people sees expansionary monetary policy as permanent one rather temporary, they will increase their spending today. For QE3, Beckworth explains that it has had some indication of permanent money supply growth with "its data-dependent nature and appears to have offset much of the 2013 fiscal drag" and this could be a reason

Now let's get back to the reverse repo program. By using this tool instead of targeting federal funds rate, it can convince the public that it will not lower the money base in the future to raise the interest rate. In other words, the FED will be able to make shift to a monetary policy that will sustain the higher monetary base created by QE3 permanently AND convince the public that it will be indeed permanent. This type of monetary policy or QE that raises the monetary base permanently rather than temporarily could achieve more private spending and economic growth as we can see from Japan's latest growth under Abenomics (one could argue that the other two main policies or arrows of the Abenomics also helped Japanese economy to improve). Of course, we cannot take the latest Japan's inflationary success and economic growth in 2013 as a product of the Abenomics. And the U.S. is far from implementing this kind of economic reform consisting of fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies, but if the Abenomics turns out to be Japan's success story in the future, the U.S. should study this "real life experiment" of Japan. If it chooses to do the experiment on itself, the reverse repo program is their experiment tool.

The Fed's New Tool for Increasing the Short Term Interest Rate

As the U.S. economy starts to look better, the Fed eventually has to increase its federal funds rate. The Fed has stated that it is planning to keep the near zero federal funds rate until the unemployment reaches 6.5 % as long as the inflation rate and expected inflation remains low.

Now, the question is whether the Fed will be able to increase the short term rate in the economy as it desires when the correct time comes through changing its federal funds target rate. As the Fed has been conducting QEs since the recession ended, its balance sheet  reached  $4 trillion mark in last December and bank reserves at the Fed increased greatly.

Source: http://www.piie.com/publications/pb/pb14-4.pdf

To increase the short term interest rate in the future, under current system, the Fed has to sell government bonds to pull money out of the economy, therefore increases the interest rate. But since it has put in enormous amount of reserves for last few years, the Fed faces a problem of selling huge amount of asset to effectively increase the interest rate.

Since September 2013, the Fed has been experimenting a new tool to control the short term interest rate. This new tool called a reverse repurchase program works this way: the Fed sells its asset in the System Open Market Account to money-market mutual funds, banks, securities dealers, government-sponsored enterprises and others with a condition that it will buy back those assets in the future for higher price than it sold to them. In other words, the Fed, under this program, borrows from those institutions with collateral of Treasury Securities. The difference between the sale price and repurchase price along with a length of time between these indicate the interest rate the Fed pays.

When the Fed wants to increase short term rates, it can increase the reverse repurchase interest rate. When the financial institutions see this higher interest rate paid buy the Fed, they aren't willing to borrow reserves each other below this rate because they can make more buy purchasing assets from the Fed and selling back. Therefore, it can effectively put a floor for the short term interest rates that banks charge each other. Moreover, through raising this rate, the Fed can affect the overall short term interest rate in the economy. Also, using reverse repurchase program, the Fed doesn't have to shrink its balance sheet; therefore, it can use its assets when it faces a problem.

One counterproductive effect this program could have is that when the Fed shifts to this policy, the Fed will be expanding the monetary base through its payment to financial institutions. That is reverse of what the Fed tries to do when it needs to raise the interest rate in the economy.

Along with targeting reverse repurchase interest rate, the Fed has to increase the interest on reserves, which is currently 0.25%, when it raises the short term interest rate to prevent depository banks from lending too much credit and causing inflation.

This policy has been examined by the Fed since September, and there has been a research paper on its effectiveness. Whether the Fed will employ this policy in the future is interesting thing to put eye on.

Related article on the Wall Street Journal:

Former Fed Economist Call For Central Bank to Scrap Fed Funds Rate Target

Fed Moves Toward New Tool for Setting Rates

An Attack on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory

In my most recent post, I briefly explained what the Austrian Business Theory is. In this post, I will try to make some arguments against the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. The theory, in short, says that when the central bank extends the bank credit at an artificially low interest rate, this credit feeds a boom in the production sector, And once businesses realize that the higher demand wasn't relative rather overall caused by an expansionary policy, they try to re-adjust their capital. This re-adjustment process is, according to the ABCT, a recession.

Now, let's try to argue against one of the main assumptions on which the ABCT built on.

The first assumption or definition that was taken to build the foundation of the theory by Ludwig Von Mises is the notion of a natural rate of interest. The natural rate of interest, a defined by Swedish economist Knut WIcksell, is the rate that would balance the amount of capital demanded by the borrowers and the amount of capital saved by the savers in the economy. In other words, it is a market equilibrium price for the capital. F.A.Hayek explains the notion in Prices and Production (1935):

“Put concisely, Wicksell’s theory is as follows: If it were not for monetary disturbances, the rate of interest would be determined so as to equalize the demand for and the supply of savings. This equilibrium rate, as I prefer to call it, he christens the natural rate of interest. In a money economy, the actual or money rate of interest (“Geldzins”) may differ from the equilibrium or natural rate, because the demand for and the supply of capital do not meet in their natural form but in the form of money, the quantity of which available for capital purposes may be arbitrarily changed by the banks."

The ABCT says that when the government or the central bank intervenes the market and controls the interest rate, the economy is distorted by this artificial interest rate.

However, the notion of the natural rate of interest could be attacked in a following way. This notion assumes that an equilibrium interest rate could be dictated by the market itself. If we want to see this natural rate of interest, we have to assume that savers and borrowers perfectly maximize the profit that can be made from the capital saved or borrowed. That perfect maximization, however, doesn't take a place in real world. When savers decide how much money to save for future, their decision depends on not only the prevailing interest rate but also how much money they have in their saving account or for how much time period they are saving etc. For the borrowers, they also don't react perfectly to the change in the interest rate. They might consider uncertainty in the economy or conditions on their borrowing. For these and many other factors that influence their saving and borrowing decisions, the definition of a natural rate of interest loses its assumption.

Therefore, from the very beginning of its story, which takes the notion of a natural rate of interest when it talks about how the central bank lowers the interest rate below a natural rate of interest, the Austrian explanation of business cycles is attacked by the other schools.

Meeting my own goal: A post on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory

Developed by Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) says that an artificially low interest rate, created by the government or a central bank, induces more investment in a production sector because investors now can find more money with an interest rate that is lower than a natural rate of interest. The artificially  low interest rate creates a production boom. Sooner or later, according to the theory, the investors realize the production is unsustainable and try to re-adjust the production and capital to other productions. At this moment, the economy is in a recessionary period.

When the interest rate is lower than a natural rate of interest, savers saves less and consumes more. At the same time, businesses borrow more money to invest in their projects. Businesses fail to see an increase in the demand for their products as an aggregate increase in the demand instead they think that the relative demand for their products has increased. To respond to the increase in the demand, businesses borrow more money and produce more. With a new cheaper money, investments that wouldn't have been done without an artificially low interest rate are made. These investments are called malinvestment by Austrian economists. When the businesses realize that this higher demand wasn't relative and the inflation is higher than they expected, they try to fix the mistake they made by changing the use of the capital and labor they have already obtained through the artificially low interest rate. Unfortunately, the process to make this adjustment takes some time because not all capital and labor can be used to produce a different product than the product they had been specified for. Therefore, this adjustment results in a period of unemployment and underemployment a.k.a a recession.

Moreover, the Austrian Business Cycle Theory explains one more thing that other business cycle theories don't explain. William J. Luther and Mark Cohen states this in their recent paper:

In particular, we have argued that the Austrian view is unique in suggesting that a monetary shock will distort the structure of production. An unexpected monetary expansion encourages early and late stage production relative to middle stage production. Hence, the Austrian theory claims that prices and production will increase in early and late stages relative to middle stages when the interest rate prevailing in the market falls below the natural rate.

In other words, the artificially low interest rate changes the structure of the production process.

According to the Austrians, the recent recession was the result of the Fed's low interest rate policy that followed 2001 recession.

Moreover, the theory has a implication on today's Fed's low interest policy. According to the Austrian Theory, the recession is a self-healing process of the economy after a boom and burst. Therefore, lowering the interest rate is seen as a problem by the Austrians. Here, WSJ covers some Austrian voices on the issue of the easy money policy in 2010:

Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Fed, argued that a large part of today's unemployment problem is caused by issues the Fed can't solve, such as the mismatch between the skills of jobless workers and the skills that employers wanted.

The ABCT theory hasn't been prominent theory to explain the business cycles as others, such as Keynesian economics. Economists have done researches to study the empirical evidence of the theory, but most of them shows results against the ABCT explanation. (Here and here) But it is still important to look back at the ABCT theory and its ingredients to understand economy more and fix its errors, if there is, to solve the economics problems more successfully.

The Fed and a Bubble: Flashback to 1927-1930

In recent discussions around effects and consequences of the Fed's monetary policy, a bubble in stock market has attracted attention. Even though the Fed's conventional and unconventional easy monetary policy, along with fiscal policies, has been keeping the U.S. economy from slipping into another Great Depression, unintended consequences of the Fed's recent policy, specially QE3, could be a big problem on its own as the policy sustains the recovery. The full effect of QE on the economy and the financial system isn't still fully known. Victoria McGrane quotes San Francisco Fed President John Williams from his recent paper on the zero lower bound:

Added to this uncertainty, the programs also raise “nagging concerns that large-scale asset purchases carry with them particular risks to the economy or the health of the financial system that we still don’t understand well,” he said.

Warning of a stock bubble has already been voiced by some of the Fed's policy makers. They argue that today's historically low federal funds rate has been fueling the stock prices. Therefore, they argue the Fed should pull back its bond-buying program to stop the potential stock bubble. However, the Fed shouldn't, in my opinion, tighten its monetary policy  so quick to just stop any potential bubble.

Here, Economist's 1998 article, "America's Bubble Economy", says:

In the late 1920s the Fed was also reluctant to raise interest rates in response to surging share prices, leaving rampant bank lending to push prices higher still. When the Fed did belatedly act, the bubble burst with a vengeance. The longer that asset prices continue to be pumped up by easy money, the more inflated the bubble will become and the more painful the economic after-effects when it bursts.

Now, let's try to see what was the Fed's action in the years prior to the Great Depression. In 1927, the Fed decreased its federal funds rate in the face of a mild recession in the U.S. and Britain's balance of payments crisis. Following this policy, the stock market prices gained 39% and the price-dividend ratio rose by 27% in 1928 (FYI: IN 2013, the Dow and S&P500 stock prices gained 26.5% and 29.6% respectively.) Worrying about a potential stock market bubble, the Fed raised the discount rate from 3.5% to 5% in the first half of 1928. The contractionary policy seemed to be working as the price-dividend ratio continuously fell until July 1929, when it started to increase again. Acting against this increase in the stock price, the Fed further increased the discount rate to 6% in August 1929. We know what happened next: the stock market crashed in late October of 1929. Here, we can see the Dow Jones Industrial Average price and price-dividend ratio in late 1920s.

As we briefly discussed the actions that the Fed took to cool down the stock market in the late 1920's, we should study further what this Fed's actions led to.

Today, the Fed faces the same problem even though Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn't see an evidence of a bubble. Therefore, today's one of the biggest problems is whether the Fed can manage its bond-buying program in a way such that it's action doesn't burst or sustain any dangerous bubble.

Asset Boom vs Low Inflation

Since the Fed announced that it would start trimming it's bond buying program of $85 billion a month to $75 billion in the face of better economic outlook in December, the certain members of the FOMC have been open about their opinion on the Fed's recent QE program.

Being one of the strong critics of the program, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher has been arguing against the whole bond buying program. In his opinion, the bond buying program does nothing much to the recovery, and the Fed should have cut back the amount of monthly bond purchase by $20 billion instead of $10 billion. Moreover, Fisher worries about increasing price of stocks and other assets. He isn't alone to warn about the bond buying programs push on asset price as stock prices are up 30% from a year ago. The worrisome result of the program is that "the boost to wealth and consumer confidence has accrued almost exclusively to the 52% of Americans who own stocks, based on a Gallup survey. It has not flowed through to jobs as the employment-to-population ratio has remained at 58.6% of the working-age population, within tenths of a percent of the recession low", according to RANDALL W. FORSYTH on Barron's. In other words, the bond buying program's main effect has been on the upward movement of the stock and asset prices but not much on the employment. The employment-to-population ratio has been lower than what it was at the "official" end of the recession, namely 59.4%, in June 2009, let alone before the recession ratio 62.7%. But we have to be careful here; to judge the QEs' effect on the economy, we should compare how the economy has been doing to how it would have done without the Fed's bond buying programs. Therefore, the judgement on the unemployment rate should be considered with a research on an "imaginary" economy without the QEs. However, the other point made in the above quote on the distribution of the Fed's high powered money and the beneficiaries of the FED's program, namely asset owners. The Fed's policy, therefore, could be a factor that is widening income inequality. Increasing income inequality should be tackled as soon as possible as it is growing as never before.

On the other hand, some members of FOMC have been big proponents of the Fed's bond buying program. Being one of them, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans has been taking strong stand on the continuation of the program to boost the recovery. He, among others, is worried by not-so-much inflation rate of 1.1% in the last year, which is well below the Fed's targeted level of 2%. To boost it to this targeted level, the Fed should pursue its near zero percent interest rate policy with its bond buying program, according to him. With low inflation, consumers and businesses have low incentive to borrow and spend their money. Therefore, the Fed is targeting high enough inflation to give confidence to consumers and businesses.

In other words, the Fed's policymakers have been divided between a policy against increasing asset prices and a policy against low inflation. Of course, it is not like "black vs white" argument. Fortunately, the monetary policymakers have been critical of each possible effect of the program.