Research and Policy Advisor @KansasCityFed doing macro and labor; Minnesota PhD; Views and tweets are my own. Retweets ≠ endorsement. andyecon.weebly.com
The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate to ensure price stability and full employment. But how to tell if labor markets are at full employment and how to know what interest rate achieves the dual mandate? This requires estimating two time-varying objects: u* and r*.
Relatedly, the KC Fed Model-Based u* indicates that labor markets were slack for most of the 2010's even with inflation below 2% and policy rates near zero. Labor markets became balanced a few years before the pandemic, became tight in 2022, and are now roughly balanced again.
These series will be updated monthly from now on and available on a link that I will post in just a minute (I still don't quite know why, but people say not to post links on X).
Did you read Nakamura, Riblier, and Steinsson's 2025 Jackson Hole paper "Beyond the Taylor Rule"? Check it out!
It inspired Johnson Oliyide and I to check how much post-pandemic monetary policy diverged from our own specification of the Taylor Rule
kansascityfed.org/research/c…
In a new Charting the Economy, we use our own monthly estimate of the natural rate to calculate the prescribed federal funds rate from a Taylor Rule that tracks r* while responding to inflation deviations from 2% and the unemployment gap.
Like Nakamura, Riblier, and Steinsson's, our rule prescribes a higher policy rate post 2021. Our Rule's rates differ quantitatively from theirs, which reinforces their conclusion that optimal policy may not be well described by any given Taylor Rule.
Looking forward to @SEDmeeting in Copenhagen from tomorrow!
Come and check out our session on Housing and Rental Markets on Saturday, with @andyecon and @_ChoongYang. I'll be presenting my recent paper on the "Home Purchase Channel of Expenditure".
Last weekend to submit for Midwest Macro here at the KC Fed! Lots of interesting papers already submitted, but we want MORE!
kansascityfed.org/events/202…
What happens if employers can't use pre-employment credit screening (PECS) in hiring? In a model with adverse selection in both credit and frictional labor markets, banning PECS lowers labor market efficiency but helps reduce poverty traps.
New paper from Corbae & @andyecon 👇
New KC Fed Economic Bulletin asks why higher interest rates haven't slowed the economy more. TLDR answer: private lending spreads usually increase significantly during monetary tightening cycles, but have been flat (or fallen) during this one.
kansascityfed.org/research/e…
We consider how risk-adjusted lending spreads (Gilchrist-Zakrajsek’s excess bond premium) and the effective stance of monetary policy respond to monetary policy shocks (Ala Bauer and Swanson).
Find that EBP usually rises more than 1-1 with shock, whereas stance rises less.
This tightening cycle, the neutral rate has likely risen to dampen the increase in policy’s stance, but that is normal. The surprising thing is that excess bond premium has barely moved!