242 posts on "Macroeconomics"
July 7, 2022
Climate Change: Implications for Macroeconomics
What are the implications of climate change, and climate change–related policies, for macroeconomics in general and monetary policy in particular? This is the key question debated at a recent symposium on “Climate Change: Implications for Macroeconomics” organized by the Applied Macroeconomics and Econometrics Center (AMEC) of the New York Fed on May 13. This post briefly summarizes the content of the discussion and provides links to recordings of the various sessions and the participants’ slides.
June 24, 2022
How Could Oil Price and Policy Rate Hikes Affect the Near‑Term Inflation Outlook?
Since the start of the year, oil prices have risen sharply owing to worsening expectations regarding global oil supply. We’ve also had an acceleration of inflation in the United States and the euro area, as well as a sharp steepening of the expected paths of policy rates in both economies. These factors, combined with the potential for a slowdown in growth, have made the inflation outlook quite uncertain. In this post, we combine the demand and supply oil price decomposition from the New York Fed’s Oil Price Dynamics Report with yield curve data to quantify the likely path of inflation in the United States and the euro area over the next twelve months. Based on our analysis, we anticipate that inflation will likely remain elevated through the second quarter of 2023, despite payback for the inflationary impact of current negative oil supply shocks during the second half of 2022 and the disinflationary effects of tighter monetary policy.
Posted at 7:00 am in Forecasting, Inflation, Macroeconomics, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (2)
June 21, 2022
Will the U.S. Dollar Continue to Dominate World Trade?
There are around 180 currencies in the world, but only a very small number of them play an outsized role in international trade, finance, and central bank foreign exchange reserves. In the modern era, the U.S. dollar has a dominant international presence, followed to a lesser extent by the euro and a handful of other currencies. Although the use of specific currencies is remarkably stable over time, with the status of dominant currencies remaining unchanged over decades, there have been decisive shifts in the international monetary system over long horizons. For example, the British pound only lost its dominant currency status in the 1930s, well after Britain stopped being the leading world economy. In a new study, we show that the currency that is used in international trade transactions is an active firm-level decision rather than something that is just fixed. This finding raises the question of what factors could augment or reduce the U.S. dollar’s dominance in world trade.
Posted at 7:00 am in Exchange Rates, Exports, International Economics, Macroeconomics | Permalink | Comments (2)
June 17, 2022
The New York Fed DSGE Model Forecast—June 2022
This post presents an update of the economic forecasts generated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. We describe very briefly our forecast and its change since March 2022.
June 2, 2022
Does China’s Zero Covid Strategy Mean Zero Economic Growth?
The Chinese government has followed a “zero covid strategy” (ZCS) ever since the world’s first COVID-19 lockdowns ended in China around late March and early April of 2020. While this strategy has been effective at maintaining low infection levels and robust manufacturing and export activity, its viability is being severely strained by the spread of increasingly infectious coronavirus variants. As a result, there now appears to be a fundamental incompatibility between the ZCS and the government’s economic growth objectives.
May 18, 2022
Global Supply Chain Pressure Index: May 2022 Update
Supply chain disruptions continue to be a major challenge as the world economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, recent developments related to geopolitics and the pandemic (particularly in China) could put further strains on global supply chains. In a January post, we first presented the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI), a parsimonious global measure designed to capture supply chain disruptions using a range of indicators. We revisited our index in March, and today we are launching the GSCPI as a standalone product, with new readings to be published each month. In this post, we review GSCPI readings through April 2022 and briefly discuss the drivers of recent moves in the index.
Posted at 10:00 am in Inflation, International Economics, Macroeconomics, Pandemic, Supply Chain | Permalink | Comments (1)
April 20, 2022
Inflation Persistence: How Much Is There and Where Is It Coming From?
The surge in inflation since early 2021 has sparked intense debate. Would it be short-lived or prove to be persistent? Would it be concentrated within a few sectors or become broader? The answers to these questions are not so clear-cut. In our view, one should ask how much of the inflation is persistent and how much of it is broad-based. In this post, we address this question through a quantitative lens. We find that the large ups and downs in inflation over the course of 2020 were largely the result of transitory shocks, often sector-specific. In contrast, sometime in the fall of 2021, inflation dynamics became dominated by the trend component, which is persistent and largely common across sectors.
March 18, 2022
The New York Fed DSGE Model Forecast—March 2022
This post presents an update of the economic forecasts generated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. We describe very briefly our forecast and its change since December 2021. As usual, we wish to remind our readers that the DSGE model forecast is not an official New York Fed forecast, but only an input to the Research staff’s overall forecasting process. For more information about the model and variables discussed here, see our DSGE model Q & A.
March 3, 2022
Global Supply Chain Pressure Index: March 2022 Update
Supply chain disruptions continue to be a major challenge as the world economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. In a January post, we presented the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI) as a parsimonious global measure that encompasses several indicators used to capture supply chain disruptions. The main purpose of this post is to provide an update of the GSCPI through February 2022. In addition, we use the index’s underlying data to discuss the drivers of recent moves in the GSCPI. Finally, these data are used to create country-specific supply chain pressures indices.
March 2, 2022
Disinflation Policies with a Flat Phillips Curve
Yesterday’s post analyzed the drivers of the surge in inflation over the course of 2021 through the lens of the New York Fed DSGE model. In today’s post, we use the model to study how alternative monetary policy strategies might contribute to bringing inflation back down to 2 percent. Our main finding is that there is no monetary silver bullet. Due to a flat Phillips curve—a well–documented feature of the economic environment of the last three decades—monetary policy can only achieve faster disinflation at a considerable cost in terms of forgone economic activity. This is true regardless of the systematic approach followed by the central bank in the model to pursue its objective.
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