Latest / The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast / Monetary economics, the Taylor Rule, fiscal policy, and economic growth
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- 0:43>> John Hartley: This is the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st century
- 0:45podcast where we talk about economics, markets and public policy.
- 0:49I'm John Hartley, your host.
- 0:50Today, I'm joined by John Taylor, who is the Mary and
- 0:53Robert Raymond professor of economics at Stanford University.
- 0:56John is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and
- 0:59is one of the world's greatest living monetary economists.
- 1:02John is also the inventor of the Taylor rule, which is a canonical description
- 1:05of how central banks change interest rates in response to inflation and output gaps.
- 1:10He is also one of the founders of the new Keynesian macroeconomic paradigm and
- 1:13is consistently cited as a likely future winner of the Nobel Prize in economics,
- 1:17which I think would be more than well-deserved.
- 1:19John has also served in many positions in government.
- 1:22He has served in the US Navy.
- 1:24He has also served in the White House Council of Economic advisors, and
- 1:27he served as the US treasury under-secretary of international affairs
- 1:31during the George W Bush administration.
- 1:33Welcome, John.
- 1:34>> John Taylor: Good to be here, thank you.
- 1:36>> John Hartley: You were born in Yonkers, New York.
- 1:39You're a Princeton undergrad, you're a Stanford PhD.
- 1:42How do you get interested in economics the first place?
- 1:45And what influenced you to get into the field of monetary economics?
- 1:50>> John Taylor: Well, I majored in economics in college.
- 1:53I went to Princeton and had some advisors, Phil Howard for example,
- 1:58who just encouraged looking at the overall, the macroeconomy.
- 2:03And that interested me from the start, and not so
- 2:06much that that's what I was gonna do.
- 2:08But I had to do a senior thesis, I did my senior thesis-
- 2:12>> John Hartley: It's required at
- 2:13Princeton-.
- 2:13>> John Taylor: Required, yes, required.
- 2:15And so I did it in that particular topic and that sort of got me interested,
- 2:20and I went to graduate school at Stanford.
- 2:24After that, actually I had a little interruption in the Navy, went to the Navy
- 2:29in between Princeton coming out here, which was formative for sure.
- 2:33Then came back here, and I was interested in econometrics, actually.
- 2:38Ted Anderson was my advisor, he's since passed away.
- 2:41He's a great advisor and did econometrics.
- 2:44But that was more on my way to study monetary.
- 2:47I never really lost the interest in monetary economics and how you
- 2:52could smooth the business cycle, how you could have a better economic policy.
- 2:58>> John Hartley: Fantastic, and I'm curious, so
- 3:02you've been a professor at Stanford for some time.
- 3:08I'm curious, how did some of these collaborations, for example,
- 3:13in the early new Keynesian days, folks like Ned Phelps, for example.
- 3:19I think one of the biggest, I think, contributions,
- 3:22I think that you made to the new Keynesian literature was coming up with this idea
- 3:27of having a monetary policy rule, would later be named a Taylor rule.
- 3:31And initially it was sort of used as this third equation
- 3:37to allow for the determinacy of equilibrium.
- 3:41And it turned out later, great description of the world and how the Fed actually
- 3:45would follow monetary policy when it would follow interest rate targets and
- 3:49prescription for optimal policy later.
- 3:51But I'm curious, how did you get interested in this idea of central
- 3:56banks should be following interest rate targets instead of just,
- 4:01say, money growth rule targets.
- 4:03Things that obviously Milton Friedman was a big fan and proponent of,
- 4:07and certainly captured a lot of the Fed's interest in the 1970s and 80s.
- 4:13How did you fall into this conversation about following interest rate targets,
- 4:19and how did that interest you in the early new Keynesian days?
- 4:24>> John Taylor: Well, it came very gradually.
- 4:26It was originally built and was interested in econometric models.
- 4:31They were quite elaborate.
- 4:33They did have this mixture of expectations and sticky prices,
- 4:36which I thought was very important.
- 4:38And that was a way to both have the ability to affect expectations of future
- 4:43prices, but also have some rigidities,
- 4:45which still seems to be an important aspect of the economy.
- 4:49So those are the basic structure, which was fundamental.
- 4:53But in that context, you have to have a model of policy.
- 4:59And of course, Milton Friedman was a great influence.
- 5:01And the idea of having a money growth rule, having a rule is essential.
- 5:06How do you study policy without some kind of notion of what the central bank is
- 5:11gonna do next year, next quarter?
- 5:13Cuz expectations are so important.
- 5:15You had to build on expectations, and you build them in by somehow having
- 5:20a description of what the central bank will do.
- 5:23>> John Hartley: Something that Sergeant and Lucas and the rational expectations,
- 5:27microfinance models sort of came in the 70s and 80s-.
- 5:31>> John Taylor: Yeah, in some sense they never had sticky prices.
- 5:34That was a huge difference.
- 5:35They had perfectly flexible prices.
- 5:39And so what I thought was important, based on my studies, and
- 5:44in looking at the world is some kind of rigidity but not permanent,
- 5:49something that could be influenced by policy, you could do it.
- 5:54So that's why a rule became important, a strategy,
- 5:56before the central bank became important.
- 5:59And I really began to look at that, but it's gradual over time.
- 6:04You had to have some stipulation of what the central bank was gonna do,
- 6:07what the fiscal policy would do.
- 6:09Otherwise, how would you have a model if you didn't have some description?
- 6:12So early on it was a description, and that gradually evolved to some description
- 6:17where the primary variable which the central bank had
- 6:20influence on was the interest rate and that affected the money supply.
- 6:24We always had a money demand function in these models.
- 6:27That was still a very important part of it.
- 6:30But I thought, based on my experience in Washington,
- 6:34I worked on the CEA a couple of times, and
- 6:37you could see they became good friends with the policymakers.
- 6:42You could see that their focus was more on the interest rate.
- 6:45So I wanted to find a way to do that, but to preserve the notion of a policy rule,
- 6:49of a strategy that the central bank was considering.
- 6:52So it was a gradual thing over time, but
- 6:55it involved research in academia and then getting my PhD, of course.
- 7:01But go and work in the Council of Economic Advisors in Washington, coming back and
- 7:05doing more work and going back again.
- 7:07That mixture back and forth is very important.
- 7:09I had four stints in the government, if you count the navy.
- 7:15>> John Hartley: That's fantastic, I wanna get back to that a little bit later when
- 7:19talking about the fiscal outlook,
- 7:22but sticking to monetary policy just for a second here.
- 7:26How exactly did the Taylor rule come about?
- 7:29There's this, obviously, your famous 1993 paper,
- 7:33Discretion Versus Policy Rules and Practice.
- 7:37It famously has a coefficient of, I think,
- 7:410.5 on the upward gap and 1.5 on inflation,
- 7:46which I think became, I think, your most cited paper.
- 7:52And it's been an incredible description of the world and
- 7:56something that central banks all over the world Pay attention to
- 8:01closely when thinking about what monetary policy should be,
- 8:05even if perhaps they don't follow it as closely as they should at times.
- 8:10How did this idea come about to write that 1993 paper?
- 8:15>> John Taylor: Well, it wasn't instant.
- 8:17It took a while by the way, it's 30 years old as we speak.
- 8:21>> John Hartley: Yeah, exactly 30th anniversary.
- 8:23>> John Taylor: Originally, it didn't set out to write a simple, but if you had a,
- 8:28if you looked at policy, it was complicated and
- 8:31isn't there a way we could make it simpler?
- 8:34And that was what I strived for.
- 8:37I didn't know it become as useful or as popular as it's become global.
- 8:42It's well known.
- 8:43It was mainly a method to simplify in a way that people could understand and
- 8:48you could talk about it.
- 8:50And as you say, the coefficients 1.5 and 0.5.
- 8:54What could be simpler than that?
- 8:55Just two variables, the inflation rate and the GDP gap, so to speak.
- 9:02And that was the, it was looking around.
- 9:04I didn't start there, for sure, had more complicated things, but
- 9:08that seemed to work pretty well in the models.
- 9:10Remember this, I came about this through the models.
- 9:12First, make sure that your policy was gonna work in the model,
- 9:17and you had a criterion.
- 9:18You wanted to have low inflation rate, around 2% or so.
- 9:22That was the goal.
- 9:23That was the 2% target,
- 9:24I think was the first time maybe one of the central bank had 2% before then.
- 9:29But the simple, sometimes we thought maybe one and
- 9:32a half wouldn't be better just choose an easy number and then work from there.
- 9:38And then originally, it was more complicated things.
- 9:40The exchange rate was certainly a factor that people talked about, so
- 9:44I considered that.
- 9:45But it's realized you come pretty close to optimal policy, pretty close to the more
- 9:49complicated thing, which had 30 variables, or ten variables on the right hand side.
- 9:54He had two, and that was kind of an eye opener for me.
- 9:58But I still thought it was something that wouldn't have as much impact as it has.
- 10:03>> John Hartley: Well, it's amazing.
- 10:04I feel like it's like one of those strokes of brilliance and genius that you look
- 10:08back on it now, 30 years later, and it's, well, isn't that obvious?
- 10:13Unemployment, inflation is probably the dual mandate, but
- 10:17I think it's one of those things where it was probably not
- 10:20at all obvious at the time that the Fed could follow these things so closely.
- 10:25And the way that you wrote down the Taylor rule and
- 10:28something that obviously influenced central banks around the world.
- 10:32Now I want to start getting a little bit to see a question of optimal policy.
- 10:37And I think this is where I think there's a lot of maybe confusion about, and
- 10:41sometimes criticism about the Taylor rules being something that,
- 10:45yeah, it was too rigid to follow mechanically.
- 10:47And where I think people say things, we shouldn't adopt a Taylor rule.
- 10:54Well, I think that the irony is that several banks around the world have
- 10:59already adopted Taylor rules, and you can just see that in the data.
- 11:03But I think one sort of misconception is that you advocate for
- 11:08something that's strictly mechanical.
- 11:11If you look to, for example, things like the Fed Oversight and Reform Act,
- 11:15the Form Act from 2016, something which you had direct influence on and
- 11:19was something that was before by Congress.
- 11:21I think that stipulated that Congress could revise these rules and
- 11:25that there wouldn't necessarily be such a mechanical thing.
- 11:28I'm curious, how has your time in Washington when you visit
- 11:34talking with Congress people and talking with monetary policymakers?
- 11:40I mean, how do you respond to those sorts of
- 11:45critics who argue that monetary policy should
- 11:50be not somewhat rules based in a sense?
- 11:54I'm curious. >> John Taylor: Well, let me say,
- 11:56the idea of a rules based policy has always been very important.
- 11:58In other words, how are you gonna figure out what the central bank is going to
- 12:03do next year without some kind of a description of what they do?
- 12:06So the notion of a rule, whether it's simple or complicated,
- 12:10was essential to what I was always interested way back at the very beginning.
- 12:14And the idea that, well, it's too complicated out of five variables came
- 12:18from working in Washington, knowing people at the Fed, knowing Greenspan.
- 12:23He was the chair of the CEA for a while.
- 12:25And so you got the sense a little bit what they were thinking about and
- 12:30how you could simplify it.
- 12:31And clearly, you had some notion of inflation.
- 12:34If you had a target inflation rate, 2%, then you had some sense to tighten policy
- 12:38when inflation got to Irish policy, when inflation got too low.
- 12:42So that became a key ingredient.
- 12:44But you also notice that,
- 12:46well, the central bank also looks at the state of the economy.
- 12:50What's the unemployment rate, what's the GDP gap?
- 12:53And so you had to have something in that.
- 12:55And that wouldn't make sense if you didn't,
- 12:57because the Fed is gonna ease when the economy is in a tough time.
- 13:01And then the other variables you maybe want to include, too, as I mentioned,
- 13:06the exchange rate was very common, especially for
- 13:09economies where international trade and foreign exchange are very important.
- 13:14So I definitely considered that a lot.
- 13:17But the idea, I guess, was you had to have something simpler.
- 13:21And I knew that from working in Washington several times and
- 13:26knowing central bankers in the US and other places.
- 13:30And that's where the idea of, as you say, simple and
- 13:32people always argue is too simple.
- 13:34How could policy be so simple as two variables?
- 13:37But it's turned out to be pretty good, by the way, it's not always.
- 13:40Sometimes they get off, and I think the Fed recently has been off.
- 13:45Now they're back on again, closer at least.
- 13:47And so people are looking back, well, what was wrong?
- 13:50And they were so far off.
- 13:51And maybe that's problem.
- 13:52Maybe that will bring even more attention back to some kind of a simple rule.
- 13:57I've noticed a lot of interest.
- 13:58You mentioned the Congress having quite a bit of interest in this, and
- 14:02there was some legislation passed.
- 14:04The Fed had to say what its rule was and
- 14:06the Congress would build into their testimony but that faded away.
- 14:10I don't know, maybe they come back now, people will see how useful it actually is.
- 14:15>> John Hartley: Jumping off that,
- 14:16I want to touch a little bit about the Taylor principle, this idea that the Fed
- 14:20needs to raise short term interest rates more than one for one with inflation.
- 14:24This goes back to the Taylor rule coefficient of 1.5 on inflation.
- 14:31There's certainly been this experiment that's been playing out, and
- 14:35others like John Cochran,
- 14:36have written a bit about this question about neoficarianism and so forth.
- 14:41And in this era of inflation, sort of maybe peaked at 8% or
- 14:47so, and it's still at 6%.
- 14:50Do we actually need to raise the Fed funds rate to above inflation to
- 14:54get it to come down?
- 14:56And it increasingly seems like that's the case, and that's where we're getting to.
- 15:00And interest rates are, as of this moment, around 5%.
- 15:05I'm curious, what are your thoughts on that debate right now and
- 15:10where monetary policy currently is?
- 15:12Do you think the Fed has been too slow to respond to inflation?
- 15:16That picked up in May 2021 and became certainly more
- 15:21than just a temporary phenomenon as it became increasingly clear over time.
- 15:29How do you think the Fed has been?
- 15:31How would you assess the Fed's response to this early 2020s inflation?
- 15:36>> John Taylor: In fact, we had a book on the desk here how monetary
- 15:40policy got behind the curve, which was a really important thing.
- 15:45>> John Hartley: And this is the summary of your monetary policy conference
- 15:48proceedings from last year.
- 15:49>> John Taylor: A lot of people contributed this, but they were behind,
- 15:52no question interest rate was 25 basis points, and
- 15:54the rules would say it should be four or five or something like that.
- 15:57So they have way.
- 15:59Quite a way to catch up, and they're now four and a half or so, but
- 16:03I still think based on the rule they got to go a little higher.
- 16:07And you could say, why one and a half?
- 16:09The idea is to have the real interest rate a little bit higher than normal.
- 16:13So that would offset the other impacts that are keeping inflation from high,
- 16:18basically to attenuate.
- 16:20It's also very important that this be known, as long as it's known,
- 16:24the impact are much less severe.
- 16:27The worst thing is, I'm surprised, [COUGH] tightening, surprised, and
- 16:30that is conjecture.
- 16:31So the whole idea of a rule or strategy is that people know what it is,
- 16:37and it's also important internationally.
- 16:40So the US knows what's happening in Japan or Europe, and so
- 16:43they have a sense of what's going on there.
- 16:46So I think ultimately, this is always meant to be an international aspect.
- 16:51That's why I've always worried about the exchange rate, but
- 16:54it seems like the US exchange rate is less important.
- 16:57And also let me say this, it's very important to say, I originally said,
- 17:01this is a guideline, don't follow this exactly.
- 17:04There's other things that come in play, you go back and read my 30 year old paper
- 17:08or whatever it is, you can see that pretty clear now, it is [INAUDIBLE].
- 17:11Now it's become more adopted, more descriptive of what actually happens,
- 17:17as you say, and that's become an important way to test it.
- 17:21Now we have how other central banks are doing and what they don't go,
- 17:25they didn't follow this method in the 70s, and inflation went through the roof.
- 17:30And then they've been better at it, we'll see what happens now.
- 17:33There's a real question about what's happening in monetary policy right now.
- 17:36>> John Hartley: Absolutely, I wanna jump a little bit to fiscal policy and talking
- 17:42to get your thoughts on that, you've long spoken about fiscal issues in the US.
- 17:48You testified on these issues and you've written several papers and
- 17:52books on this topic.
- 17:53You also served as Secretary for International Affairs, you ran OIA,
- 17:58or Office of International Affairs at Treasury in the early 2000s.
- 18:03You spent time at CEA, and you've also served in the military,
- 18:10so you've seen the government spending side at work very up close.
- 18:17I'm curious, what do you think about the long-term fiscal outlook for the US?
- 18:22This COVID era spending is piled on an additional four
- 18:26plus trillion dollars in spending.
- 18:30There's right now some negotiations in DC about raising the debt limit,
- 18:35I think it's something that seems to get lifted every few years.
- 18:40About ten years ago there was this big sort of discussion around Bowles Simpson,
- 18:45the Bowles-Simpson Commission.
- 18:47There's a lot of discussions about debt then,
- 18:51that seems to have become a bygone era almost at this point.
- 18:55With, I think very few politicians in both parties wanting to talk about
- 19:00sort of the reality of entitlement spending and the future path of debt.
- 19:06We also have inflation and interest rates would,
- 19:09it obviously influenced the net interest costs.
- 19:12I'm curious, what do you think about the fiscal outlook for the US and
- 19:16what do you think needs to be done?
- 19:17>> John Taylor: So, first of all, I think, we talked about monetary policy,
- 19:20that's where the Taylor rule and things like that come from.
- 19:23Because I thought it was so important to have something that was better than
- 19:27a fixed money growth rule, but had the same principles as a rule.
- 19:31But there's other rules, there's fiscal rules, there's rules for regulation,
- 19:35there's international rules.
- 19:36I always have written about, this is just one element of good policy.
- 19:40We have to have a good fiscal policy, have good regulatory policy,
- 19:43a good international policy.
- 19:45So fiscal policy is a very important part of this.
- 19:47And I think that originally, the notion is you had a balanced budget normal times,
- 19:52and you had surpluses and deficits around that.
- 19:55We're far from that at this point at this point.
- 19:57And I think it would be easier for monetary policy, it'd be easier for
- 20:02policy all around if fiscal policy also had this notion of a smaller deficit.
- 20:08And the deficit has been quite big.
- 20:10And to some extent, it's really like monetary policy being off,
- 20:13they're both off.
- 20:14And I think that the more we can come back to the basic elements of what good
- 20:19economic policy is, and rules base is part of it, and you have a fiscal rule,
- 20:23it really makes a difference.
- 20:25So there's lots of problems with big deficits, sometimes there,
- 20:30like the panic we had a few years ago, you had to have it,
- 20:34it's there already, interest rates driven near to zero.
- 20:38But the idea is in normal times you don't need that, you should get out of it.
- 20:42So I would like to see policy, fiscal policy, as well as monetary policy,
- 20:46get back to a more normal stance.
- 20:48I think policy would work better if that was the case.
- 20:51And there's also international aspects of fiscal policy too.
- 20:54>> John Hartley: Absolutely, I mean, it's interesting to see Europe obviously has
- 20:59tried to adopt fiscal rules and trying to get its fiscal house in order.
- 21:03Do you have any, on the international side of things,
- 21:07do you have any particular thoughts about the European experiment with the Euro and
- 21:13having a monetary union, but not a fiscal union?
- 21:16>> John Taylor: [CROSSTALK] Well,
- 21:17I think that their decision to have a single currency was a good one.
- 21:21They had to rein in certain countries and have sort of a common policy of all,
- 21:26it was hard to do, but I think it's led to better policy,
- 21:29I think they're a little bit off right now, to be sure.
- 21:33I think it's a good system.
- 21:35The UK is not part of it, and so ultimately,
- 21:38I think that's a good way to think about how the world will work.
- 21:42These are countries who are quite different, Italy and Germany, for example.
- 21:46But the idea of bringing them together with a common
- 21:49framework always seem to be good.
- 21:51And whether it's a Taylor rule or some other kind of rule, that is part of their
- 21:56thinking, it's always a part of the thinking and has influenced that.
- 22:00They all know about that.
- 22:01So I think it's a good phenomenon, it's happening, a good trend that's happening.
- 22:07But it's not the only answer, because you still have to deal with differences
- 22:11of opinion, different cultures, different nationalities.
- 22:15>> John Hartley: Any thoughts on Japan?
- 22:17Japan being one of the first countries to embark on quantitative easing,
- 22:22we've seen this whole decade of quantitative easing.
- 22:26I feel like the 2010's, the monetary policy response was largely embracing
- 22:31this unconventional form of monetary policy of buying long term bonds,
- 22:36trying to bring down long term bond yields.
- 22:39What do you think the legacy of that has been?
- 22:42And do you have any particular thoughts on Japan and
- 22:45being in this low interest rate environment?
- 22:47>> John Taylor: Yeah, and it is a very important part of the world economy.
- 22:51I spent several months at the bank of Japan learning how they work and
- 22:54talking with the policymakers, and I followed pretty closely.
- 22:58I think they have a new governor coming in, and that will change things.
- 23:01I think it will get back to a more rules-based policy, we'll see.
- 23:05>> John Hartley: Is Kuroda leaving?
- 23:06He's just retiring, I think, this month.
- 23:07I think Kuroda is exiting this month.
- 23:11>> John Taylor: Yeah, they mean well, they're good people, but
- 23:14I think they have lost track of how to conduct monetary policy.
- 23:19And Vasil becomes back a little bit.
- 23:21But it's different countries, different policies that are taken throughout,
- 23:25and so you have to put that in the right context.
- 23:28But I think what's important now is how do you have a global system
- 23:33where each central bank,
- 23:35assuming there's central banks in each country that are independent.
- 23:40Are conducting policy in a way that's good for their economy, but it's also good for
- 23:45the world economy.
- 23:46And that's what I hope will happen in the next few years.
- 23:50We've made a lot of progress, we're not there yet, that's for sure.
- 23:52And I think that, as you say, there's disputes,
- 23:55some people think it's too simple.
- 23:56Some people think we need to do more complicated things.
- 23:59What's amazing is you don't have to be that complicated, it works pretty well.
- 24:02That's what evidence has shown.
- 24:05>> John Hartley: It's been 50 years since Bretton Woods and
- 24:08we've been in this flexible exchange rate regime for some time.
- 24:14Any thoughts on this was obviously a big debate that Friedman had with Mundell.
- 24:21Friedman definitely won the flexible exchange rates
- 24:26fight when 50 years ago the pegs were broken.
- 24:31But certainly I think Mundell was able to sort of get his Euro brain child in
- 24:35place and having a common currency in Euro.
- 24:38And obviously that's been very controversial.
- 24:40But I'm curious what you think of the legacy of
- 24:45flexible exchange rates that we all have today.
- 24:50>> John Taylor: Milton Friedman was a good friend.
- 24:52He was here at Stanford for quite a few years.
- 24:55Talked to him a lot about policy rules, that's for sure.
- 24:58He knew about the Taylor rule very well.
- 24:59We talked a lot about that, talked about the fixed money growth rule and
- 25:04the idea of having a flexible exchange rate that's in the tailor roll unless you
- 25:09somehow get together at one central bank.
- 25:11So you have the same interest rate back in Europe.
- 25:14But there was definitely a way.
- 25:16How could you realize exchange rate is gonna be flexible and
- 25:20still have a policy rule?
- 25:21And I think that's the fixed money growth rules of Milton Friedman were
- 25:26very much that way, and so is the tail rule.
- 25:30There's no exchange rate explicitly.
- 25:31And that was, they say, I worried a lot about that.
- 25:34What about the exchange rate?
- 25:36And it turned out to be pretty simple.
- 25:38In fact, inflation rate and GDP gap and
- 25:40interest rate is pretty close to money growth rule.
- 25:44And you look at the interest rate specifically,
- 25:47rather than let the interest rate come out of the policy,
- 25:50where you have a fixed money growth, fixed money growth implies interest rate.
- 25:54This way the interest rate is decided and implies the money growth rate.
- 25:59So the idea of a rule is very, very clear.
- 26:03As long as I've been in economics, I think about rules for strategies for
- 26:07monetary policy and fiscal policy.
- 26:09You asked me about how I got interested.
- 26:12Well, there were rules, they were more complicated,
- 26:14but how could you make it simpler?
- 26:15And then I think that was where working in Washington and understanding and
- 26:20getting to know the policymakers, getting to know members of Congress,
- 26:25getting to know the White House, and how the president was working with other
- 26:30people, you began to see something simpler was gonna be important to this.
- 26:36It's just, you don't want to be so complicated.
- 26:38There's no reason for it to be so complicated.
- 26:40>> John Hartley: Absolutely and absolutely, you think about it.
- 26:42Taylor and Taylor rule in an open economy.
- 26:45Mundell Fleming says, if you're gonna have monetary
- 26:49policy where you can change interest rates and
- 26:53not have a pegged interest rate permanently, you have to allow for
- 26:59both movement of capital flows and to have free flow and exchange rates.
- 27:06I'm curious to keep back, just on a final note here.
- 27:09Part of your time in Washington, you were undersecretary for international affairs.
- 27:15Part of that was not just focusing on the developed economies in the developed
- 27:21world, but also on emerging economies in many other parts of the world,
- 27:26the developing parts of the world.
- 27:29I know you spent some time helping to set up currencies in Afghanistan and
- 27:33Iraq in the early 2000s.
- 27:35I'm just curious about your thoughts on global economic growth and
- 27:39your thoughts on regulation institutions.
- 27:43I'm sure you had many great conversations with Milton Friedman.
- 27:48I spent a lot of my time sort of researching on things that relate to
- 27:51economic growth and constraints on economic growth.
- 27:53I'm curious, what is your broad thinking about?
- 27:56Like, what is the secret sauce to economic growth in your mind?
- 27:59>> John Taylor: Well, I go back to the notion that you have good economic policy
- 28:01as monetary policy, fiscal policy, regulatory policy,
- 28:04and some international aspect.
- 28:06That seems to me, I've written books about that.
- 28:08That's the most important thing to keep in place.
- 28:11So monetary policy is very important, but countries are different.
- 28:15Maybe fixed money growth will work best for a small economy in Africa.
- 28:19And so you have to recognize the institutions are different.
- 28:22And I've always emphasized that.
- 28:24I think what I've seen over the very recent years and the experience with
- 28:28countries is that this kind of rule, where the interest rate is the main variable,
- 28:33that could be countries coming together in a union of some kind,
- 28:37like the European Central bank and the monetary union.
- 28:41But the notion that there'd be some stable,
- 28:44understandable monetary policy is key because,
- 28:48think about how terrible it can be if you don't think of Zimbabwe.
- 28:53I carry Zimbabwe notes in my wall to show kids how bad it can be, and
- 28:57it can be really terrible.
- 28:59And we still have that problem around.
- 29:02And there's other things that interfere with monetary policy, but
- 29:06just focus on monetary policy.
- 29:07There's a lot that can be done in Africa, Asia, Latin America.
- 29:11Latin America still has high inflation rates.
- 29:14What's going on?
- 29:14They don't need to have that.
- 29:16But there's still a feeling that, well, maybe high inflation is not so bad.
- 29:21In fact, right now there's people saying, well, why have a 2% inflation?
- 29:25Why don't we have three, four?
- 29:27And so I don't think that's a good idea.
- 29:29I testified just last week in Congress emphasize that 2% is where we
- 29:34are globally mimic.
- 29:36Many countries have that.
- 29:37There's a sense of that causes more stability than if it is,
- 29:41one has four, one has ten, one has two.
- 29:43And so I think try to stick with that.
- 29:46And there's always temptation, hey, what, 3%, 4%?
- 29:49We could get to that.
- 29:50Not a big deal, but it is a big deal.
- 29:52And that is a unifying theme that I hope we continue with in the future.
- 29:58>> John Hartley: Well, it's fascinating, I know there's been some discussions about
- 30:02potentially a monetary union between Argentina and Brazil.
- 30:06I don't know if that'll happen or if that's a good deal for the Brazilians.
- 30:10But I know that there is a good chunk of evidence that there's resurgent economic
- 30:14growth and
- 30:15maybe some evidence that there's some convergence across the developing world.
- 30:20And I think, and this is really just in the past two decades.
- 30:27And I think it's fair to say that a lot of that, I think,
- 30:31is partially and thanks to monetary stability.
- 30:34And I think a lot of that goes back to so
- 30:37much of the great work that you've done over the past decades.
- 30:41And I know many are still fascinated by all of your work John,
- 30:46I want to thank you so much for joining us today John,
- 30:50it's been a real pleasure having you.
- 30:53>> John Taylor: It's been great, thanks for your great questions, terrific.
- 30:55I enjoyed it.
- 30:56>> John Hartley: Today, our guest was John Taylor,
- 30:58who is the Marion Robert Raymond professor of economics at Stanford University and
- 31:02is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
- 31:05This is the capitalism and freedom of the 21st century podcast where we
- 31:08talk about economics, markets and public policy.
- 31:10I'm John Hartley, your host.
- 31:11Thanks so much for joining us.
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