I write from Jackson Hole Wyoming as the early morning sun shines sharply on the Grand Tetons where I just spent a very enjoyable few days at the annual monetary conference. I have been coming to these Jackson Hole conferences on and off since the first one on monetary policy in 1982, and as usual I learned a lot. Here is a brief sampling. I recommend reading the papers and the commentary once they are posted by the Kansas City Fed.

The main thing I took away from Ben Bernanke’s opener (the tradition going back to Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan is for the Fed chair to lead off) was his call for a “cost-benefit” approach to determine whether another dose of unorthodox large scale asset purchases is needed. This is a big improvement over a “whatever it takes” approach, and it opens the door to a transparent discussion of the costs and benefits of such policies. My own view (based on research with Johannes Stroebel) is that the benefits in terms of lower rates are very small, while the short-term costs of greater uncertainty about the exit strategy and long-term costs from a loss of independence are large.

Continue reading John Taylor on his blog Economics One

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