John B. Taylor

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
John Taylor
Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs
In office
2001–2005
PresidentGeorge W. Bush
Preceded byTimothy Geithner
Succeeded byTimothy D. Adams
Personal details
Born
John Brian Taylor

(1946-12-08) December 8, 1946 (age 77)
Yonkers, New York, U.S.
Political partyRepublican
EducationPrinceton University (BA)
Stanford University (PhD)
Academic career
InstitutionsStanford University
Hoover Institution
Columbia University
FieldMonetary economics
School or
tradition
New Keynesian economics
Doctoral
advisor
Theodore Wilbur Anderson[1]
Doctoral
students
Lawrence J. Christiano
InfluencesMilton Friedman
Paul Volcker
E. Philip Howrey
Alan Greenspan
ContributionsTaylor rule
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

John Brian Taylor (born December 8, 1946) is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at

George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.[2]

He taught at

Woodrow Wilson School and Economics Department of Princeton University from 1980 to 1984 before returning to Stanford. He has received several teaching prizes and teaches Stanford's introductory economics course as well as PhD courses in monetary economics.[3]

In research published in 1979 and 1980 he developed a model of price and wage setting—called the

Administration and Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the Ford and Carter Administrations.

In 2012 he was included in the

Nobel Prize in Economics.[8] He was president of the Mont Pelerin Society from 2018 to 2020.[9]

Early life and education

Born in

PhD
in economics from Stanford University in 1973.

Academic contributions

Taylor's research—including the staggered contract model, the Taylor rule, and the construction of a policy tradeoff (Taylor) curve[12] employing empirical rational expectations models[13]—has had a major impact on economic theory and policy.[14] Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said that Taylor's “influence on monetary theory and policy has been profound,”[15] and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has noted that Taylor's work “has affected the way policymakers and economists analyze the economy and approach monetary policy."[16]

Taylor contributed to the development of mathematical methods for solving macroeconomic models under the assumption of rational expectations, including in a 1975 Journal of Political Economy paper, in which he showed how gradual learning could be incorporated in models with rational expectations;[17] a 1979 Econometrica paper in which he presented one of the first econometric models with overlapping price setting and rational expectations,[18] which he later expanded into a large multicountry model in a 1993 book Macroeconomic Policy in a World Economy,[13] and a 1983 Econometrica paper,[19] in which he developed with Ray Fair the first algorithm to solve large-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models which became part of popular solution programs such as Dynare and EViews.[20]

In 1977, Taylor and

macroeconomic policy useless for stabilization;[22] the results of Taylor, Phelps, and Fischer showed that Sargent and Wallace's crucial assumption was not rational expectations, but perfectly flexible prices.[23] These research projects together could considerably deepen our understanding of the limits of the policy-ineffectiveness proposition.[24]

Taylor then developed the

staggered contract model of overlapping wage and price setting, which became one of the building blocks of the New Keynesian macroeconomics that rebuilt much of the traditional macromodel on rational expectations microfoundations.[25][26]

Taylor's research on monetary policy rules traces back to his undergraduate studies at Princeton.[27][28] He went on in the 1970s and 1980s to explore what types of monetary policy rules would most effectively reduce the social costs of inflation and business cycle fluctuations: should central banks try to control the money supply, the price level, or the interest rate; and should these instruments react to changes in output, unemployment, asset prices, or inflation rates? He showed[29] that there was a tradeoff—later called the Taylor curve[30]—between the volatility of inflation and that of output. Taylor's 1993 paper in the Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy proposed that a simple and effective central bank policy would manipulate short-term interest rates, raising rates to cool the economy whenever inflation or output growth becomes excessive, and lowering rates when either one falls too low.[6] Taylor's interest rate equation has come to be known as the Taylor rule, and it is now widely accepted as an effective formula for monetary decision making.[31]

A key stipulation of the Taylor rule, sometimes called the Taylor principle,[32] is that the nominal interest rate should increase by more than one percentage point for each one-percent rise in inflation. Some empirical estimates indicate that many central banks today act approximately as the Taylor rule prescribes, but violated the Taylor principle during the inflationary spiral of the 1970s.[33]

Recent research

Taylor's recent research has been on the financial crisis that began in 2007 and the

then directly led to the housing boom in his opinion.[34] He also believes that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae spurred on the boom and that the crisis was misdiagnosed as a liquidity rather than a credit risk problem.[35] He wrote that, "government actions and interventions, not any inherent failure or instability of the private economy, caused, prolonged, and worsen the crisis."[36]

Taylor's research has also examined the impact of fiscal policy in the recent recession. In November 2008, writing for

tax cuts would not serve as a good policy tool.[37] His research[38] with John Cogan, Tobias Cwik, and Volcker Wieland showed that the multiplier is much smaller in new Keynesian than in old Keynesian models, a result that was confirmed by researchers at central banks.[39] He evaluated the 2008 and 2009 stimulus packages and argued that they were not effective in stimulating the economy.[40]

In a June 2011 interview on Bloomberg Television, Taylor stressed the importance of long term fiscal reform that sets the U.S. federal budget on a path towards being balanced. He cautioned that the Fed should move away from quantitative easing measures and keep to a more static, stable monetary policy. He also criticized fellow economist Paul Krugman's advocacy of additional stimulus programs from Congress, which Taylor said will not help in the long run.[41] In his 2012 book First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring America’s Prosperity, he endeavors to explain why these reforms are part of a broader set of principles of economic freedom.

Selected publications

  • Taylor, John B. (October 1975). "Monetary policy during a transition to rational expectations".
    S2CID 8603588
    .
  • Taylor, John B.; Phelps, Edmund S. (February 1977). "Stabilizing powers of monetary policy under rational expectations". .
  • Taylor, John B. (May 1979). "Staggered wage setting in a macro model". .
Reprinted in Taylor, John B. (1991), "Staggered wage setting in a macro model", in Mankiw, N. Gregory; Romer, David (eds.), New Keynesian economics, volume 1, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 233–42, .

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Taylor, John B. (September 24, 2016). "The Statistical Analysis of Policy Rules". economicsone.com. Economics One (A blog by John B. Taylor). Retrieved October 2, 2016.
  2. ^ "Hoover Institution Senior Fellow: Biography". Hoover Institution. Retrieved 27 October 2011.
  3. ^ Taylor, John B. "Curriculum vitae" (PDF). Stanford University. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. JSTOR 1801626
    .
    Reprinted in Taylor, John B. (1991), "Staggered wage setting in a macro model", in Mankiw, N. Gregory; Romer, David (eds.), New Keynesian economics, volume 1, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 233–242, .
  5. .
  6. ^
  7. .
  8. ^ "Hall of 'citation laureates' (in economics)". science.thomsonreuters.com. Thomson-Reuters. Archived from the original on 2011-12-02. Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  9. ^ "Past Presidents - The Mont Pelerin Society". www.montpelerin.org. Retrieved 2023-10-22.
  10. ^ "Notable alumni". shadysideacademy.org. Shady Side Academy.
  11. ^ Taylor, John Brian. Princeton University. Department of Economics (ed.). "Fiscal and Monetary Stabilization Policies in a Model of Cyclical Growth". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. JSTOR 1911962. Pdf.
    Reprinted in Taylor, John B. (1981), "Estimation and control of a macroeconomic model with rational expectations", in Lucas, Jr., Robert E.; Sargent, Thomas J. (eds.), Rational expectations and econometric practice, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, .
  13. ^ .
  14. ^ Ben Bernanke refers to the “three concepts named after John that are central to understanding our macroeconomic experience of the past three decades—the Taylor curve, the Taylor rule, and the Taylor principle.” in “Opening Remarks,” Conference on John Taylor’s Contributions to Monetary Theory and Policy
  15. ^ Bernanke, Ben (2007). Opening Remarks. Remarks at the Conference on John Taylor's Contributions to Monetary Theory and Policy.
  16. ^ Yellen, Janet (2007). Policymaker Roundtable (PDF). Remarks at the Conference on John Taylor's Contributions to Monetary Theory and Policy.
  17. S2CID 8603588
    .
  18. .
  19. .
  20. and “Eviews Users Guide II.”
  21. .
  22. .
  23. .
  24. .
  25. .
  26. .
  27. ^ Taylor, John B. (April 1968). Fiscal and monetary stabilization policies in a model of endogenous cyclical growth (BA thesis). Princeton University.
  28. OCLC 22687344
    .
  29. .
  30. ^ Bernanke, Ben (2004). The Great Moderation. Remarks at the meeting of the Eastern Economic Association.
  31. ^ Orphanides, Athanasios (2007). Taylor rules (PDF). Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2007–18. Federal Reserve Board.
  32. JSTOR 30035014
    .
  33. .
  34. ^ Taylor, John B. (February 9, 2009). "How government created the financial crisis". The Wall Street Journal. p. A19. Pdf.
  35. ^ Taylor, John B. (November 25, 2008). "Why permanent tax cuts are the best stimulus". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 30, 2011.
  36. S2CID 14892522
    .
  37. Washington Post. June 27, 2011. Archived from the original
    on November 12, 2012. Retrieved June 30, 2011.

External links

Political offices
Preceded by Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs
2001–2005
Succeeded by