Showing results 1 - 10 of 27
February 25, 2021, Opinion: "Rather than worrying about the prospects of higher long-term expected inflation, the US Federal Reserve is exuding confidence that it can maintain price stability should the need ever arise. It should think again, before the inflation genie has escaped from the bottle."
Harvard Author Website - Robert Barro
December 2020, Paper: "The national-income accounts double-count investment, which enters once when it occurs and again in present value as rental income on added capital. The double-counting implies that GDP and national income overstate sustainable consumption. An alternative measure, “permanent income,” equals consumption in the steady state but deviates from consumption outside of the steady state because expensing of gross investment…
Coronavirus meets the Great Influenza Pandemic. Robert Barro, March 2020, Paper, "What is a plausible worst-case scenario for outcomes under COVID-19? This column draws lessons from the 1918-1920 Great Influenza Pandemic. Data for 43 countries imply flu-related deaths back then of 39 million, 2% of the world population, implying 150 million deaths when applied to current population. Controlling for effects from WWI, GDP and consumption in the…
Cutting GDP to Counter the Coronavirus Pandemic. Robert Barro, March 26, 2020, Opinion, "One of the main policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic has been to curb economic activity as a way of reducing the contagion’s spread. I would characterize this policy as a decision to reduce U.S. and world GDP in the short run by roughly 20 percent. In essence, this is a voluntarily implemented negative supply shock, akin to a sudden loss in…
| Jeremy Stein | James H. Stock | Jason Furman
The economy and policy in the coronavirus crisis to date. James Stock, Robert Barro, Jason Furman, Jeremy Stein, Video: "This conversation took place during the Spring 2020 conference on the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Participants included Daniel Lewis of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Jan Hatzius from Goldman Sachs, and Lucrezia Reichlin of the London Business School discussing the economic outlook in the face of COVID-19.…
The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Epidemic - Lessons from the 'Spanish Flu' for the Coronavirus's Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity. Robert Barro, 2020, Paper, "Mortality and economic contraction during the 1918-1920 Great Influenza Epidemic provide plausible upper bounds for outcomes under the coronavirus (COVID-19). Data for 43 countries imply flu-related deaths in 1918-1920 of 39 million, 2.0 percent of world…
January 2020, Paper: "We derive an option-pricing formula from recursive preferences and estimate rare disaster probability. The new options-pricing formula applies to far-out-of-the money put options on the stock market when disaster risk dominates, the size distribution of disasters follows a power law, and the economy has a representative agent with a constant-relative-risk-aversion utility function. The formula conforms with options data on…
Trump’s Mercantilist Mess. Robert Barro, September 5, 2019, Opinion, "When US President Donald Trump boasted that trade wars are "easy to win" in March 2018, it was convenient to dismiss the remark as a rhetorical flourish. Yet it is now clear that Trump meant it, because he genuinely believes the bizarre and anachronistic macroeconomic theories underlying his approach."…
Mysteries of Monetary Policy. Robert Barro, July 4, 2019, Opinion, "Since the federal funds rate peaked at 22% in the early 1980s, inflation in the United States has remained low and stable, leading many to believe that the mere threat of renewed interest-rate hikes has kept it in check. But no one really knows why inflation has been subdued for so long."…
Trump Is Slowing US Economic Growth. Robert Barro, June 4, 2019, Opinion, "The current state of US macroeconomic policymaking across four key areas does not bode well. Although the 2017 tax legislation has done its job in promoting faster growth, rising trade tensions, persistent regulatory burdens, and a lack of investment in infrastructure all threaten to limit the US economy's potential."…