housing and ary policy：住房与货币政策.pdf

Housing and ary Policy John B. Taylor 1 September 2007 My remarks focus on the relationship between ary policy and the recent turmoil in the markets for housing, housing fina nce, and beyond. I begi n with a review of the period leading up to the crisis. I then use this review as a basis for discussing the role of ary policy in resolving such crises and preventing future crises. A Great Moderation of the Housing Cycle When you look back over the past half century in the United States you see a remarkable secular change in the housing cy cle. Most importantly, the volatility or average size of the fluctuations in resident ial construction decline d. The change occurred in the early 1980s. For example, compare two periods, the first befo re the early 1980s and the second since the 1980s. In the earlier pe riod the standard devi ation of residential investment relative to trend was around 13 pe rcent; in the later period it was 5 percent, and this includes the most recent fluctuation which is much larger than the average since the early 1980s. Without the current cycle the reducti on would be even larger. In my view this decline in volatility was largely due to an improved ary policy, and it is closely relate d to the Great Moderation of th e volatility of real GDP and inflation which many researchers have attribut ed to ary policy. Compared to the earlier period, ary policy has been much more responsive si nce the early 1980s to changes in inflation and real GDP. It ha s also been much more predictable and systematic in its response. This has been documented using the Taylor rule, where the response coefficient to inflation has increase d from less than one to greater than one and where the response coefficient to real output has also increased. These higher and more predictable responses have helped tame in flation and have kept it steadier, thereby reducing the boom-bust cycle and the resu