What is one thing economists could use when trying to decipher current trends with inflation and economic growth? A little humility, suggests Nobel economics laureate and 卡罗尔学校 金融 Professor Paul Romer.
Romer drew attention this fall with remarks following some surprisingly good economic news. 10月, government data showed that the inflation rate was dipping at an increasingly quick rate even as the economy kept chugging along. That’s not supposed to happen, according to the economic playbook.
Nobel economics laureate and 卡罗尔学校 金融 Professor Paul Romer
“The theory was you could only bring down inflation when the economy slows and that just is not true right now,”罗默, the Seidner University Professor, 十月说. 26 interview aired on Bloomberg Television. “没人料到会这样。.”
根据罗默所说, economists and policy makers will need to acknowledge the 不确定性 and follow the data, particularly with regard to interest rates. “So, right now we’re at a period where we’ve just got to look at the facts and not be confused by some theory that turns out to be wrong,罗默说。, 谁, in 2018, won his Nobel Prize in Economics for documenting how ideas propel innovation and growth.
Romer added that the Federal Reserve appears well on track with the goal of slicing the inflation rate to two-percent annually (the rate is now 3.1%并且还在下降). This means the Fed should be moving toward not just pausing interest-rate hikes but also lowering the rates, 他解释说.
“It’d be crazy to raise rates at this point,”罗默 said in remarks that spawned 进一步的媒体报道. “I think they should start cutting rates and explain to people—within a year we’re going to be at our two-percent target—we need to sort of get ready to level off.”
The finance professor followed the interview with his own media, crafting two blog posts on the subject 在他的网站上. In 其中一个帖子, Romer allowed that the inflation picture could change again: “Yes, this is a time of unusual 不确定性. Yes, something unexpected could happen. Yes, inflation could go back up.”
But he said the same rule—follow the facts—would apply. 和, if the Federal Reserve “wants to show us that it is serious about following the facts, it has to respond to the facts that confront us, not to possibilities that it can imagine,他写道. “The best we could do now is feel our way along in the dark, paying extra attention to the facts” and not falling back on “a textbook analysis that fails to fit the facts.”
同时在山庄
While keeping up his role as an internationally prominent economist and public intellectual, Romer has also been making the rounds on the Heights during his first semester as a faculty member at 电子游戏软件. For instance, he took part in an Oct. 5 colloquium sponsored by the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, discussing the nature of citizenship and the sense of place in a globalized world. 12月. 6、他还做了一次演讲 Physics Department colloquium, titled “Will Science Survive?”
在卡罗尔学校, Romer gave the faculty a tour of his far-spread research while presenting at the Bartunek 教师 电子游戏正规平台 Forum 10月. 11. He cruised through topics like oral rehydration therapy for children in the developing world as one example of how relatively simple ideas have continually contributed to economic progress and human wellbeing. Romer noted that his fellow economists have generally been less receptive to his frequently iconoclastic ideas than management experts like John and Linda Powers Family Dean 和y Boynton, 谁 touched on those ideas in his column in the inaugural edition of 卡罗尔的资本 在他2011年的书中 The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen.
With a slight nod toward his theme of 不确定性 as an economic reality, the Nobel recipient also drew chuckles from a packed faculty audience in 富尔顿大厅 by pointing out, “Everything involving people is pretty complicated, 实际上.”
