Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T20:33:38.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Inductive risk in macroeconomics: Natural Rate Theory, monetary policy, and the Great Canadian Slump

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2020

Gabriele Contessa*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Abstract

This paper has two main goals. The first is to fill a gap in the literature on inductive risk by exploring the relevance of the notion of inductive risk to macroeconomics. The second is to draw some general lessons about inductive risk from the case discussed here. The most important of these lessons is that the notion of inductive risk is no less relevant to the relationship between the proximate and distal goals of policy than it is to the relationship between specific policies and their proximate goals.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akerlof, G.A., Dickens, W.T. and Perry, G.L. 1996. Low Inflation or No Inflation: Should the Federal Reserve Pursue Complete Price Stability? Policy Brief 4. Washington, DC: Brooking Institution.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akerlof, G.A. and Shiller, R.J. 2010. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, E. 2004. Uses of value judgments in science: a general argument, with lessons from a case study of feminist research on divorce. Hypatia 19, 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angner, E. 2006. Economists as experts: overconfidence in theory and practice. Journal of Economic Methodology 13, 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernanke, B.S., Laubach, T., Mishkin, F.S. and Posen, A.S. 1999. Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Betz, G. 2013. In defence of the value free ideal. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3, 207220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchard, O. and Johnson, D.R. 2013. Macroeconomics. 6th edition. Boston, MA: Pearson.Google Scholar
Bootle, R. 1981. How important is it to defeat inflation? The evidence. The Three Banks’ Review 132, 2347.Google Scholar
Brown, M.B. 2009. Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation. Boston, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conti-Brown, P. 2017. The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crow, J.W. 1988. The work of Canadian monetary policy. In The Eric John Hanson Memorial Lecture Series 2, 324. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Google Scholar
Crow, J.W. 2013. Practical experiences in reducing inflation: the case of Canada. In The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, ed. Bordo, M.D. and Orphanides, A., 3755. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crump, R.K., Eusepi, S., Giannoni, M. and Şahin, A.. 2019. A Unified Approach to Measuring U*. Working Paper 25930. National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietsch, P., Claveau, F. and Fontan, C. 2018. Do Central Banks Serve the People? Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, H. 2000. Inductive risk and values in science. Philosophy of Science 67, 559579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, H. 2009. Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earle, J., Moran, C. and Ward-Perkins, Z. 2017. The Econocracy: The Perils of Leaving Economics to the Experts. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Easterly, W. and Fischer, S. 2001. Inflation and the poor. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 33, 160178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, K.C. 2017. A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, K.C. and Richards, T., eds. 2017. Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Forder, J. 2014. Macroeconomics and the Phillips Curve Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortin, P. 1996. The Great Canadian Slump. Canadian Journal of Economics 29, 761787.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortin, P. 1999. The Great Canadian Slump: a rejoinder to Freedman and Macklem. Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d’Economique 32, 10821092.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freedman, C. and Macklem, T. 1998. A comment on ‘The Great Canadian Slump’. Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d’Economique 31, 646665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, M. 1966. The methodology of positive economics. In Essays in Positive Economics, ed. Friedman, Milton, 343. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. 1968. The role of monetary policy. American Economic Review 58, 117.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. 1977. Inflation and unemployment. Journal of Political Economy 85, 451472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillman, M., Harris, M.N. and Mátyás, L. 2004. Inflation and growth: explaining a negative effect. Empirical Economics 29, 149167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, S., McMahon, M. and Velasco, C. 2014. Preferences or private assessments on a monetary policy committee? Journal of Monetary Economics 67, 1632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hohberger, S., Priftis, R. and Vogel, L. 2020. The distributional effects of conventional monetary policy and quantitative easing: evidence from an estimated DSGE model. Journal of Banking & Finance 113, 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IARC 2007. Some Organophosphate Insecticides and Herbicides . IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans 112. Lyon: International Agency for Research on Cancer.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, R.C. 1956. Valuation and acceptance of scientific hypotheses. Philosophy of Science 23, 237246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
John, S. 2015. Inductive risk and the contexts of communication. Synthese 192, 7996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keynes, J.M. 1936. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Khan, M.S. and Senhadji, A.S. 2001. Threshold effects in the relationship between inflation and growth. IMF Staff Papers 48, 121.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. 2001. Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. 2011. Science in a Democratic Society. Vol. 101. New York, NY: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Kormendi, R. and Meguire, P. 1985. Macroeconomic determinants of growth: cross-country evidence. Journal of Monetary Economics 16, 141163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krippner, G.R. 2007. The making of US monetary policy: Central Bank transparency and the neoliberal dilemma. Theory and Society 36, 477513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martini, C. 2015. Expertise and institutional design in economic committees. Journal of Economic Methodology 22, 391409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, S.D. 2009. Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelps, E.S. 1967. Phillips curves, expectations of inflation and optimal unemployment over time. Economica (New Series) 34, 254281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelps, E.S. 1995. The origins and further development of the natural rate of unemployment. In The Natural Rate of Unemployment: Reflections on 25 Years of the Hypothesis, 1531. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, A.W. 1958. The relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the United Kingdom, 1861–1957. Economica 25, 283299.Google Scholar
Plutynski, A. 2017. Safe or sorry? Cancer screening and inductive risk. In Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science, ed. Elliott, K.C. and Richards, T., 149170. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Quiggin, J. 2010. Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rudner, R. 1953. The scientist qua scientist makes value judgments. Philosophy of Science 20, 16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, P.A. and Solow, R.M. 1960. Analytical aspects of anti-inflation policy. American Economic Review 50, 177194.Google Scholar
Selody, J. 1990. The Goal of Price Stability: A Review of the Issues. Technical Report No. 54. Bank of Canada.Google Scholar
Shafir, E., Diamond, P. and Tversky, A. 1997. Money illusion. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 341374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shrader-Frechette, K. 2014. Tainted: How Philosophy of Science Can Expose Bad Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, K. 2012. The scientist qua policy advisor makes value judgments. Philosophy of Science 79, 893904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, S.P. 2003. Liberal Democracy 3.0 Civil Society in an Age of Experts. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Turner, S.P. 2013. The Politics of Expertise. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar