Deflation: Current and Historical Perspectives

Description

Until recently fears of deflation seemed nothing more than a relic of the Great Depression. However, beginning in the 1990s, persistently falling consumer prices have emerged in Japan, China and elsewhere. Deflation is also a distinct possibility in some of the major euro area economies, especially Germany, and emerged as a concern of the US Federal Reserve in 2003. Deflation may be worse than inflation not only because the real burden of debt rises but also because firms would confront rising real wages in a world where nominal wage rigidity prevails. This volume explores some key themes regarding deflation including: (i) how economic agents and policy makers have responded to deflation, (ii) the links between monetary policy, goods price movements, and asset price movements, (iii) the impact of deflation under different monetary policy and exchange rate regimes, and (iv) stock market reactions to deflation.

Richard C. K. Burdekin is Jonathan B. Lovelace Professor of Economics at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California. His areas of interest include monetary and financial economics, Chinese economics reforms, and inflation and deflation. Professor Burdekin has published four books: Budget Deficits and Economic Performance (with Farrokh K. Langdana), Confidence, Credibility and Macroeconomic Policy (with Farrokh K. Langdana), Distributional Conflict and Inflation (with Paul Burkett), and Establishing Monetary Stability in Emerging Market Economies (edited with Thomas D. Willett, Richard J. Sweeney, and Clas Wihlborg). He has also authored over forty refereed journal articles which have been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic History, the Journal of International Money and Finance, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, among other leading publications. Pierre L. Siklos is Professor of Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and Associate Director of its Viessmann Centre for the Study of Modern Europe. He specializes in macroeconomics with an emphasis on the study of inflation, central banks, and financial markets and also conducts research in applied time series analysis. Professor Siklos has been a consultant to a variety of institutions and central banks. He is the author of several books, including the leading textbook in Canada on money and banking, and The Changing Face of Central Banking: Evolutionary Trends Since World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2002). He has also published numerous articles in eminent economics journals. Professor Siklos has been a visiting lecturer or fellow at several universities in Europe, North America and New Zealand.

'Slow deflation was once a widely espoused policy goal in its own right, and it still has its supporters. Perhaps more important, potentially deflationary accidents are bound to happen from time to time in a world that has settled for low inflation, because not all shocks emanate from monetary policy. This volume is an indispensable source of wisdom on the variety that deflationary episodes have displayed in the past, and on the many intellectual and practical challenges that they have presented to economists. Burdekin and Siklos are to be congratulated on a collection of essays that is historically illuminating, intellectually challenging, and of current policy relevance, too.' David Laidler, University of Western Ontario, Canada 'In this volume, a distinguished set of scholars make important contributions to monetary history and to a number of contemporary policy debates including the role, if any, asset prices should play in setting monetary policy, the use of exchange rates as nominal anchors and whether Japan has fallen into a Keynesian liquidity trap. The contributors provide strong support for inflation targeting to avoid not only high inflation, but deflation as well.' Thomas Willett, The Claremont Colleges