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How did 2% become the magic inflation target?
Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, January 3rd, and this is your FT News Briefing.
The UK may face an especially bad recession, and we’ll take a look at what it means for the Netherlands if its economy has reached the limit of how much it can grow. Plus, the Federal Reserve’s New Year’s resolution may sound familiar: bring down inflation to 2 per cent. The FT’s Colby Smith explains where that target came from and whether it’s going to stick around. I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.
Economists think that out of all the G7 countries facing a recession this year, the UK is going to get hit the hardest. The FT surveyed more than 100 UK-based economists. They said not only will Britain have the worst recession, but the country’s recovery will take the longest. Now, there are a few reasons for this. The economists who were surveyed said inflation caused by the war in Ukraine will stick around in the UK longer than other G7 countries. But it’s been made worse by poor policy decisions. Economists point to weak business investment, the government neglecting public services and the damage Brexit has done to trade.
It’s beginning to look like the Netherlands economy has grown to a point that it’s about to hit a ceiling. The country is getting overdeveloped in a way that’s actually hurting the country. That’s at least what the FT’s Simon Kuper thinks. He’s our Life and Arts columnist and he’s here to explain what he means. Hey, Simon.
Simon Kuper
Hi.
Marc Filippino
OK. So first of all, what does reaching the limits of growth mean in reality for people actually living in the Netherlands?
Simon Kuper
Well, the country has run out of workers. So, for example, a lot of restaurants close at lunchtime. Some trains don’t run because there are no train staff. The country has run out of space very largely, and it’s sort of reached a limit to its nitrogen emissions, which means that a lot of farms have to close because they’re emitting nitrogen through their cows and pigs right next to inhabited areas. And in the Netherlands, pretty much everything happens next to an inhabited area.
Marc Filippino
OK. So I have a sense of why this might be important, but explain to me, why does this matter?
Simon Kuper
Well, it matters because the ways that you could solve the limits of growth are not popular in the Netherlands. So you could import a lot more workers. And, you know, importing workers is not popular in a country with a strong anti-immigration movement. You could get rid of the farms and build houses there. But the Dutch agriculture is the most productive, more or less in the world. So that’s not popular. And you could ask people to work more because the Dutch have the shortest workweek in the developed world, averaging 30 hours. But Dutch people on the whole quite like working shorter hours. You could displace activity to the eastern and northern parts of the country where there’s not many inhabitants, but people want to live around the economic boom zone of the west, and that’s not possible. And anyway, who is going to build these new houses that there are no builders to build them?
Marc Filippino
OK. So I’m gonna push back a little bit, Simon. Is it actually so bad that growth is slowing in the Netherlands? I mean, the whole global economy is slowing down. Why is it bad in this case?
Simon Kuper
Well, it hasn’t slowed down yet. I mean, it’s still booming. And so sort of the last employee has taken. I mean, you raise a big question, which is, is it so bad in a rich country to stop growing? And maybe countries can deal with it. People at the top end, you know, they sort of have enough. And you can, in the Netherlands, you can offer them a short working week and a good work-life balance. And you can say to them, look, you know, your top end incomes have stagnated, let’s say an average of €80,000 a year. And that’s fine. But the problem is also the people at the bottom end who, you know, they want to have higher incomes for themselves and for their children. And you’re saying to them, right, we’re sort of turning the economy to zero here. We’re doing what Japan did. No more growth. And, you know, we’ve seen in recent years that people at the bottom can get politically very angry if they feel that they are being left behind in this way. So without growth, you create political dangers.
Marc Filippino
Simon Kuper is the FT’s Life and Arts columnist. Thanks, Simon.
Simon Kuper
Thank you.
Marc Filippino
If you’ve listened to Jay Powell give a press conference lately, you know that the chair of the US Federal Reserve is very concerned with bringing down the inflation rate to a very particular number.
Jay Powell
To 2 per cent, down to our 2 per cent, well above our 2 per cent goal.
Marc Filippino
So we hear that 2 per cent target a lot, but where did it come from and why are central banks shooting for it? To help answer some of these questions is the FT’s Colby Smith. Hey, Colby.
Colby Smith
Hi, Marc.
Marc Filippino
So, Colby, can you tell us where this 2 per cent target came from?
Colby Smith
So New Zealand was the first country to set a formal inflation target in 1989. And essentially, you know, what the central bank there and government officials were trying to do was to help to bring down inflation that was running at a level that they considered far too high. And the whole notion of the inflation target was that if a central bank was seen as being independent to adjust interest rates accordingly in order to get inflation down to a certain level and they had a target in mind, it would lead to a situation where price pressures would actually moderate or adjust to whatever that level turned out to be. And when that country saw success, other countries started to adopt similar rules.
Marc Filippino
So, Colby, can you explain why 2 per cent has been so widely adopted? I mean, it’s not just the Fed. The European Central Bank shoots for just under 2 per cent. And a lot of other central banks aim for inflation to be around that number as well. Why is that?
Colby Smith
So 2 per cent came to pass after, you know, a pretty long debate about where was that right sweet spot for the inflation target. Proponents of 2 per cent said that it was seen as a level that was low enough that it didn’t necessarily factor into people’s decisions about how they spend their money, how they invest. It allowed for inflation to hover around a point where it just wasn’t something that they’re thinking about every single day. On the other hand, 2 per cent was seen as an appropriate level because it was high enough to give central banks the capacity to respond in a downturn. The concern was that if inflation was too low, it could lead to a situation where expectations of future inflation also were lower, which in turn could potentially drag down inflation again, which would have the effect of pushing down interest rates. And the problem there is that it would just mean central banks have less room to manoeuvre when there’s an economic contraction. They can only lower interest rates so much unless they were willing to delve into more unconventional policy tools like negative interest rates.
Marc Filippino
Now, someone recently wrote an opinion piece in the FT, Colby, that said central banks should revisit the 2 per cent target. And they also said that advanced economies like the US should shoot for 3 per cent.
Colby Smith
So 3 per cent it definitely feels like the consensus view if you talk to economists who, you know, dare to dabble in this debate at this stage. So the cons, I think, of changing the inflation target right now is the fact that the Fed could lose quite a lot of credibility if they were to say, you know, we’re OK with 3 per cent. People might think, well, what’s stopping them from saying they’re OK with 4 per cent or 5 per cent? And suddenly you have this kind of dangerous situation where inflation expectations get out of hand. People really start to lose confidence in the Fed’s ability and commitment to get inflation down. And then that’s a much worse problem for the Fed to be dealing with. The more obvious positive of a higher inflation target when the time is right to have that debate is that it gives the Fed again more flexibility to respond in economic downturns. Interest rates would be materially higher in that type of environment, and it would just enable the Fed to have a little bit more room to play with in terms of reducing those later down the line.
Marc Filippino
Colby Smith is the FT’s US economics editor. Thanks, Colby.
Colby Smith
Thank you.
Marc Filippino
You can read more on all of these stories that at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
The Fed’s Inflation Goal Is Completely Arbitrary
Over the past 18 months, inflation has dominated our understanding of the pandemic economy. Americans have endured the highest yearly price increases in four decades, from soup to nuts — literally. Even now, as experts and forecasters worry that the economy might dip into recession, observers also remain dismayed about the relative stickiness of inflation. Through it all, we’ve heard an almost mantra-like refrain from the Federal Reserve: We’re still not close to 2 percent inflation.
It might seem odd, then, that this ostensibly carefully crafted rule of monetary policy, the goal of arguably the most powerful technocrats in the world, is sort of … arbitrary. In fact, there’s little empirical evidence to suggest that a long-run inflation target of 2 percent is the platonic ideal for balancing the Fed’s “dual mandate” of price stability and maximum employment. So as the Fed continues to raise interest rates with the stated goal of bringing us back down to 2 percent inflation, it’s worth reexamining this long-held “rule of economics.” Despite its widespread acceptance, there’s a strong case that we should understand it as a product of history — and relegate it to the dustbin accordingly.
Why is 2% the Federal Reserve’s magic number for inflation? | FiveThirtyEight
“The idea that inflation should be relatively low and relatively stable is certainly a reasonable position to have,” said Jonathan Kirshner, a professor of political science at Boston College who studies the politics of inflation. “But there’s nothing magic or special about 2 percent.”
To understand the potential benefits — and drawbacks — of eschewing the 2 percent inflation target, it helps to know just how we arrived at this rule in the first place. Officially, a 2 percent inflation target was not adopted by the United States until 2012, when the Fed — then chaired by Ben Bernanke — decided to fall in line with the rest of the developed world’s central banks. But starting in 1996, the U.S. central bank quietly started pursuing a target rate of 2 percent under the instruction of former Chair Alan Greenspan, who wanted to keep the news under wraps. The reasons for pursuing that specific number were never clearly articulated by Greenspan, whose “covert inflation targeting” coincided with a decade of fantastic economic growth in the U.S. That lack of transparency was cause for concern for some economists.
“He didn’t think there should be a [public-facing] numerical target,” said Laurence Ball, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. “He sort of went to comical lengths to not define what he meant by price stability, or to give any vague definitions.”
But according to Ball and other economists, that choice was inspired by the experiences of New Zealand, whose central bank was the first to adopt inflation targeting — a choice that caught the attention of economists around the world. The country adopted the practice because, not unlike the U.S., it had experienced double-digit inflation in the 1970s and ’80s. But in keeping with the theme of arbitrariness, New Zealand’s initial target range of 0 to 2 percent wasn’t carefully engineered either; rather, it was the result of an offhand comment made by the head of the central bank in an interview, which he called “almost a chance remark.” Not long after New Zealand adopted its target, so did Canada, and then Australia. As Ball put it, the practice then went “viral,” and eventually the U.S. joined the party — albeit secretly.
And for a long time, it appeared as if the Fed’s shadow, Kiwi-flavored inflation strategy was more or less working — or at the very least, not obviously inflicting economic hardship on millions of Americans. The Fed brings down inflation by raising interest rates, which usually has the effect of slowing the economy down, cooling growth and heightening unemployment. But for more than a decade after the Fed adopted its 2 percent goal in 1996, inflation remained under control, while gross domestic product growth and unemployment remained stable and pointing in the right direction for a healthy economy:
When things go well, people tend not to ask too many questions. But underneath those rosy topline numbers remained the issue of the empirical reasoning behind a 2 percent inflation target: We didn’t have any. And by the time we got to 2008, the 2 percent inflation target may have left us ill-prepared for the Great Recession. That’s according to some economists, including Ball, who have argued that a higher inflation target would have lessened the severity of the crisis.
“From World War II until the early 2000s, the Fed had developed a pretty effective way of fighting recessions, that it would lower interest rates, and if the recession didn't end pretty quickly, would lower interest rates again,” Ball said. “In 2008, they lowered interest rates to zero very quickly, and still unemployment was very high. That meant there was this long, very painful, slow recovery.”
The basic argument for a higher inflation target is fairly simple, and it goes back to Econ 101. When you have a contracting or weakened economy, the Fed likes to cut interest rates to boost spending and grease the wheels of growth. The Fed is limited in how much it can do this, however, because you can’t bring interest rates below zero — at that level, a bank would be paying you to borrow money. But according to a concept known as the Fisher effect, the real interest rate people base decisions off of in their lives is equal to the nominal interest rate (i.e., the listed percentage) minus the expected inflation rate (which, in this case, is equal to the inflation target set by the Fed). So if you have a lower expected inflation rate, you would also have a lower nominal interest rate — and therefore, less space to work with before real interest rates dip below zero.
With this in mind, Ball’s research found that had the Fed targeted 4 percent inflation before the Great Recession, overall economic output would have been considerably higher — and unemployment lower — in the years following the start of the Great Recession. Additional research has found that, under certain conditions, pursuing a higher inflation target can actually improve economic stability.
Now, adopting a higher inflation target isn’t without its downsides. Kirshner, who supports the move, said the fact that recent price hikes haven’t come down as quickly as inflation doves like himself had expected is something they needed to reckon with. Others have made a slippery-slope argument, saying that raising the target by just a percentage point would beget even more inflation. And there is certainly a political danger in moving the goalposts of inflation, especially at a time when so much policy energy has been spent on counteracting inflation — not advocating for more of it. In a recent talk, Fed Gov. Philip Jefferson said that raising the inflation target would “damage the central bank’s credibility.” That conjures up some pretty gnarly images: If people don’t trust the country’s foremost financial institutions, that could have resounding effects for not just inflation, but the whole economy.
And unlike in Greenspan’s day, Fed officials now provide justification for the 2 percent target — justification which sounds plausible. As Jefferson said in that same talk, the Fed’s decision to formalize the target was based on the idea that “reasonable price stability was desirable, while also recognizing the reality that very low inflation can also be economically costly.” That accords with what economists like Paul Krugman have said, that we should understand the 2 percent rule as the result of a compromise between inflation hawks and doves.
Ball told me that he expects the Fed to continue to raise rates to bring down inflation, under the presumption of getting down to the 2 percent target eventually. But he didn’t rule out the possibility that the bank could secretly choose to adopt a de facto 4 percent inflation rate — essentially recreating the deception that Greenspan engineered decades earlier — so as not to send the economy into a nosedive, while also communicating to Americans that the Fed is serious about cracking down on inflation.
But at least at the moment, the Fed appears resolute in its quest to bring us back down to 2 percent inflation, as Powell indicated in remarks before the Senate Banking Committee earlier this week. And, like the general state of the economy right now, the notion of “reasonable price stability” remains fuzzy. Despite the fact that it has the potential to affect millions of lives, our war on inflation has a final mission that’s more subjective than not.
“You hear Fed officials or central bank officials talking about, ‘Well, price stability means 2 percent,’” Ball said. “You would think from that, either somebody has sort of scientifically figured out what's the best inflation rate […] or maybe somewhere in the Bible or the Quran or some text, God said, ‘2 percent inflation is what we want.’ But it's really kind of a historical accident.”
Santul Nerkar was a copy editor at FiveThirtyEight. @santulN
Why Is 2 Percent The Federal Reserve’s Magic Number For Inflation?
Santul Nerkar: Inflation in America is high. You’ve probably noticed when you’ve gone to the grocery store or gas station. But ordinary Americans aren’t the only ones unhappy with our current 6 percent inflation rate. The Federal Reserve isn’t thrilled, either. The number that the Fed would like to see — its target inflation rate — is 2 percent.
But why did we decide that 2 percent inflation is the way to go? Why not 3 percent? Or 12 percent? For that matter, why not 0 percent??
First thing’s first — the Fed thinks that 0 percent inflation is bad. At that rate, we risk the opposite phenomenon: deflation, where prices drop. Now, lower prices might sound like a good thing. But periods of deflation can actually lead to economic downturns, as research has found it’s bad for wages and overall growth. We’ve seen this multiple times in U.S. history, like during the Great Depression and the Great Recession. One reason is that people tend to delay big purchases when they see prices dropping, because they figure they might get a better deal in a few months. The result is that companies struggle, they lay off employees and wages fall.
Meanwhile, inflation can be beneficial. Let’s say you’ve recently bought a car, and you got a $10,000 bank loan to pay for it. A year from now, with, say, 2 percent inflation that $10,000 won’t be worth as much. At the same time, you’ve maybe gotten a cost-of-living raise to keep up with the value of the dollar. And now you can take some of that extra money you have and put it toward something else you want — which has the added benefit of spurring on the economy.
So, economists generally agree that some amount of inflation is important. And central banks around the world have settled on 2 percent — including in the U.S., where it was officially made the standard in 2012.
But there’s no ironclad rule of economics that says 2 percent inflation is the goldilocks of monetary policy. In fact, some have argued that a 2 percent inflation target is too low — particularly today, when the cure for inflation might be worse than the disease. Typically, to lower inflation, you raise interest rates so that prices go down but it’s more expensive to borrow money. But while inflation has come down since the Fed started raising interest rates in March 2022, it hasn’t come down as quickly as many experts hoped or expected. And if the Fed continues to raise interest rates, it could cause a recession. Businesses would struggle to grow and people would buy fewer houses and cars because they’d have to take on too much debt.
As a result, some economists have said that pursuing a 2 percent inflation target will create an unacceptable level of economic pain for Americans. Others argue that a higher inflation target of 4 or even 5 percent is actually better for a healthy economy, based on research of economic growth in countries with different levels of inflation.
There are inherent tradeoffs with every level of inflation. Run the economy too hot, and it could boil over and make money worthless. Bring it down too quickly, and people feel the pain of mass layoffs and less money in their pocket. That’s the puzzle that Fed policymakers will have to piece together over the coming months.
Santul Nerkar was a copy editor at FiveThirtyEight. @santulN
Anna Rothschild was FiveThirtyEight’s senior producer for video. @Anna_Rothschild
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