Former Princeton economist Ben Bernanke returned to the University on Feb. 24 to deliver his first public policy address as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Photo: Denise Applewhite
Returning to Princeton University for his first public policy
address as Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke stressed that stable prices are the key to economic and job growth -- endorsing the path
charted by predecessors Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker.
Speaking
on Friday, Feb. 24, in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall, the
former Princeton economist also noted that the Fed should not try to
burst potential "bubbles" in asset prices by shifting interest rates,
saying that the U.S. central bank's role is not to decide whether the
cost of homes, stocks or other assets are too high.
Bernanke spoke at the culmination of a daylong conference on government service that was part of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs'
yearlong 75th anniversary celebration. In discussing the Fed's
evolution, Bernanke said that the current consensus view that low,
stable inflation drives economic progress and controls unemployment was
not always a widely held notion.
"Central bankers, economists
and other knowledgeable observers around the world agree that price
stability both contributes importantly to the economy's growth and
employment prospects in the longer term, and moderates the variability
of output and employment in the short to medium term," he said.
"But
that view did not always command the support that it does today,"
Bernanke said. "Notably, during the 1960s and early 1970s, some
policymakers appeared to believe that price stability and high
employment were substitutes, not complements. Specifically, some
influential voices of the time argued that, by accepting higher
inflation, policy-makers could bring about a permanently lower rate of
unemployment."
That notion was disputed by economists such as
Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps, whose work influenced Volcker (a
1949 Princeton alumnus) as he "embarked on his campaign to break the
back of U.S. inflation" upon taking over as Fed chairman in 1979.
Greenspan, who succeeded Volcker in 1987, followed that path.
"The
Greenspan era also saw important steps toward increased transparency at
the Federal Reserve, which helped to clarify for the public the Federal
Reserve's strong institutional commitment to price stability," Bernanke
said.
His predecessors' efforts to stabilize U.S. inflation
"resulted from the constructive interplay between academic research and
practical policy-making experience … that significantly improved policy
outcomes and economic welfare in the United States," Bernanke noted,
adding that such collaboration is a principal objective of the Wilson
School.
The consensus view on inflation and unemployment "has
not been achieved easily, however, but is the product of many years of
policy experience, policy leadership and sustained economic analysis,"
Bernanke said. "No doubt we will continue to learn about the economy
and economic policy, even as we benefit from the insights of those who
went before us. I am sure the Woodrow Wilson School, its faculty and
its students will continue to play an important role in that ongoing
process."
After his formal remarks, Bernanke took questions from
Princeton students. Addressing whether the Fed should try to defend
against potential bubbles in home or stock prices by changing interest
rates, he said, "It's generally a bad idea for the Fed to be the
arbiter of asset prices. In particular, the Fed doesn't really have any
better information than other people in the market about what the
correct value of asset prices is." Bernanke also said he expected that
the relatively low savings rates among Americans will improve.
Following
Bernanke's address, sophomore Rob Biederman said, "As an economics
major, it was fantastic to see the first speech by a sitting chairman
of the Federal Reserve Board. It was very kind of him to have it here
rather than in Washington. … It certainly was a very good overview of
the past 40 years of monetary policy."
Volcker, who attended the
address after participating in the government service conference
earlier in the day, said that Bernanke argued the case for continued
emphasis on stable inflation "in a good professorial manner."
Bernanke
served on the Princeton faculty from 1985 until July 2005, a month
after he was appointed as chairman of President Bush's Council of
Economic Advisers. He was sworn in as Fed chairman Feb. 1. At
Princeton, he held a joint appointment in the Wilson School and the Department of Economics and served as chairman of the economics department from 1996 to 2002.
In
introductory comments, Princeton economist Alan Blinder, a former Fed
vice chairman under Greenspan, noted that Bernanke moved into
government service after "an academic career that can only be
characterized as a smashing success," marked by "stunningly original
work on how monetary policy works."
Blinder remarked that, in
just a few weeks as the world's most influential economic policy-maker,
Bernanke "has already wowed the crowd with his initial congressional
testimony, about which it was noted he answered in clear, intelligible
English. I guess all those years in Princeton classrooms did pay off."
Bernanke's address was sponsored by the Wilson School and Princeton's Center for Economic Policy Studies.
