For the entirety of the current economic expansion, outcomes have fallen short of expectations. Overall economic growth has been below perceived potential. Inflation remains persistently below the Fed's 2 percent target, while long-term unemployment remains higher and wage growth lower than anticipated. Why?

For decision makers, the deviation of actual outcomes from expected carries important lessons for how we model the actual economic environment we face rather than an idealized vision of the economic landscape that is often based on a view of the past.

Meanwhile, on the public policy front, neither fiscal nor monetary stimulus has delivered on their promised results in terms of real economic growth and jobs. For decision makers, there appears to be little guidance about the connections between idealized theoretical conditions of the economy and actual results of the current recovery.

Our challenge is to recognize that, as we saw with both the fiscal and monetary stimulus, the estimates of policy effectiveness vastly underweighted the impact of market imperfections at the time—looking at idealized conditions rather than the real economy. Broad verbal claims of economic policy effectiveness were disconnected from formal analysis of the actual economic conditions facing the economy and decision makers at the time. Hence, estimates of both fiscal and monetary multipliers were wildly overstated. Real-world conditions of very high credit and liquidity constraints, as well as high levels of policy uncertainty, were certainly present.

Unfortunately, we are now in the precarious situation of having readers of economic content and public policy pronouncements stop taking seriously any analysis of current economic conditions that purports to claim any degree of precision.

Our approach here is that we do not start with an idealized economy to draw lessons for decision makers; instead, we examine the economic world as it is—not as we imagine it. Stylized economic models are less useful for real-world decision makers. In this book, we focus on four market imperfections that persist in our economy in the current economic expansion—dynamic adjustment, imperfect information, lags in price movements, and policy uncertainty.

In contrast, idealized economic models often assume conditions of perfect competition. For example, it is often assumed that households and firms instantly react to an exogenous economic shock and move smoothly to a new equilibrium point. Second, the idealized model assumes full and complete information, but economic information is very imperfect and certainly economic policy intentions are anything but transparent. With respect to prices, it is obvious that many prices do not move instantaneously to a new equilibrium when faced with an exogenous economic shock. Moreover, there are many given, administered prices set by governments that interfere with price discovery. Finally, we are familiar with the experience of frequent changes in economic policy and, more fundamentally, uncertainty about what direction economic policy is actually taking.

FOUR CHARACTERISTICS OF A LESS-THAN- PERFECT ECONOMY

1. Economies Are Characterized by Dynamic Adjustments—Things Take Time

We are familiar with the proposition that monetary policy acts with lags, often long and variable lags. In theory, we have also begun to appreciate that the efficiency of countercyclical fiscal policy has been diminished by the recognition of significant policy implementation lags since the 1960s.

As for the private sector, alterations of consumer spending to a change in oil prices or tax incentives take place over time and with no consistent pace. This is also true of business investment, which we explore more thoroughly in Chapter 5.

2. Imperfect Information—What You See Is Not What You Get in an Imperfect Economy

During the past few years we have witnessed a series of examples where the information we see is not quite the reflection of reality.

In 2014, we had an instance where the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing index, a key economic indicator, was released, re-released and then re-rereleased again in the same morning to correct a series of errors. This sequence created confusion in the markets, and no doubt, many missed trades and consequent capital gains and losses occurred that would not have been realized if the correct number had been initially released.

We are also very aware that, despite the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases and explanations, the public remains confused about the differences between the establishment and household surveys and how we can have job gains and a rise in the unemployment rate during the same month. Moreover, how come the number of jobs can be revised for prior months but not the unemployment rate? Additional series, such as retail sales, are also continuously revised— information remains imperfect.

3. Price Adjustment—Contracts—Hop, Skip, and Jump at the Local Gas Station

Price adjustments are not smooth in the real economy. Therefore, the economic system is in a constant state of disequilibrium, as prices do not reflect the full effect of market forces. Moreover, our forecasts seldom have time to play out, as there is often a regular sequence of market shocks over time. As all of our experience at the local gas station over the past year can attest, price changes are often not very smooth and frequently opposite in direction over short periods of time. Price adjustments reflect the judgments of sellers about the trade-off between customer satisfaction, maximizing profits, and fighting for market share.

Moreover, in the short run, price adjustments are limited by price fixing for many goods and services. Federal- and state-mandated prices are pervasive in areas such as labor (minimum wages), credit (interest rates and ATM fees), and other goods and services (utilities, rent controls, and health care). These pervasive fixed prices/federally mandated prices do not allow fully flexible prices—often in both directions.

4. Economic Policy Inconsistencies—The Parable of Strange Bedfellows

Policy inconsistencies reflect a frequent conflict between economic and political objectives and validate the volatility in the economic policy uncertainty index. Moreover, policy by polling is a growing phenomenon, and yet most of these polls are counterproductive. Frequent political polls indicate that Congress is held in low esteem and yet most congressmen are reelected—quite a disconnect. Such polls contain little information about the actual economic value or effectiveness of policy since the polling sample so often reflects the self-selected viewing or listening audience itself. In addition, the actual policy put in place reflects the influence of an entire policy influence industry—lobbyists, D.C.-based news correspondents, Fed watchers, and D.C.-based political consultants.

Moreover, policy initiatives, such as the Affordable Care Act, are subject to frequent changes that limit the ability of private actors to respond to any tentative, but unclarified, elements of the original legislation. Fiscal tax policy is subject to perennial revisions every legislative session. Trade and environmental policies are altered by federal agencies such that the initial legislation is regularly revised in action, and this thereby increases the uncertainty of the impacts of legislation and thereby limits the willingness of the private sector to react to any initial legislation.

WHY THIS BOOK?

This book is well timed after the experience of the last six years. First, there has been a clear demarcation between the forecasts of policy makers and actual outcomes, and these persistent differences have required time for contemplation. Second, by letting the dust settle, we can better identify three key facets of economic behavior that distinguish the current economic recovery from an idealized recovery and, in addition, from recoveries in the past. Our approach is to provide both some explanation and statistical perspective on the actual economic workings of the economy during the current economic recovery. Waiting for the return to a “normal” economy has become like waiting for Godot.

Instead, given the evidence of structural breaks in the economy, real economic growth has been below prerecession rates. Labor force growth and its associated participation rate have been below the trends of prior economic recoveries. Inflation, despite quantitative easing, has been below 2 percent for all six years of the expansion.

Our value proposition is simple. We apply statistical techniques to economic factors of interest for private and public decision makers in the current expansion and characterize the evolving conditions of the U.S. economy relative to the idealized model of the workings of the economy. We address several statistical techniques to address critical character economic behavior in the context of the post 2007–2009 recession economy. We recognize structural change, not fight against it, and we do not engage in wishful hoping for a return to a simpler, idealized economic landscape.

Our book appeals to a broad audience. We address four economic characteristics that are central to the actual behaviors in the economy. These are dynamic adjustment, imperfect information, lags and disparities in price movements, and, finally, economic policy uncertainty. Then we examine six aspects of the economy, one of which is the labor market, and the implications of the four economic characteristics on the actual behavior in the labor market. We apply a number of statistical techniques to identify and quantify the behavior using SAS as our primary statistical tool. The book is aimed at practitioners and both advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in techniques to understand and evaluate in an applied manner the current economic situation.

Chapters 1 through 4 identify the fundamental challenge to our economy today—the shift in the behavior of economic growth and the three characteristics that differentiate the current recovery from the idealized model of the economy that failed to provide the guidance necessary to forecast and understand current trends.

Dynamic adjustment, Chapter 2, reflects the reality that developments in the economy take time to adjust to what would be considered an equilibrium. This is certainly true of households and firms as they adjust to economic and political shocks. Here, the role of market frictions is paramount. For example, in the labor market, both employers and potential employees cannot move instantaneously to a new equilibrium in the labor market given these frictions. In many markets there are barriers to rapid adjustment that lead to excess inventories in production, structural and long-term unemployment, and credit rationing. As suggested by Reinhart and Rogoff, the current economic recovery has been limited by financial constraints and the implementation of new financial regulations. Uncertainty and expectations also play a key role in making decisions that determine the path of economic adjustment—the difference between what was expected and what is realized drives much of economic activity.

Chapter 3 focuses on the role of information and, more specifically, the reality of a world of decision making with imperfect information, incomplete information, and less-than-exact economic models. Imperfect information is well exemplified by the repetitive revisions of economic series such as employment, retail sales, and gross domestic product (GDP) that complicate decision making. Incomplete information follows from the missing variables problem we witness every day when we don't have measures for many economic behaviors that we believe are important to understanding the economy. Finally, decision making is subject to many biases but also the uncertainty of whether the precise model we are using for decision making actually matches the behavior of the economy. Current debates on the usefulness of the Philips Curve to forecast inflation are a prime example.

Finally, price adjustments are often portrayed as smooth, with quick and direct moves to the new equilibrium after an economic shock. Instead, as we examine in Chapter 4, price adjustments are not smooth and often reverse directions; “corrections, short-covering” are frequently cited in market commentary.

Moreover, price adjustments take time to play out—they are not instantaneous. Exchange rate misalignment in the late 1990s began to correct with Thailand in May 1997, when the central bank there failed to defend the Thai baht. In August, Indonesia adopted a free-floating regime—after which their currency immediately sunk. Price movements intensified in November as those corporations that had borrowed in dollars sold rupiah to get dollars, driving the rupiah down further. In November, values on the Seoul stock exchange dramatically declined. Economic weakness then led to a lower price of oil, which led to the 1998 Russian oil crisis, followed by the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in the United States and rapid Federal Reserve actions. Our lesson is that price adjustments take place over time and across numerous markets—credit, goods, foreign exchange, labor—generating real effects over time.

Our analysis extends the text into core economic factors that matter as inputs to effective decision making. In Chapter 5, we examine one aspect of aggregate demand—business investment. In this case we examine the role of dynamic adjustment and price movements. In addition, we examine the role of imperfect information as firms estimate the future path of real final sales, interest rates, and economic policy—especially tax policy on the planned investment horizon.

In Chapter 6, we examine the often overlooked role of corporate profits in the macroeconomy, both as a return to capital and as an input to growth. Profits are both an incentive and reward. Yet profits have very high cyclical variation relative to overall economic activity, thereby creating a difficulty in interpreting the information that profits provide to decision makers. Profits cannot be taken in isolation, as corporate profits play a role in the broader economy—representing returns to savers/investors and incentives for investment.

Labor markets set the tone as the second input to growth—and as a measure of the return to labor. In Chapter 7, we highlight the patterns of this economic expansion that has made the behavior this cycle in labor so different than in the past. The heterogeneity of workers, and employers’ expectations has produced a significant amount of imperfect information between bid and offer in the labor market. Meanwhile, we have witnessed the drawn-out adjustment of both employment and the price of labor (wages) that reinforces the view that these adjustments are anything but consistent with the perfect competition model underlying most economic models.

In Chapter 8, we examine the behavior of inflation and focus on the change in price behavior over time, particularly the lack of accelerating inflation in the current expansion despite the declining labor market slack. Our work identifies the importance of structural breaks in the inflation series as a major barrier to developing a simple theory of inflation determination. Meanwhile, we put forward an early-warning system that provides for a distinct three-option outlook for inflation trends.

Combining the views on growth and inflation, our net result is to identify the structural breaks in the behavior of interest rates during the current cycle in Chapter 9. This provides us an excellent example of price discovery as the price of credit—interest rates—frequently overshoots, and then undershoots the expected equilibrium values. We also bring in the dynamic inconsistency character of a low-inflation policy by the central bank. This policy introduces another element of misinformation that increases the range of possible future values of interest rates and also adds to the forecast error.

In Chapter 10, we focus on the capital flows within the open economy model. This reflects the increasing globalization of capital markets as well as the unusual flight to safety incentive for global investors that has kept U.S. interest rates much lower than many forecasters had anticipated. What is also different during this expansion is that U.S. equity markets may also be influenced by the perception of flight to safety flows. We test this hypothesis in this chapter.

Finally, in Chapter 11, we highlight the implications of our three principles of the post–Great Recession economy and their importance for public- and private-sector decision makers. Our approach brings to decision makers three advantages when looking over the economic landscape. First, rather than an idealized approach to benchmarking economic activity, we recognize the character of the post–Great Recession economy that actually confronts decision makers. Second, we identify three aspects of economic behavior that influence the developments we actually see in product, credit, labor, and international capital markets. Third, we present statistical methods to identify the structural breaks and lags that characterize the information/adjustment issues faced by decision makers.