7 Comments

Better still, the Fed could issue such a security and then target it's price to rise at 1+ its preferred inflation rate times 1+it's estimate of maximum real income growth. BTW the Treasury ought to be issuing more TIPS at other intervals 6 mo, 1,2,3,4 year intervals

Expand full comment

These arguments seem to apply just as much to bonds linked to real GDP. So why is it better to make a futarcy optimising nominal GDP than one optimising real GDP?

Expand full comment

The late John Williamson wrote a short book in 2017 on this subject called Growth-Linked Securities.

Expand full comment

Maybe I missed this in the article, but it seems like the main problem is that gdp linked bonds are usually not exactly the market clearing price. Countries don't want to pay more interest than they have to eg Germany and USA borrow at low rates. Lenders don't want to charge less interest than they have to eg some developing countries pay more interest than a gdp linked bond would. So in order for gdp linked bonds to make sense for both borrower and lender requires an uncommon circumstance.

Expand full comment