Question 2: Do you agree that, in a period of great uncertainty and after a prolonged period of weak real wage growth, monetary policy makers can afford to wait for greater certainty about real wage developments and building inflationary pressure before raising interest rates?
Real wages are surely an important piece of information, but so are money wages and prices, and other indicators of incipient inflation, and indicators of robust growth continuing in the coming months and years.
Falling unemployment rates, a growing proportion of people employed is still going to put some upward pressure on wages, but it is not clear how much, or at what level of unemployment it really starts to have a noticeable effect. The quote from Mario Draghi above seems right: "As the labour market tightens and uncertainty falls, the relationship between slack and wage growth should begin reasserting itself. But we have to remain patient."
Question 2: Do you agree that quantitative well-being analysis should play an important role in guiding policy makers in determining macroeconomic policies?
It may be too strong to argue that they should play an "important" role. I would agree that they should play some role, but doubt that it should be an important one. For example, very strong evidence that some policy is causing or would cause a reduction of subjective well-being, using a variety of different measures, should be examined very carefully. Even if it caused a substantial increase in GDP, one might want not to implement it.
Question 1: Do you agree that subjective well-being measures, or at least some of the subindices from the typical survey measures, are now reliable enough to give useful insights when used in macroeconomic empirical analysis?
They are reliable enough to give useful insights. You would not want to use them alone, or have them replace measures of GDP, but the use of several subjective measures, alongside GDP and other conventional measures, would be informative. They can be used to make comparisons over time. Dis-aggregated data would be particularly useful as different groups within society might be affected by macroeconomic developments in different ways.
Question 2: Do you agree that the traditional argument that less central bank independence leads to higher inflation will (still) be relevant over the next 48 months in Western economies?
The argument will remain relevant, despite weak demand in the Euro zone and Japan. If populist governments in the US or UK get more control of monetary policy, there may be no danger of higher inflation in the short run, but it would bring risks of inflation further into the future.
The CFM surveys informs the public about the views held by prominent economists based in Europe on important macroeconomic and public policy questions. Some surveys focus specifically on the UK economy (as the CFM is a UK research centre), but surveys can in principle focus on any macroeconomic question for any region. The surveys shed light on the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement among these experts. An important motivation for the survey is to give a more comprehensive overview of the beliefs held by economists and in particular to include the views of those economists whose opinions are not frequently heard in public debates.
Questions mainly focus on macroeconomic and public policy topics. Although there are some questions that focus specifically on the UK economy, the setup of the survey is much broader and considers questions related to other countries/regions and also considers questions not tied to a specific economy.
The surveys are done in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
Labour Markets and Monetary Policy
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Question 2: Do you agree that, in a period of great uncertainty and after a prolonged period of weak real wage growth, monetary policy makers can afford to wait for greater certainty about real wage developments and building inflationary pressure before raising interest rates?
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Question 1: Do you agree that a strong labour market is a good indicator of building inflationary pressure?
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Happiness and well-being as objectives of macro policy
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Question 2: Do you agree that quantitative well-being analysis should play an important role in guiding policy makers in determining macroeconomic policies?
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Question 1: Do you agree that subjective well-being measures, or at least some of the subindices from the typical survey measures, are now reliable enough to give useful insights when used in macroeconomic empirical analysis?
The Future of Central Bank Independence
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Question 2: Do you agree that the traditional argument that less central bank independence leads to higher inflation will (still) be relevant over the next 48 months in Western economies?
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