https://www.scmp.com/rss/513496/feed Robert J. Barro, professor of economics at Harvard University, is a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com When considering what caused the sharp increase in US inflation from late 2020 to today, my initial instinct was to focus on aggressive monetary policy, following Milton Friedman’s famous dictum that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”. But while monetary policy is important, aggressive fiscal policy might have been more important this time. From March 2020 to March 2022, the US Federal Reserve kept short-term nominal interest rates at zero while also using quantitative... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3190787/federal-reserves-dramatic-fiscal-expansion-key-understanding-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3190787/federal-reserves-dramatic-fiscal-expansion-key-understanding-us?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 31 Aug 2022 19:30:11 +0000