"Dusting off Austrian economics"

A The Economist explica porque razão Ben Bernanke, como Chairman da Reserva Federal Americana (o banco central dos EUA), devia olhar para as teorias da Escola Austríaca:

Most central banks base their policy analysis on models derived from Keynesian economics. In these, holding interest rates too low creates excessive aggregate demand and hence inflation. But [Bill White, the chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements] believes that a model based on the Austrian school of economics, at its height between the world wars, may now be more relevant. In Austrian models, the main result of excessively low interest rates is excess credit and an imbalance between saving and investment—rather like the one in America today.

There are two reasons for dusting off Austrian economics.###

Financial liberalisation, by allowing bigger increases in credit than in the past, has increased the risk of boom-bust cycles of the Austrian sort. Second, competition from China and faster productivity growth may have changed the inflation process and made traditional indicators a less useful guide to monetary policy.

Defenders of today's monetary-policy method, focused on consumer-price inflation, may say that it seems to have delivered the goods, in the form of more stable growth. So why change? One reason, suggests Mr White, is that if monetary policy is concerned solely with price stability, surges in credit will be restrained only if they trigger inflationary pressures. Ever-bigger financial imbalances could thus build up. Even if inflation remains subdued in the short term, low interest rates could either increase the risk of higher inflation in future or pump up borrowing and asset prices. Should these imbalances eventually correct themselves, there will be a sharp slowdown.

Central banks therefore need to watch a wider range of indicators, including the growth in credit, saving rates and asset prices. They should be prepared to raise interest rates in response to clear evidence of financial imbalance even if this leads them to undershoot their targets for inflation.

The snag is that in contrast to a simple inflation target, such a framework will make policy less transparent and a central bank may find it harder to explain its interest-rate decisions. Central bankers will need especially clear heads: what could be better than a brisk hike in the Austrian Alps?