Editors’ Summary of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity – 2002 No 2

William C. Brainard and

WCB

William C. Brainard

George L. Perry

George L. Perry Senior Fellow Emeritus - Economic Studies

The brookings panel ON Economic Activity held its seventy-fourth
conference in Washington, D.C., on September 5 and 6, 2002. This issue
of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity includes the papers and discussions
presented at the conference. The first paper reviews the process
and methods of inflation and output forecasting at four central banks and
proposes strategies for improving the usefulness of their formal economic
models for policymaking. The second paper analyzes the implications for
monetary policymaking of uncertainty about the levels of the natural rates
of unemployment and interest. The third paper examines reasons for the
recent rise in current account deficits in the lower-income countries of
Europe and the role of economic integration in breaking the link between
domestic saving and domestic investment. The fourth paper applies a new
decomposition of productivity growth to a new database of income-side
output to examine the recent speedup in U.S. productivity growth and the
contribution made by new economy industries.