Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I’d like to discuss one of the most fundamental challenges we face as economic policymakers: understanding structural economic change as it happens. There are many types of structural change that create such a challenge, including changes in the famous star variables like the natural rates of unemployment and interest. But today, I’ll focus on shifts in the trend rate of productivity growth. I’ll boil this topic down to a simple two-part question: how does the economy respond to a shift in the rate of productivity growth, and what does it mean for monetary policy? It may ... (full story)