Alejandra Edwards
Economist affiliated with California State University, Long Beach, known for research on pensions, social security reform, labor markets, and public policy, including work on Chile’s pension system and the gender impact of social security reform.
Fed Officials Call for Better Classification Tools Under Economic Uncertainty
At a Hoover Institution policy panel on central-bank independence, structure and emerging risks, Federal Reserve officials Michelle Bowman, Mary Daly, Austan Goolsbee and Christopher Waller each argued that the Fed’s next problems turn on classifying risks before they are obvious in hindsight. Bowman focused on capital rules and private credit, Daly on distinguishing temporary from persistent inflation shocks, Goolsbee on whether expected AI productivity gains lower or raise the appropriate rate path, and Waller on which Fed functions require regional autonomy rather than centralized operations.
Fiscal Stress Is Narrowing the Room for Independent Central Banks
At a Hoover Institution conference on central-bank independence, Michael Bordo, Barry Eichengreen and Hanno Lustig argued that fiscal policy is increasingly constraining what monetary policy can credibly do. Bordo used Britain’s Great Inflation to show how a fiscal regime shift can turn shocks into inflation; Eichengreen said U.S. fiscal politics now pose risks to the dollar and the Federal Reserve; and Lustig argued that markets are starting to price Treasurys less as safe assets than as risky debt. Their shared point was that legal independence offers central banks only limited protection when debt dynamics, fiscal politics and bond-market stress move against them.