Goodfriend Legacy

Article

A speaker presenting his paper to fellow economists at CORE Week.

Goodfriend Memorial Lecture: Productivity and Structural Change

Economic Brief

September 2025, No. 25-34

The third annual Marvin Goodfriend lecture, given by Richard Rogerson, covered cross-country sectoral productivity differences.

Richard Rogerson

Conference

CORE Week, featuring the Marvin S. Goodfriend Conference on Productivity

Aug. 4, 2025

Visiting economists from a range of disciplines will join economists at the Richmond Fed for CORE Week, featuring the Marvin S. Goodfriend Conference on Productivity, in August 2025.

Article

Maurice Obstfeld presenting his memorial lecture on Marvin Goodfriend.

Goodfriend Memorial Lecture: The U.S. Current Account Deficit and the Global Capital Market Revisited

Economic Brief

November 2024, No. 24-37

The second annual Marvin Goodfriend Lecture, given by Maurice Obstfeld, revisits the current account deficit of the first decade of this millennium.

Maurice Obstfeld

Article

Hugo Hopenhayn gives a lecture at Core Week in May 2023

Goodfriend Memorial Lecture: Knowledge Creation and Diffusion

Economic Brief

June 2023, No. 23-18

The inaugural Marvin Goodfriend lecture, given by Hugo Hopenhayn, discussed how intellectual property rights must trade off incentives for innovation and knowledge diffusion.

Hugo Hopenhayn

News

Four men discuss a presentation at Core Week

Goodfriend Memorial Lecture Debuts During CORE Week

May 22, 2023

The Richmond Fed hosted CORE Week and also launched the Goodfriend Memorial Lecture in early May.

Article

Recent Research in Monetary Policy and Central Banking: A Conference Recap

Economic Brief

June 2022, No. 22-19

Among the topics covered at the Marvin Goodfriend conference were Fed bond facilities' impact on corporate credit risk and how trade leads to a global Phillips curve.

John Mullin

Podcast

The Legacy of Marvin Goodfriend

Speaking of the Economy

May 18, 2022

Alex Wolman and Robert King reflect on the life and legacy of Marvin Goodfriend. Throughout his career, Goodfriend wrote a number of influential papers on monetary policy and played a key role in the development of the Richmond Fed's Research Department.

Conference

An economist presents his work to the CORE Week attendees.

CORE Week, featuring the Marvin S. Goodfriend Conference

May 9, 2022

Article

Rational Expectations and Volcker’s Disinflation

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

An examination of Marvin Goodfriend and Robert G. King's "The Incredible Volcker Disinflation" paper.

Thomas J. Sargent

Article

Interest Rate Policy

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

This paper builds on the analysis of Marvin Goodfriend and examines how the Fed can better engage in a rules-based monetary policy going forward.

John B. Taylor

Article

The Implications of Optimal Prediction Formulae

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

Like many economists who came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Marvin Goodfriend learned how models were affected by the assumption of rational expectations.

Mark W. Watson

Article

Taming Inflation Scares

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

Marvin Goodfriend drew a number of conceptual and policy implications from his analysis of inflation scares, which have become part of the central banks' approaches to monetary policy.

Athanasios Orphanides and John C. Williams

Article

Banking Policy and Monetary Policy

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

This essay discusses the ideas and contributions in Marvin Goodfriend and Robert G. King's 1988 paper and relates it to some of Goodfriend's other research on banking and monetary policy.

Douglas W. Diamond

Article

Monetary Mystique and the Fed’s Path Toward Increased Transparency

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

This essay details Marvin Goodfriend's work around central bank secrecy and the evolution of transparency over the years.

Lars E.O. Svensson

Article

Industrial Development and Convergence

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

In this essay, we describe Marvin Goodfriend's Industrial Development model and ponder its lessons for contemporary policy discussions.

Sergio T. Rebelo and Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte

Article

The New Neoclassical Synthesis and the Role of Monetary Policy

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

In 1997, Marvin Goodfriend published two papers that advocated a new approach to monetary policy analysis.

Michael Woodford

Article

Credibility and Explicit Inflation Targeting

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

This essay reviews Marvin Goodfriend's path to making the case that the U.S. should adopt an explicit inflation targeting system.

Robert G. King and Yang K. Lu

Article

Reconsidering the Case for Price Stability

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

This essay explains why central banks have targeted a 2 percent target inflation rate instead of literal price stability.

Vitor Gaspar and Frank Smets

Article

Board of Governors headquarters, Washington, D.C.

The Federal Reserve’s New Monetary Policy Framework

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

This essay evaluates the Fed's new monetary policy framework through the prism of two pillars of Marvin's work — sustaining price stability and being very transparent about how that will be achieved.

Donald Kohn

Article

From the Great Inflation to the Great Moderation

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

This essay reviews the Volcker and Greenspan policy accomplishments at the Fed, as well as Marvin Goodfriend's contributions during this timespan.

Robert L. Hetzel

Article

The 2007 Monetary Policy Consensus in Retrospect

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

The development of a symbiotic relationship between academic research and central bank policymaking led to a consensus on a new framework for monetary policymaking, which remains with us today.

Mark Gertler

Article

Federal Reserve Independence: Is it Time for a New Treasury-Fed Accord?*

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

This essay considers whether the 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord should be amended in order to address new challenges to Fed independence.

Charles Plosser

Article

Central Bank Lending and Incentives

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

An analysis of the roles of central bank lending and central bank credit policy, what can go wrong with central bank lending, and how to fix these problems.

Kartik B. Athreya and Stephen D. Williamson

Article

Image of dollar bill with the word fed spelled out in letter blocks

Paying Interest on Bank Reserves

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

This essay recounts the history of interest on reserves at the Fed, showcasing the influence of Marvin Goodfriend's ideas and how those ideas were adapted as policymakers learned from the implementation of policy.

Huberto M. Ennis and John A. Weinberg

Article

Federal Reserve Structure and Economic Ideas

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

Marvin Goodfriend's views on the proper role of a central bank and his defense of the federal structure of the Federal Reserve System.

Michael D. Bordo and Edward S. Prescott

Article

Marvin Goodfriend and the Zero Lower Bound

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 9, 2022

An examination of Marvin Goodfriend's research on the relationship between the zero lower bound and interest rate policy.

Ben S. Bernanke

Article

Marble doorway that reads "Federal Reserve"

Interest Rate Smoothing

Honoring Marvin Goodfriend

May 2022

The concept of interest rate smoothing behavior by central banks is now standard, but it was not in the early 1980s when Marvin Goodfriend made the concept into a distinct phenomenon to be explained.

Michael Dotsey, Andreas Hornstein and Alexander L. Wolman

Marvin Goodfriend's Legacy

Marvin Goodfriend's Legacy