An economic “soft landing,” although often “elusive,” is “a primary objective” of the Federal Reserve. But what exactly is it and how will we know if we achieve it?
Robert K. Triest, professor and chair of the Department of Economics at Northeastern University, and William Dickens, a professor of economics and public policy at Northeastern, described a soft landing as using monetary policy to reduce inflation without tipping the economy into a recession.
As for where we are in regards to such an outcome? “We may not have stuck the landing yet, we may be on the runway,” Dickens says. “But we’re still carrying a lot of speed, and still in danger of going off the runway.” Triest, meanwhile, describes himself as “cautiously optimistic that we’re going to have a soft landing this time. Generally, they are extremely difficult to pull off.”
