That greater tendency toward self-correction has made the cyclical stability of an economy less dependent on the actions of macroeconomic policy makers, whose responses often have come too late or have been misguided. Being able to rely on markets to do the heavy lifting of adjustment is an exceptionally valuable policy asset.
The impressive performance of the U.S. economy over the past couple of decades, despite  12  The persistent divergence subsequent to the creation of the euro of many prices of identical goods among member countries of the euro area is analyzed in John H. Rogers (2002), "Monetary Union, Price Level Convergence, and Inflation: How Close is Europe to the United States?"