7 These observations suggest two useful directions for research: First, more obviously, there is scope to continue the search for measures or indicators of output gaps that provide useful information in real time. Second, we need to continue to think through the decision procedures that policymakers should use under conditions of substantial uncertainty about the state of the economy and underlying economic relationships.
For example, even if the output gap is poorly measured, by taking appropriate account of measurement uncertainties and combining information about the output gap with information from other sources, we may be able to achieve better policy outcomes than would be possible if we simply ignored noisy output gap measures. Of course, similar considerations apply to other types of real-time economic information.