John's visual depiction of this policy tradeoff has come to be known as the Taylor curve. Interestingly, John's work anticipated the possibility that improvements in the conduct of monetary policy or changes in the structure of the economy could result in a shift of the Taylor curve--that is, a change in the ability of policy to smooth both inflation and employment.
And indeed, what economists have dubbed the Great Moderation--a simultaneous reduction in the volatility of inflation and the volatility of real economic activity-has occurred in the United States and in many other economies over the past quartercentury. Over the course of the 1980s, John continued his work on rational expectations issues and monetary policy and macroeconomics more generally.