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Macro & Economy

Soft Landing

Also called: soft landing scenario, hard landing

A soft landing is a central bank slowing an overheating economy enough to bring inflation down without causing a recession. It is genuinely rare, because policy acts with long and variable lags and the tool is blunt. The 1994–95 US tightening is the usual example of success; most other episodes ended in the hard landing of rising unemployment, which is the trade-off the Phillips curve describes.

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