英语文摘：Policy has not produced sufficient recovery: Bernanke

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged on Friday that macroeconomic policies taken so far have not delivered enough recovery to reduce high unemployment in the country.

"Although financial markets are for the most part functioning normally now, a concerted policy effort has so far not produced an economic recovery of sufficient vigor to significantly reduce the high level of unemployment," he said in a speech to a conference at Princeton University, where he once taught economics.

He said that "both older and more recent ideas drawn from economic research have proved invaluable to policymakers attempting to diagnose and respond to the financial crisis."

U.S. unemployment rate, currently at 9.6 percent, is not expected to fall significantly in the short run.

The Fed chief called for more study into the formation of speculative bubbles, which can develop in assets like homes, stocks, bonds or commodities.

He also called for more research into what makes people tick. That's a field called behavioral economics.

"More work is needed on the behavior of economic agents in times of profound uncertainty; on asset price bubbles and the determinants of market liquidity, and on the implications of financial factors," he said.

The central bank chief did not discuss the outlook for the economy or monetary policy.

Earlier in the week, the Fed hinted that it was prepared to take action if the recovery weakens further. One likely next step would be for the Fed to relaunch a program to buy government debt on a large scale to shore up the economy.