shock. The current low interest rate environment limits the tools the central bank can use to stabilize the economy, while …

monetary tightening, further debt accumulation, and additional inflationary pressure. Thus, the economy will go through a …

in the US economy at the zero lower bound. We first estimate a Markov-switching VAR to highlight that a zero …

functioning of the economy and the effects of policy. We document the changes in beliefs using contemporaneous discussions of the … economy and policy by monetary and fiscal policymakers and, for the period since the late 1960s, using the Federal Reserve …'s internal forecasts. We find that policymakers' understanding of the economy has not exhibited steady improvement. Instead, the …