A vector autoregression with time-varying parameters is used to characterize changes in Federal Reserve policy that occurred from 2000 through 2007 and describe how they affected the performance of the U.S. economy. Declining coefficients in the model's estimated policy rule point to a shift in...

We review recent changes in monetary policy that have led to development and testing of an overnight reverse repurchase agreement (ON RRP) facility, an innovative tool for implementing monetary policy during the normalization process. Making ON RRPs available to a broad set of investors,...

This paper extends a conventional cash-in-advance model to incorporate a real balance effect of the kind described by de Scitovszky, Haberler, Pigou, and Patinkin. When operative, this real balance effect eliminates the liquidity trap, allowing the central bank to control the price level even...

A small, structural model of the monetary business cycle implies that real money balances enter into a correctly-specified, forward-looking IS curve if and only if they enter into a correctly-specified, forward-looking Phillips curve. The model also implies that empirical measures of real...

This paper addresses the problem of multiple equilibria in a model of time-consistent monetary policy. It suggests that this problem originates in the assumption that agents have rational expectations and proposes several alternative restrictions on expectations that allow the monetary authority...

In this paper, we investigate the properties of alternative monetary policy rules using four structural macroeconometric models: the Fuhrer-Moore model, Taylor's Multi-Country Model, the MSR model of Orphanides and Wieland, and the FRB staff model. All four models incorporate the assumptions of...

This paper documents the evolution of long-run inflation expectations and models the stance of monetary policy from 1965 to 1980. A host of survey-based measures and financial market data indicate that long-run inflation expectations rose markedly from 1965 to 1969, leveled off in the mid-1970s,...

Post-1980 U.S. data trace out a stable long-run money demand relationship of Cagan's semi-log form between the M1-income ratio and the nominal interest rate, with an interest semi-elasticity below 2. Integrating under this money demand curve yields estimates of the welfare costs of modest...

This paper analyzes the role of transparency and credibility in accounting for the widely divergent macroeconomic effects of three episodes of deliberate monetary contraction: the post-Civil War deflation, the post-WWI deflation, and the Volcker disinflation. Using a dynamic general equilibrium...

In the New Keynesian model, preference, cost-push, and monetary shocks all compete with the real business cycle model's technology shock in driving aggregate fluctuations. A version of this model, estimated via maximum likelihood, points to these other shocks as being more important for...