Laurence Ball and Dean Croushore look at forecasts from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to determine if forecasts and the economy respond in tandem or if there are significant differences.

The subject of our next article, "The Taylor Curve and the Unemployment-Inflation Tradeoff," by Satyajit Chatterjee, is finding an optimal monetary policy menu. In the past, monetary policy options were described in terms of a tradeoff between the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, the...

Whether one looks at consumers or businesses, expectations - people's beliefs - are driving forces of every economy. The economic outcomes one can expect from public policy are affected by the way beliefs are formed and how they vary over time. In "Great Expectations: The Role of Beliefs in...

The recent business cycle has been driven by two forces: a series of extraordinary events and some longer term secular trends. In "Monetary Policy: Stability Through Change," President Anthony Santomero discusses how these extraordinary events, including the bursting of the tech bubble, the...

Managing the recovery in uncertain times was the topic of our third annual Philadelphia Fed Policy Forum held on November 14, 2003. This event, sponsored by the Bank’s Research Department, brought together a group of highly respected academics, policymakers, and market economists, for...