Most central banks conduct monetary policy by setting targets for overnight interest rates. During the 1990s, central banks have tended to move these interest rates in small steps without reversing direction quickly, a practice called interest rate smoothing. For example, the majority of Federal...

Summary of proceedings from the 1986 Fall Academic Conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

A history and analysis of the debate about whether monetary policy should be conducted by rules known in advance to all or by policymaker discretion.

Interest rates sometimes seem to respond to Federal Reserve policy actions in unexpected ways--for example, falling when the Fed " tightens" monetary policy or rising when the Fed "eases" policy. In this article, Michael R. Pakko and David C. Wheelock attempt to demystify such responses. They...

Despite the fact that the U.S. economy has been performing very well recently, monetary policymakers have been the targets of some criticism. In the speech reprinted here, which was delivered to a group of bankers in June 1997, St. Louis Federal Reserve President Thomas C. Melzer responds to the...