A summary of the fifth in a series of symposiums sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The September 1994 meeting was dedicated to monetary policy issues and included examinations of the macroeconomic effects of price rigidity and sluggish savings decisions by households, the...

This article reexamines the view that monetary policy affects real (inflation-adjusted) economic variables in the short run but that its powers fade quickly in the long run (that is, that money is long-run superneutral). This view relies on the assumption that monetary policy can have real...

A policy rule can be activist; the distinction between rules and discretion depends on the stage at which optimization calculations enter the policy process. Here a specific monetary rule is proposed, one that sets the monetary base each quarter in a manner designed to keep nominal aggregate...

In October 1979 the Federal Reserve, in an attempt to curb double-digit inflation, announced that it would place more weight on monetary aggregates in policy deliberations. This policy shift helped reduce inflation but sent the economy into a recession. Three years later the Fed abandoned...