Using data for the U.S. manufacturing sector, we test for the existence of a broad credit channel for monetary policy, which operates through the total supply of loans. Our test focuses on the relationship between internal funds and business investment. After a monetary tightening, we find that...

This article decomposes U.S. GDP into components associated with major macroeconomic disturbances in order to identify the likely causes of the 1990 recession. Four types of disturbances--aggregate supply, aggregate spending, money demand and money supply--are identified in the empirical...

This paper estimates a simple model of the Federal Reserve's "reaction function" - that is, the relationship between economic developments and the fed's response to them. We focus on how this estimated reaction function has changed over time. Such changes are not surprising given compositional...

Given doubts about the reliability of the monetary aggregates as intermediate targets of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve attempts to meet its dual goals--gradual reduction of inflation and mitigation of cyclical downturns in output--through purely discretionary adjustments of an interest...

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.