A number of recent papers have used short-maturity financial instruments to measure expectations of the future course of monetary policy, and have used high-frequency changes in these instruments around FOMC dates to measure monetary policy shocks. This paper evaluates the empirical success of a...

Most central banks now implement monetary policy by trying to hit a target overnight interest rate using one of two types of frameworks. The first involves arrangements for depository institutions to hold a minimum account balance over a multi-day averaging period. The second uses the central...

In recent years, some central banks have implemented monetary policy without reserve requirements by using a ceiling and floor for overnight interest rates established by central bank lending and deposit facilities. This paper analyzes a theoretical model of such a "tunnel" system and the...

The housing market is of central concern to monetary policy makers. To achieve the dual goals of price stability and maximum sustainable employment, monetary policy makers must understand the role that housing plays in the monetary transmission mechanism if they are to set policy instruments...

Movements in the stock market can have a significant impact on the macroeconomy and are therefore likely to be an important factor in the determination of monetary policy. However, little is known about the magnitude of the Federal Reserve's reaction to the stock market. One reason is that it is...

Most inflation-targeting central banks express their inflation objective in terms of a range for a single official inflation measure but generally have not clarified the meaning of the ranges and their implications for policy responses. In formulating policy, all central banks monitor multiple...

The value of a vast array of financial assets are functions of rates or prices determined in OTC, interbank, or other off-exchange markets. In order to price such derivative assets, underlying rate and price indexes are routinely sampled and estimated. To guard against misreporting, whether...

The Federal Reserve and other central banks tend to change short-term interest rates in sequences of small steps in the same direction and reverse the direction of interest rate movements only infrequently. These characteristics, often referred to as interest-rate smoothing, have led to...

Estimating the response of asset prices to changes in monetary policy is complicated by the endogeneity of policy decisions and the fact that both interest rates and asset prices react to numerous other variables. This paper develops a new estimator that is based on the heteroskedasticity that...

Federal funds futures are popular tools for calculating market-based monetary policy surprises. These surprises are usually thought of as the difference between expected and realized federal funds target rates at the current FOMC meeting. This paper demonstrates the use of federal funds futures...