In the late 1990s, some observers began to make comparisons between the rapid rise in stock prices then taking place in the United States and the escalation in asset values in Japan in the late 1980s. Did Japan's experience, which was followed by more than a decade of stagnation, contain any...

This article examines the impact of global developments on the practice of U.S. monetary policy, broadly defined to include regulatory and lender-of-last-resort functions as well as open market, discount, and intervention activity, over the past forty years. It is part of a paper presented at...

Although open market operations are clearly the primary monetary policy tool, the discount rate is not without influence. Federal Reserve Banks propose any discount rate changes, and the Board of Governors decides whether to accept, reject, or take no action on their requests. This article...

Central bankers in the United States and abroad must grapple with a broad array of questions about how best to conduct monetary policy. How much should the goal of price stability be emphasized relative to the goal of employment stability? Does central bank independence aid in achieving either...