This article is based on the author’s Homer Jones Memorial Lecture delivered at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, April 2, 2014.

This article describes the joint evolution of Federal Reserve policy and the study of the impact of monetary policy surprises on high-frequency asset prices. Since the 1970s, the Federal Open Market Committee has clarified its objectives and modified its procedures to become more transparent and...

By providing guidance about future economic developments, central banks can affect private sector expectations and decisions. This can improve welfare by reducing private sector forecast errors, but it can also magnify the impact of noise in central bank forecasts. I employ a model of...

The Federal Open Market Committee has recently attempted to stimulate economic growth using unconventional methods. Prominent among these is quantitative easing (QE)—the purchase of a large quantity of longer-term debt on the assumption that it will reduce long-term yields through the...

In this article, time-series models are developed to represent three alternative, potential monetary policy regimes as monetary policy returns to normal. The first regime is a return to the high and volatile inflation rate of the 1970s. The second regime, the one expected by most Federal Reserve...

This article presents a record of dissents on Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy votes from the Committee’s inception in its modern form in 1936 through 2013. Dissents were rare during the Committee’s first 20 years but began to increase in the late 1950s. The number of...

Several commentators have been concerned about the possibility that the euro area may be experiencing disinflation with the risk of deflation. However, the euro area is not the only economy navigating the risky waters of low inflation. Several other advanced economies have recently experienced...

The Federal Reserve devotes significant resources to forecasting key economic variables such as real gross domestic product growth, employment, and inflation. The outlook for these variables also matters a great deal to businesses and financial market participants. The authors present a...

The essence of quantitative easing (QE) is reducing the cost of private borrowing through large-scale purchases of privately issued debt instead of public debt (Bernanke, 2009). Regardless of how effective this highly unconventional monetary policy may be in reviving private investment and the...

Monetary policy choices going forward are explicitly tied to labor market performance. Hence, the sharp decline in the labor force participation rate following the 2007-09 recession has become a salient topic.