Monetary policy analysts often rely on rules of thumb, such as the Taylor rule, to describe historical monetary policy decisions and to compare current policy with historical norms. Analysis along these lines also permits evaluation of episodes where policy may have deviated from a simple rule...

This paper was prepared for the Home Jones Lecture, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, March 28, 2001. The author addresses the influence of monetarism and the role of money in making monetary policy. The monetarist idea that monetary policy has primary responsibility for inflation is now...

The Federal Reserve currently has a dual mandate: promote price stability and full employment. In a speech presented at the University of California at San Diego Economic Roundtable, Laurence Meyer explores two policy options that would change the current framework. Meyer discusses whether the...

This study offers a historical review of the monetary policy reform of October 6, 1979, and discusses the influences behind it and its significance. We lay out the record from the start of 1979 through the spring of 1980, relying almost exclusively on contemporaneous sources, including the...