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...

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...