Financial markets embed expectations of central bank policy into asset prices. This paper compares two approaches that extract a probability density of market beliefs. The first is a simulated moments estimator for option volatilities described in Mizrach (2002); the second is a new approach...

At the start of 1999, a new policy regime was introduced in Europe that included the launch of the euro and the establishment of a centralized control over monetary policy common to the eleven European Union (EU) countries that decided to participate.(2) The objective of this paper is to assess...

In the debate on monetary policy strategies on both sides of the Atlantic, it is now almost a commonplace to contrast the Fed and the ECB by pointing out the former's flexibility and capacity to adjust rigidity, and the latter's extreme caution, and obsession with low inflation. In looking at...

In recent years the world's two largest inflation-targeting central banks - the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) - have revised their monetary policy frameworks in a more progressive direction. Whereas the Fed decided to abandon its strategy of pre-emptive...

This paper develops a new and easily implementable necessary and sufficient condition for the exact identification of a Markov-switching structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. The theorem applies to models with both linear and some nonlinear restrictions on the structural parameters. We...

We explore the effect of volatility in the federal funds market on the expectations hypothesis in money markets. We find that lower volatility in the bank funding markets market, all else equal, leads to a lower term premium and thus longer-term rates for a given setting of the overnight rate....

With the global crisis, the policy stance around the world has been shaken by massive government and central bank efforts to prevent the meltdown of markets, banks, and the economy. Fiscal packages, in varied sizes, have been adopted throughout the world after years of proclaimed fiscal...