Would a more open and regular evaluation of the monetary policy framework improve policy in the United States? Even when considering a relatively short timeframe that spans the 1960s to the present, it is possible to point to many significant changes to the framework. Some of the changes were...

This paper examines the expectations behavior of individual responses in the Survey of Professional Forecasters, the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center survey of consumers, and the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters. It finds that the most robust feature of all of these...

This paper discusses the likely evolution of U.S. inflation in the near and medium term on the basis of (1) past U.S. experience with very low levels of inflation, (2) the most recent Japanese experience with deflation, and (3) recent U.S. micro evidence on downward nominal wage rigidity. Our...

This paper examines the concept of inflation persistence in macroeconomic theory. It begins with a definition of persistence, emphasizing the difference between reduced]form and structural persistence. It then examines a number of empirical measures of reduced]form persistence, considering the...

A growing body of literature examines alternatives to the rational expectations hypothesis in applied macroeconomics. This paper continues this strand of research by examining the role survey expectations play in the inflation process and reports three principal findings. One, short-run...

The way that consumers make payments is changing rapidly and attracts important current policy interest. This paper develops and estimates a structural model of adoption and use of payment instruments by U.S. consumers. We use a cross-section of data from the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, a...

We designed and fielded an experimental module in the American Life Panel (ALP) where we ask individuals to report the number of their purchases and the amount paid by debit cards, cash, credit cards, and personal checks. The design of the experiment features several stages of randomization....

Using data from a nationally representative survey on consumer payment behavior, we estimate Heckman two-stage regressions on the adoption and use of seven different payment instruments. We find that the characteristics of payments are important in determining consumer payment behavior, even...

We present a vision for improving household financial surveys by integrating responses from questionnaires more completely with financial statements and combining them with payments data from diaries. Integrated household financial accounts - balance sheet, income statement, and statement of...

The revolving credit available to consumers changes substantially over the business cycle, life cycle, and for individuals. We show that debt changes at the same time as credit, so credit utilization is remarkably stable. From ages 20-40, for example, credit card limits grow by more than 700...