Each year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) publishes its Budget and Economic Outlook. The CBO’s deficit projections for the current fiscal year (FY) and the next 10 FYs are widely followed because they provide an assessment of the medium-term budget outlook based on current law and a...

The standardisation of the European systems of national accounts has progressed significantly in recent years. Some room for interpretation remains in regard to some accounting standards, the periodicity of the data, and the quality of the forecasts of budget deficits. Yet national accounts data...

When the government runs a deficit, it can borrow from the public—that is, it can create debt. Conversely, when the government runs a surplus, it can retire that debt. For the past three years, the federal government has recorded budget surpluses, and both the White House Office of Management...

Monetary policy in the euro area is conducted within a multicountry, multicultural, and multilingual context involving multiple central banking traditions. How does this heterogeneity affect the ability of economic agents to understand and to anticipate monetary policy by the European Central...

The average relationship between changes in the 10-year Treasury yield and changes in the funds rate over the 1987-2007 sample period is not indicative of the relationship between changes in the funds rate and changes in the 10-year Treasury yield that existed for more than a decade prior to the...

Neither core nor headline inflation measures can consistently and reliably predict medium-term inflation well enough to be of much use to policymakers.>

In order to maintain its credibility, however, the FOMC will have to take actions consistent with achieving its stated inflation objective.

With the funds rate driven to levels far below its target, the FOMC had no recourse but to adjust the target accordingly.