If investment spending is sufficiently insensitive to interest rate changes and the effect of Fed actions on interest rates is sufficiently weak, the net effect of the persistent zero interest rate policy could be negative.

This paper creates a new series of the FOMC*s Target for the federal funds rate for the period September 27, 1982 through December 31, 1993. The creation of this series was motivated by Thornton (2005). Analyzing the verbatim transcripts of the FOMC, Thornton finds that most of the FOMC believed...

Despite its important role in macroeconomics and finance, the expectations hypothesis (EH) of the term structure of interest rates has received little empirical support. While the EH*s poor performance has been attributed to a variety of sources, none appear to account for the EH*s poor...

Motivated, on the one hand, by the belief that the Fed controls the short-term rate through open market operations, and on the other, by "the lack of convincing proof that this is what happens," Hamilton (1997) suggested that more convincing evidence of the liquidity effect could be obtained...

The only outcome consistent with the Fisher equation holding and the FOMC’s zero interest rate policy is that the “long run” is considerably longer than 4.5 years.

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...

This paper develops a unified framework for the analysis of wage indexation and monetary policy in the presence of supply shocks. We first present simple formulae for the optimal wage indexation rule and for the optimal money supply rule. In order to set the stage for an evaluation of departures...

This paper develops a unified framework for the analysis of wage indexation and monetary policy in the presence of supply shocks. We first present simple formulae for the optimal wage indexation rule and for the optimal money supply rule. In order to set the stage for an evaluation of departures...