We distinguish between three different ways of using real-time data to estimate forecasting equations and argue that the most frequently used approach should generally be avoided. The point is illustrated with a model that uses monthly observations of industrial production, employment, and...

The Great Moderation impacted job growth across nearly all regions over a fairly short period of time.

Accurate forecasts of inflation are important to policymakers and to individuals who must make decisions on the basis of expectations about the future purchasing power of the dollar. ; Recent research on forecasting inflation has shown that interest rates, by themselves, may provide useful...

The behavior of inflation during the 1990s is consistent with the predictions of a model that assumes a constant long-run NAIRU and a constant long-run markup of output prices over unit labor costs. Within this framework, inflation fell during the late 1990s - despite low unemployment - chiefly...