Statements released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and congressional testimony by Chairman Greenspan are found to significantly affect market interest rates, indicating that central bank talk conveys important information to market participants. These effects arise not only because...

In the past few years, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has been using forward guidance about the federal funds rate in a more explicit way than ever before. This paper explores the market reaction to the forward guidance, with particular focus on the use of calendar dates and economic...

This paper proposes a simple framework for analyzing a continuum of monetary policy rules characterized by differing degrees of credibility, in which commitment and discretion become special cases of what we call quasi commitment. The monetary policy authority is assumed to formulate optimal...

This paper proposes a simple framework for analyzing a continuum of monetary policy rules characterized by differing degrees of credibility, in which commitment and discretion become special cases of what we call quasi commitment. The monetary policy authority is assumed to formulate optimal...

Estimating the response of asset prices to changes in monetary policy is complicated by the endogeneity of policy decisions and the fact that both interest rates and asset prices react to numerous other variables. This paper develops a new estimator that is based on the heteroskedasticity that...

This paper argues that interest-rate smoothing may be optimal when the effect of monetary policy is uncertain. A model is presented in which the Federal Reserve rationally learns about the policy multiplier by observing the reaction of the economy to recent choices of the interest rate. As a...

The tendency for changes in the federal funds rate to be implemented gradually has been considered evidence of an interest rate smoothing objective for the Federal Reserve. This paper investigates whether gradual funds rate movements can be explained by the dynamic structure of the economy and...

We investigate the effects of U.S. monetary policy on asset prices using a high-frequency event-study analysis. We test whether these effects are adequately captured by a single factor - changes in the federal funds rate target - and find that they are not. Instead, we find that two factors are...