The textbook view of the monetary transmissionmechanism rests on the central bank’s ability tomanipulate the overnight interest rate by controlling thereserve supply, followed by a rational-expectations mechanismthat ensures that movements in the overnight rate reverberateinto longer maturity...

The Federal Reserve requires U.S. commercial banks andother depository institutions to hold a minimum level ofreserves in proportion to certain liabilities. On occasion, thecentral bank has reduced reserve requirements—such as in1990, when requirements on large time deposits were dropped,and...

Monetary policy operating procedures have long beendebated within the Federal Reserve and amongmonetary economists at large. For instance, economists havedisagreed about whether a central bank should utilize bankreserves or the interest rate as the policy instrument. For thetime being at least,...

Improvements in information processing technology andderegulation, among other forces, are profoundlytransforming the financial sector of the United States and otheradvanced economies. Many of these changes are likely toimprove the efficiency of financial intermediation, in the sensethat the...

Several authors have documented a reduced variability ofoutput and inflation in the United States since the beginningof the 1980s.1 In fact, a comparison of the 1980:1-2001:2 periodwith the two preceding decades shows that the standarddeviation of quarterly output growth has fallen 30...

Asset market values react to economic news and policychanges, and consumers react to changes in asset marketvalues. The consumption-wealth channel of monetary policyspells out this mechanism: changes in monetary policy affectasset values, which in turn affect consumer spending onnondurable goods...

[...]In the first half of the paper, we review the significantchanges in the housing finance system over the past thirty yearsand discuss the implications of these changes for the cost andavailability of mortgage credit. In the second half, we present atwo-part econometric analysis of the...

The volatility of real GDP growth in the United States hasfallen by half since the early 1980s relative to the priorpostwar experience.1 Inflation also stabilized around then(although only when compared with a shorter period ofvolatility in the 1970s). Some studies have argued that animprovement...

[...]This paper looks for evidence of both types of crediteffects—those that are endogenous to the monetarymechanism and those that are exogenous—using informationon banks’ commercial credit standards as a proxy for bankcredit availability. We compare results from an...

[...]This paper investigates whether the cyclical effects ofmonetary policy have been influenced by the secular growth insecuritization in recent decades. In particular, when the centralbank makes a specific monetary policy move—such asincreasing the overnight interbank rate by 50 basis...