Since the late 1980s the Fed has implemented monetary policy by adjusting its target for the overnight federal funds rate. Money’s role in monetary policy has been tertiary, at best. Indeed, several influential economists suggest that money is irrelevant for monetary policy because central...

This paper compares the behaviour of the effective federal funds rate to 10 US interest rates with maturities ranging from overnight to 10 years. Using spectral estimation methods, we identified idiosyncratic shocks to the funds rate and provided evidence on their impact on other rates at...

It is widely believed that the Fed controls the funds rate by altering the degree of pressure in the reserve market through open market operations when it changes its target for the federal funds rate. Recently, however, several economists have suggested that open market operations may not be...

A large empirical literature attempts to identify US monetary policy shocks using the effective federal funds rate. This paper compares the time series behavior of the effective federal funds rate to 10 US interest rates with maturities ranging form overnight to 10 years. Using a spectral...

Structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models are commonly used to investigate the effect of structural shocks on economic variables. The identifying restrictions imposed in many of these exercises have been criticized in the literature. This paper extends this literature by showing that if the...

One of the most influential tests of the expectations hypothesis is Mankiw and Miron (1986), who found that the spread between the long-term and short-term rates provided predictive power for the short-term rate before the Fed's founding but not after. They suggested that the failure of the...