In this paper, we explore the determinants of newswire coverage of Federal Reserve (Fed) communications. Our sample covers all 344 forward‐looking communications made in the period May 1999–May 2004. We find, first, that there is a higher likelihood of newswire coverage for monetary policy...

This study offers a historical review of the monetary policy reform of October 6, 1979, and discusses the influences behind it and its significance. We lay out the record from the start of 1979 through the spring of 1980, relying almost exclusively upon contemporaneous sources, including the...

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the U.S. Federal Reserve publishes the range of members’ forecasts for key macroeconomic variables, but not the distribution of forecasts within this range. To evaluate these projections, previous papers compare the midpoint of the range with the...

The article examines if US monetary policy implicitly responds to asset price booms. Using real-time data and a GMM framework we estimate a Taylor-type rule with an asset variable that captures phases of booms and busts in the real estate market. We identify quasi real-time booms and busts using...

We construct a dataset for every U.S. Treasury auction from 2003 to 2012. We find that market factors known before the auction -- FedFunds rate, S&P, VIX -- are all significant for the auction high-yield, but the relationships differ before vs. during QE and between Bond and Bills auctions....

In the first stage of the crisis, the Federal Reserve (Fed) rapidly embarked on interest rate cuts followed by several rounds of substantial quantitative easing. However, the marked monetary easing and the persistently low interest rates triggered mounting fears of inflation, calling into...

The Federal Reserve has been criticized for not forestalling the financial crisis of 2007-09, and for its unconventional monetary policies that have followed. Its critics have raised questions as to whom, if anyone, reins in the Federal Reserve if and when its policies are misguided or abusive....

In 2012, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, gave a series of lectures about the Federal Reserve and the 2008 financial crisis, as part of a course at George Washington University on the role of the Federal Reserve in the economy. In this unusual event, Bernanke revealed...

As the Federal Reserve reaches its hundredth anniversary, understanding its achievements and failures serves as a useful guide to needed reforms. My paper is an invited comment on the analysis by Selgin, White, and Lastrapes who conclude that the Federal Reserve’s performance is not an...

In this paper we present a multivariate analysis of the Federal Reserve’s forecasts. First, we evaluate the Fed’s forecasts of the ten major expenditure categories of real GDP. Second, we present a new methodology for evaluating multivariate forecasts. Finally, we use the same methodology to...