Nearly a decade has passed since the last U.S. recession ended, and memories of prior recessionary experiences may now have grown dim. The objective of this article is twofold: to provide a concise review of post-World War II recessions, with an eye to identifying their most distinctive features...

Although open market operations are clearly the primary monetary policy tool, the discount rate is not without influence. Federal Reserve Banks propose any discount rate changes, and the Board of Governors decides whether to accept, reject, or take no action on their requests. This article...

Opinion about the reliability of economic forecasts ranges widely. Some argue that they are literally worthless, at the same time that most forecasters can point to a sequence of near perfect predictions. How much confidence should one place in economic forecasts? The errors vary with many...

This study suggests that U.S. monetary policy has been influenced by forecasts of and past experience with three broad factors: inflation, economic activity, and the monetary aggregates. The influence of each factor has varied, however, within this common theme. In the past 22 years at least two...

This article presents evidence on the role that judgmental adjustments play in macroeconomic forecast accuracy. It starts by contrasting the predictive records of four prominent forecasters who adjust their models with those of three models that are used mechanically. The adjusted forecasts tend...

While many studies have evaluated the accuracy of "official" economic forecasts, this study may be the first published analysis of the Federal Open Market Committee's "Humphrey- Hawkins" forecasts. In this article, the "official" forecasts generated by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), the...