We construct a new measure of monetary policy surprise based on a natural language processing algorithm designed to capture contextual nuances in FOMC statements. Specifically we exploit cross-sectional variations across alternative FOMC statements to identify the statement's tone, and compare...

Should monetary policy use its short-term policy rate to stabilize the growth in household credit and housing prices with the aim of promoting financial stability? We ask this question for the case of Canada. We find that to a first approximation, the answer is no- especially when the economy is...

A purported benefit of state-based forward guidance is that the private sector adjusts the expected stance of policy without further policymaker communications. This assumes a shared understanding of how policymakers are interpreting the data and that policymakers are consistent in their...

Many commentators have argued that if the Federal Reserve had followed a stricter monetary policy earlier this decade when the housing bubble was forming, and if Congress had not deregulated banking but had imposed tighter financial standards, the housing boom and bust - and the subsequent...

We provide strong evidence of persistent cyclical variation in the sensitivity of stock returns to macroeconomic news announcement (MNA) surprises. When the economy is significantly below trend (output gap is large and negative) and interest rates are not expected to go up, the stock return...

We document a countercyclical sensitivity of the stock market to major macroeconomic news announcements. Stock prices react more to (either good or bad) announcement surprises when the economy is below its potential trend with the expectation of easing policy. Based on comprehensive regression...

This paper analyzes empirically the impact of fiscal policy on the price level for the cases of Germany and Spain. We investigate whether the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) is able to deliver a reasonable explanation for the different performances of the price level in these two...

While consumption habits have been utilised as a means of generating a hump shapedoutput response to monetary policy shocks in sticky-price New Keynesian economies,there is relatively little analysis of the impact of habits (particularly, external habits) onoptimal policy. In this paper we...