Asset prices may react to news through changes in expected monetary policy. We examine whether economic news directly affects expected changes in monetary policy, measured by changes in federal funds rate futures prices. Because these prices depend on monthly averages of the effective funds...

Since 1984, the FOMC has often issued directives for monetary policy that indicate a bias toward easing or tightening. This paper investigates the information content of these asymmetric directives for the likelihood of inter-meeting changes in policy during the Greenspan chairmanship. If policy...

This paper studies the credibility and transparency of monetary policy. We characterize each FOMC meeting as a decision to ease, maintain, or tighten monetary policy and model decisions with ordered probit reaction functions. Policy is credible if the estimated models are significant functions...