The potential benefits of small surveys of the economy are well known -- surveys can supply measures of economic activity quickly and at a relatively low cost. But potential drawbacks are also recognized, namely that small samples may produce predominantly noise and, because of the types of data...

How well does the market for Federal Funds Futures predict? Statistical estimates of the market's efficiency in predicting FOMC policy actions indicate that the forecasts contain useful information and are unbiased at the usual 5 percent level. That finding is of interest because it means that...

This article uses principal component methods to assess the importance of changes in the federal funds rate in driving interest rate changes across a broad array of credit markets. We find that most of the variability in interest rate changes across these markets is explained by a small number...

This paper analyzes the effects of inflation variability on economic growth in a model where money is introduced via a cash-in-advance constraint. In this setting, we find that inflation adversely affects long-run growth, even when the cash-in-advance constraint applies only to consumption. At...

This article uses principal component methods to assess the importance of changes in the federal funds rate in driving interest rate changes across a broad array of credit markets. We find that most of the variability in interest rate changes across these markets is explained by a small number...