This paper presents evidence that throughout the 1973-85 period the Federal Reserve systematically used certain types of discount rate announcements to signal changes in its policy instrument, the Federal funds rate. Market participants understood the signals contained in discount rate...

Discount rate changes always receive considerable attention in financial markets and a bulk of empirical papers shows that asset markets react to them. However, among researchers, there is no consensus yet about why markets respond to such changes. This paper analyses this issue for the...

Central banks no longer set the short-term interest rates that they use for monetary policy purposes by manipulating the supply of banking system reserves, as in conventional economics textbooks; this process normally involves little or no variation in the supply of central bank liabilities. In...