The Covid-19 Pandemic and policy response rattled the USTreasury markets. Conventional US Treasuries, inflation adjustedUS Treasuries, and the relationship between the two developed inways such that ignoring changes in real interest rates yielded dis-torted inflation expectations estimates....

The Covid-19 Pandemic and policy response rattled the USTreasury markets. Conventional US Treasuries, inflation adjustedUS Treasuries, and the relationship between the two developed inways such that ignoring changes in real interest rates yielded dis-torted inflation expectations estimates....

The Fed’s actions before and after the housing bubble burst: discretion and mandate of central banks in an environment of financial deregulation The Fed’s actions during the development and burst of the US real estate bubble highlight a Central Bank’s dilemma when facing a financial...

This paper uses data on forecasts for unemployment and GDP growth submitted by each individual FOMC member to uncover members' beliefs about Okuns's Law. The results suggest that the perceived relationship between unemployment and real growth weakened significantly since the mid-1990s.

This paper studies the impact of Federal Reserve policies that created the largest deviations from price stability during the Fed׳s first 100 years: the post-World War I deflation, the deflation of the Great Depression, the inflation of World War II, and the Great Inflation of the 1970s. In...

The Federal Reserve’s AMLF program was designed to provide liquidity to money market funds (MMFs). Between September 2008 and May 2009, the program made $217 billion in non-recourse loans to depository institutions and bank holding companies to purchase asset-backed commercial paper from MMFs....

In the first stage of the crisis, the Federal Reserve (Fed) rapidly embarked on interest rate cuts followed by several rounds of substantial quantitative easing. However, the marked monetary easing and the persistently low interest rates triggered mounting fears of inflation, calling into...

We analyze the influence of US monetary policy on commodity price volatility. Expected target rate changes and communications decrease volatility, whereas target rate surprises and unorthodox measures increase it. The “calming” effect of communication is reduced during the financial crisis.

We propose an alternative way of estimating Taylor reaction functions if the zero‐lower bound on nominal interest rates is binding. This approach relies on tackling the real rather than the nominal interest rate. So if the nominal rate is (close to) zero central banks can influence the...

The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 to be a lender of last resort. Paul Warburg, its principal architect had in mind that a U.S. central bank would follow Bagehot׳s strictures ‘to lend freely at a penalty rate’ in the face of a scramble for high powered money. Yet the Federal...