This article was originally presented as a speech at the Charlotte Economics Club, Charlotte, North Carolina, February 25, 2004.

This essay challenges the conventional wisdom about money and monetary policy. The role of money in fostering prosperity is a function of the quality, as well as the quantity, of money. Inflation always harms the performance of an economy. Deflations caused by productivity and innovation can be...

In November 2007, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced a change in the way it communicates its view of the economic outlook: It increased the frequency of its forecasts from two to four times per year, and it increased the length of the forecasting horizon from two to three years....

Despite the fact that the U.S. economy has been performing very well recently, monetary policymakers have been the targets of some criticism. In the speech reprinted here, which was delivered to a group of bankers in June 1997, St. Louis Federal Reserve President Thomas C. Melzer responds to the...

U.S. agriculture is a spectacular success story of high productivity growth maintained over an amazingly long period of time. Nevertheless, the industry today suffers from the same problems it has always suffered from: droughts, locusts and market disruptions. In this article, Kevin Kliesen and...