Comments by Preston Miller, Minneapolis Fed vice president and monetary advisor.

This article describes a new way to use monthly data to improve the national forecasts of quarterly economic models. This new method combines the forecasts of a monthly model with those of a quarterly model using weights that maximize forecasting accuracy. While none of the method's steps is...

We use a simple model to show why previous empirical studies of budget policy effects are flawed. Due to an identification problem, those studies' findings can be shown to be consistent with policies either mattering or not. We argue that this problem is difficult and not likely to be resolved soon.