This paper examines the effectiveness of the new liquidity facilities that the Federal Reserve established in response to the recent financial crisis. I develop a no-arbitrage based affine term structure model with default risk and conduct a thorough factor analysis of the counterparty default...

Since the end of the 2001 recession, the U.S. economy has performed pretty well in terms of output growth, averaging about 3-1/4 percent a year. But how well has the economy performed in terms of creating jobs? To answer that question, most analysts look at two independent monthly estimates of...

This Economic Letter summarizes the papers presented at the conference "Macroeconomic Models for Monetary Policy" held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on March 1-2, 2002, under the joint sponsorship of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Stanford Institute for Economic...

This Economic Letter examines the distinct features of deflation, discusses why it is a matter of concern to the public and to policymakers in general, and looks at the recent experience of the inflation and deflation in the U.S. and other countries.

On September 20, the Federal Open Market Committee, the nation's monetary policymaking body, raised its target level of the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, the eleventh straight increase over the last fifteen months. The statement released immediately after the meeting said, "With...

In congressional testimony on February 16, 2005, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan characterized the recent behavior of long-term interest rates as a "conundrum." Typically, long-term rates tend to rise as monetary policymakers raise short-term rates. But not in the current episode. Despite...