One way to think about monetary policy is in terms of a neutral federal funds rate, one that exerts neither inflationary nor deflationary pressures. Recent declines in worldwide investment, coupled with the growing globalization of financial markets suggest that the neutral rate may be lower...

An examination of the safe-harbor provisions of the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, with a discussion of the mechanics of the leasing, the revenue impact, and an analysis of criticism that led to the demise of the program.

An analysis of possible effects on the U.S. economy of rapid depreciation of the foreign-exchange value of the dollar, that includes discussion on interest rates, prices, real GNP, and potential problems for the Federal Reserve System.

In the years prior to our recent economic crisis, foreign savings poured into the United States. Did foreign traders who happened to acquire dollars from American trade deficits merely choose to keep these funds in dollar-denominated assets? Or, did foreigners decide to increase their savings...

The head of China’s central bank is calling for countries to replace the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency with something called SDRs. Created by the IMF way back in 1969 for that purpose, SDRs never caught on. While SDRs may be declared an official international reserve asset...

This paper assesses U.S. foreign-exchange intervention since the inception of generalized floating. We find that intervention was by and large ineffectual. We first identify which interventions were successful according to three criteria. Then, we test whether the number of observed successes...

A discussion of the costs associated with trade restraint, focusing on devices currently used or recently proposed in the United States.

A vast literature on the effects of sterilized intervention by the monetary authorities in the foreign exchange markets concludes that intervention systematically moves the spot exchange rate only if it is publicly announced, coordinated across countries, and consistent with the underlying...

Research has generally failed to find reliable connections between official exchange-market interventions and exchange rates that are consistent with either a monetary or a portfolio-balance theory of exchange-rate determination. Recently economists have suggested that intervention might...