[...]In this article, we demonstrate how such industry-specific realexchange rates can be constructed and present the recent pathsof these indexes. We next present three basic real exchange ratemeasures for each industry: one using export partner weightsonly, a second using import partner...

[...]In this article, we pursue a transaction-oriented line ofresearch to help track short-term exchange rate movements. Byexamining a publicly available data set well known to currencymarket analysts—net positions held by speculators in thefutures market—we are able to document a strong...

[...]This article examines the introduction of regular auctionofferings of Treasury notes and bonds in the early 1970s. We donot take issue with the conventional wisdom that auctions aremore efficient and less costly than fixed-price offerings. Rather,we seek to identify why the Treasury twice...

[...]This article describes the U.S. experience with inflationindexeddebt, including the evolution of activity in the TIISmarket since its inception and the valuation of those securitiesrelative to nominal Treasury issues. We show that despite thepotential appeal of TIIS, their yields have been...

The Federal Reserve requires U.S. commercial banks andother depository institutions to hold a minimum level ofreserves in proportion to certain liabilities. On occasion, thecentral bank has reduced reserve requirements—such as in1990, when requirements on large time deposits were dropped,and...

Several authors have documented a reduced variability ofoutput and inflation in the United States since the beginningof the 1980s.1 In fact, a comparison of the 1980:1-2001:2 periodwith the two preceding decades shows that the standarddeviation of quarterly output growth has fallen 30...

Asset market values react to economic news and policychanges, and consumers react to changes in asset marketvalues. The consumption-wealth channel of monetary policyspells out this mechanism: changes in monetary policy affectasset values, which in turn affect consumer spending onnondurable goods...

[...]In the first half of the paper, we review the significantchanges in the housing finance system over the past thirty yearsand discuss the implications of these changes for the cost andavailability of mortgage credit. In the second half, we present atwo-part econometric analysis of the...

The volatility of real GDP growth in the United States hasfallen by half since the early 1980s relative to the priorpostwar experience.1 Inflation also stabilized around then(although only when compared with a shorter period ofvolatility in the 1970s). Some studies have argued that animprovement...

[...]This paper looks for evidence of both types of crediteffects—those that are endogenous to the monetarymechanism and those that are exogenous—using informationon banks’ commercial credit standards as a proxy for bankcredit availability. We compare results from an...