China monetary policy, as well as its transmission, is yet to be understood by researchers and policymakers. In the spirit of Taylor (1993, 2000), we develop a tractable framework that approximates practical monetary policy of China. The framework, grounded in relevant institutional elements,...

Lending standards are a direct measure of credit conditions. We use the micro data merged from three separate sources to construct this measure and document that an uncertain macroeconomic outlook, rather than banks' balance sheet positions, was an important reason that a majority of banks...

We study the impacts of the 2009 monetary stimulus and its interaction with infrastructure spending on credit allocation. We develop a two-stage estimation approach and apply it to China's loanlevel data that covers all sectors in the economy. We find that except for the manufacturing sector,...

China's recent devaluation and liberalization of its exchange-rate policies will, at best, have only a temporary impact on its trade competitiveness with the United States. The type of exchange-rate regime that a country adopts matters little for its long-term international competitiveness. In...

In February 1994, the FOMC began a new era in transparency, gradually building a communications apparatus that conveys information about the Committee’s decisions and expectations. Has the new apparatus improved the public’s ability to predict FOMC interest rate decisions? New research based...

Since the early 1990s, international banks have been offering nondeliverable forward (NDF) contracts to clients who need to hedge exposures in currencies of emerging-market economies. Many also use the exchange rate on these contracts as a best guess of where the emerging-market currency is...

A useful first guess about the future spot price of a commodity is usually found in its current futures price. But it doesn’t work that way when the commodity in question is oil. This Commentary explains why the characteristics of oil, particularly the value it can offer its owner by remaining...

This paper documents GDPNow, a "nowcasting" model for gross domestic product (GDP) growth that synthesizes the "bridge equation" approach relating GDP subcomponents to monthly source data with the factor model approach used by Giannone, Reichlin, and Small (2008). The GDPNow model forecasts GDP...

Although macroeconomic forecasting forms an integral part of the policymaking process, there has been a serious lack of rigorous and systematic research in the evaluation of out-of-sample modelbased forecasts of China's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth and consumer price index inflation....