A measure of the neutral policy interest rate can be used to gauge the stance of monetary policy. We define the neutral rate as the real policy rate consistent with output at its potential level and inflation equal to target after the effects of all cyclical shocks have dissipated. This is a...

We compare the Federal Reserve's asset purchase programs with those implemented by the Bank of England and the Swedish Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank’s reserve expansion program. We decompose government bond yields into (i) an expectations component, (ii) a global term premium and (iii)...

We analyze money financing of fiscal transfers (helicopter money) in two simple New Keynesian models: a "textbook" model in which all money is non-interest-bearing (e.g., all money is currency), and a more realistic model with interest-bearing reserves. In the textbook model with only...

In this paper, I examine whether communications by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) play a role in determining the types of macroeconomic news that financial markets pay attention to. To do so, I construct novel measures of the intensity with which FOMC statements and meeting minutes...

On September 3-4, 2009, SUERF and Utrecht University School of Economics jointly organized the 28th SUERF Colloquium on "The Quest for Stability" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The papers contained in this SUERF Study jointly published with DNB and Rabobank are based on contributions to this...

This paper presents Bank of Canada staff's current assessment of the US neutral rate, along with a newly developed set of models on which that assessment is based. The overall assessment is that the US neutral rate currently lies in a range of 1.75 to 2.75 percent. This represents a decline of...

During and after the Great Recession of 2008-09, conventional monetary policy in the United States and many other advanced economies was constrained by the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. Several central banks implemented large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs, more...

This paper tries to identify the monetary policy shocks in Turkey during the explicit inflation targeting period starting from 2006 using a structural VAR approach. We model Turkey as a small open economy where domestic variables are affected by external factors like commodity prices and global...

This paper discusses central banks’ use of the interest rate as the instrument of monetary policy, in light of a reconsideration of macroeconomic theory induced by the financial crisis and Great Recession. Three main guiding principles for the future conduct of interest rate policy are...

Nowadays, with the diffusion of inflation targeting, the main instrument that central banks use to achieve final objectives in the implementation of monetary policy (concerning inflation and unemployment) is the interest rate. Furthermore, recent studies point out that central bank transparency...