Given the time lag between a monetary policy action and its effect on the economy, the importance of considering economic forecasts in the conduct of policy has long been acknowledged. Still, it is only over the past decade or so that the publication of central bank economic forecasts has been...

Over the past two decades, the Federal Reserve has made significant strides toward greater transparency in the conduct of monetary policy. Most recently, last November, Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants—that is, the Federal Reserve Presidents and Governors—started to release...

Speech to the Bay Area Council 18th Annual Outlook Conference, Alameda, California, April 16, 2008

Speech to the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Group, San Francisco, California, February 12, 2008. ; President Janet L. Yellen presented similar remarks to the Chartered Financial Analysts of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, February 7, 2008

Speech to the National Association for Business Economics, San Francisco, California. September 10, 2007

Speech to a community leaders' luncheon, Portland, Oregon, July 10, 2008. ; President Yellen presented similar remarks to the University of California San Diego Economics Roundtable in San Diego, CA on July 7, 2008

An economy besieged on a number of fronts in 2008 staggers into 2009 with rising unemployment, falling house prices, and strained financial markets. A recessionary environment poses formidable challenges for U.S. consumers in the coming year.

University of California, Berkeley, economic historians on the evolution of economic understanding, FOMC forecasting and more.

Fed researchers suggest that two core models used by economists are seriously flawed.

This is the first of a series of papers that are being written as part of a project to estimate a small quarterly Global Projection Model (GPM). The GPM project is designed to improve the toolkit for studying both own-country and cross-country linkages. In this paper, we estimate a small...