We revisit the sources of the bias in Federal Reserve forecasts and assess whether a precautionary motive can explain the forecast bias. In contrast to the existing literature, we use forecasts submitted by individual FOMC members to uncover members' implicit loss function. Our key finding is...

In this paper, we explore the determinants of media coverage of Federal Reserve (Fed) communications. Our sample covers all 344 forward-looking communications made in the period May 1999-May 2004. We find, first, that there is a higher likelihood of media coverage for monetary policy reports and...

Monetary Policy Committees differ in the way the interest rate proposal is prepared and presented in the policy meeting. In this paper we show analytically how different arrangements could affect the voting behaviour of individual MPC members and therefore policy outcomes. We then apply our...

We examine the degree and sources of disagreement between the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the Federal Reserve's (Fed's) staff about the appropriate policy rate for the period 1987-2011. For that purpose, we compute a counterfactual interest rate for the Fed's staff , based on its...

In practice, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) believes that it has a broad mission to achieve three main goals. These are to: ? Maintain a low inflation environment. ? Stabilize the real economy. ? Underpin the soundness of the financial system. There is little controversy over these...

There was a time when the Federal Reserve believed that honest money—i.e., a stable price level— was essential for achieving full employment. Today, retired Fed officials are recommending that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) target 3-percent inflation. They argue that a 3 percent...

I assess how dissenting views on appropriate monetary policy result in disagreement about the macroeconomic outlook of Federal Open Market Committee members. FOMC members that voted for a higher Fed Funds Rate than the majority of voters also forecast higher inflation rates, while they forecast...

Twice a year FOMC members submit forecasts for growth, unemplyoment and in ation to be published in the Humphrey-Hawkins Report to Congress. In this paper we use individual FOMC forecasts to assess whether these forecasts exhibit herding behavior, a pattern often found in private sector...