Once upon a time, U.S. monetary policy was conducted with its primary target defined in terms of the fed funds rate, which is the interest rate on an overnight loan of Federal Reserve deposits between private banks or other institutions that hold accounts with the Fed. A bank that ended the day with more deposits in its account with the Fed than needed to meet its required balances could lend those funds to another bank that found itself short. The interest rate on these loans was very sensitive to the total level of excess reserves in the system. The Fed’s direct control of available reserves gave it near control of the interest rate on loans of fed funds, which was what made the fed funds rate a credible target for implementation of the FOMC’s policy directives.
Category Archives: Federal Reserve
Forward rates and monetary tightening
The Federal Reserve has been trying hard to communicate that it intends to keep short-term interest rates low for quite some time. The market seems to have embraced the message.
Summarizing monetary policy
Before 2008, U.S. monetary policy was primarily conducted in terms of a target set by the Federal Reserve for the fed funds rate, which is the interest rate a bank pays to borrow funds overnight from other banks. A large academic literature used the fed funds rate as a summary of monetary policy, looking at its correlations in dynamic regressions with other variables of macroeconomic interest. But the fed funds rate has been stuck near zero for the last 5 years, and will likely be replaced by an alternative policy focus even once we exit the zero lower bound. Economic researchers face not just the difficulty of summarizing what the Fed has been doing in the current and future environment, but also the practical challenge of how to update their historical regressions to try to describe the full set of historical data along with the new experience in a coherent way. Here I describe a new research paper that suggests one solution to these problems.
Why isn’t inflation lower?
With so much slack in the economy and so many Americans still looking for jobs, why hasn’t inflation been falling further? University of Texas Professor Olivier Coibion and Berkeley Professor Yuriy Gorodnichenko propose an answer in an interesting new research paper.
Estimates of the effects of the Fed’s large-scale asset purchases
I attended a conference this weekend on lessons from the financial crisis for monetary policy. Among many interesting presentations, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams provided updated estimates on the effectiveness of large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance.
Yellen it is
I applaud President Obama for choosing the best person to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. And I thank Governor Yellen for her willingness to serve the country.
Who’s afraid of the big bad taper?
Those of us who believed that the Fed’s program of large-scale asset purchases had only a modest effect on long-term interest rates seem to have some explaining to do.
Summers withdraws
Harvard Professor Larry Summers yesterday requested that his name be withdrawn from consideration for next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Let me outsource to a few others for comments.
Economists supporting Janet Yellen
Econbrowser readers know that I feel that Janet Yellen would be an excellent choice for the next chair of the Federal Reserve. For those of you who feel the same way, I call your attention to an open letter of support from economists that you could sign.
If you are a professional economist who lives and/or works in the United States and you would like to join in signing this open letter, please send your name, title, and affiliation to YellenLetter@iwpr.org.
Quantitative and Credit Easing vs. Forward Guidance
Domestic Impacts and Cross-Border Impacts Contrasted