Search Results
Journal Article
Whither the New Economy?
Journal Article
Real output in Switzerland: new estimates for 1914-47
In this article, Felix A, Andrist, Richard G. Anderson, and Marcela Williams provide, for the first time, an estimate of the real gross domestic product of Switzerland between 1914 and 1947. The estimate is obtained from published data on three other measures of Swiss economic activity during this period: net national product, industrial production, and the transport volume of Swiss railroads. These underlying series closely represent the economic growth of Switzerland; but, they also seem unreasonably volatile as proxy measures of total production, and hence, are filtered by moving averages. ...
Working Paper
Construction of an estimated domestic monetary base using new estimates of foreign holdings of U.S. currency
This paper presents a new method to estimate the amount of U.S. currency held abroad. The method exploits the fact the Federal Reserve System is the major processor of currency for depository institutions. The method exploits differentials across denominations in the ratios of shipments to receipts of currency at Federal Reserve cash offices in New York City and nationwide. The method permits us to construct a new monthly time series on the domestic monetary base, M1 and M2. The method has several advantages over previous methods, including an earlier starting date (1965) and the ability to ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy's third interest rate
Journal Article
How low can you go? negative interest rates and investors’ flight to safety
It is not uncommon to observe negative interest rates during uncertain times, when investors flee to safety. But the existence of negative market yields provides no support for policies in which central banks set negative interest rates on deposits held at a central bank.
Journal Article
How positive are recent employment and labor market trends?
Assessing the state of the economy requires estimates of trends in employment and the labor force. Large monthly fluctuations make it difficult to infer these from monthly data.
Journal Article
The curious case of the U.S. monetary base
Working Paper
Retail sweep programs and bank reserves, 1994--1999
Since January 1994, the Federal Reserve Board has permitted depository institutions in the United States to implement so-called retail sweep programs. The essence of these programs is computer software that dynamically reclassifies customer deposits between transaction accounts, which are subject to statutory reserve requirement ratios as high as 10 percent, and money market deposit accounts, which have a zero ratio. Through the use of such software, hundreds of banks have sharply reduced the amount of their required reserves. In some cases, this new level of required reserves is less than ...
Journal Article
What is driving oil prices?
Besides supply and demand, speculation is drawing a lot of attention these days as a cause of higher oil prices.
