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Working Paper
A guide to FRB/US: a macroeconomic model of the United States
FRB/US is a large-scale quarterly econometric model of the U.S. economy, developed to replace the MPS model. Most behavioral equations are based on specifications of optimizing behavior containing explicit expectations of firms, households, and financial markets. Although expectations are explicit, the empirical fits of the structural descriptions of macroeconomic behavior are comparable to those of reduced-form time series models. In most instances, tests do not reject overidentifying restrictions of rational expectations or the hypothesis of serially independent residuals. As modeled, ...
Working Paper
Term premia : endogenous constraints on monetary policy
Monetary policy evaluation using structural macro models suggests that historical monetary policy responds less aggressively to inflation and the output gap than would an optimal policy rule. However, these results are obtained using models with constant term premia. This paper shows how term premia may depend on the policy rule specification and policy rate uncertainty. A more aggressive policy rule involves an economically important increase in term premia. Consequently, conclusions about the specification of optimal monetary policy rules based on counterfactual simulations of models that ...
Working Paper
Interest rate policies for price stability
Working Paper
Dynamic specifications in optimizing trend-deviation macro models
As noted in surveys by Goodfriend and King (1997) and Walsh (1998) and exemplified by models analyzed in Taylor (1999), there is encouraging progress in developing optimizing trend-deviation macro models that provide useful insights into the transmission and design of monetary policy. Several controversial features of a minimalist trend-deviation model, with optimizing households, firms, and bond traders, are examined. Dynamic specifications are suggested to improve the data-based realism, while preserving the simplicity, of the minimalist model.
Working Paper
Minding the gap : central bank estimates of the unemployment natural rate
A time-varying parameter framework is suggested for use with real-time multiperiod forecast data to estimate implied forecast equations. The framework is applied to historical briefing forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee to estimate the U.S. central bank?s ex ante perceptions of the natural rate of unemployment. Relative to retrospective estimates, empirical results do not indicate severe underestimation of the natural rate of unemployment in the 1970s.
Discussion Paper
On Nerff solutions of macroeconomic tracking problems
Working Paper
Perhaps the FOMC did what it said it did : an alternative interpretation of the Great Inflation
This paper uses real-time briefing forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to provide estimates of historical changes in the design of US monetary policy an in the implied central bank target for inflation. Empirical results and FOMC transcripts support a neglected interpretation of policy during the Great inflation of the 1970?s
Working Paper
Term structure transmission of monetary policy
The sensitivity of bond rates to macro variables appears to vary both over time and over forecast horizons. The latter may be due to differences in forward rate term premiums and in bond trader perceptions of anticipated policy responses at different forecast horizons. Determinacy of policy transmission through bond rates requires a lower bound on the average responsiveness of term premiums and anticipated policy responses to inflation.