Search Results
Working Paper
Identifying the macroeconomic effect of loan supply shocks
Evidence of an operative credit channel has been inconclusive. The inability to clearly distinguish the effects of shocks to loan supply from those to loan demand has made it difficult to quantify the importance of this transmission mechanism to the economy. This paper provides an innovative approach to identifying loan supply shocks that enables us to show that such disturbances have had economically important effects on the U.S. economy over the past two decades. We provide three different pieces of evidence that confirm that loan supply shocks have been successfully isolated from shifts in ...
Journal Article
\"Whither New England\"?
This article attempts to identify precursors, or indicators, of New England employment. The predictive power of a diverse array of variables is calculated and compared. However, because no single variable is likely to contain all information of predictive value, the article then explores alternative methods of combining several variables into an index or statistical "model" of New England employment growth. The variables are separated into regional, national, and expectational in order to measure the predictive value of each type of information. ; In both in-sample and out-of-sample tests, ...
Journal Article
Regional economic conditions and the FOMC votes of district presidents
It is often argued that the institutional structure of the Federal Reserve System influences the formulation and attainment of national monetary policy goals. District Bank presidents do play a major role in the formulation of monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York always has one of twelve votes at the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings, and four of the remaining eleven votes rotate among the other Reserve Bank presidents. ; This article tests whether regional economic performance excessively influences the votes of District Bank presidents. The article ...
Working Paper
Back to the future: monetary policy and the twin deficits
There has been a significant correlation between inward foreign direct investment in the United States and the U.S. real exchange rate since the 1970s. Two alternative reasons for this relationship are that the real exchange rate affects the relative cost of production and that the real exchange rate alters reTative wealth across countries. In this paper we explore these alternatives by examining the determinants of four measures of inward foreign direct investment to the United States from seven industrial countries over the period 1979 to 1988. We find strong evidence that relative wealth ...
Speech
Should the Fed regularly evaluate its monetary policy framework?: remarks at the Fall 2018 Conference, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Brookings Institution, Washington D.C., September 14, 2018
These slides represent the combined perspectives of President Rosengren and his co-authors, Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, Giovanni P. Olivei, and Geoffrey M. B. Tootell.
Discussion Paper
Eyes on the prize: how did the Fed respond to the stock market?
The appropriate role for equity prices in monetary policy deliberations has been hotly debated for some time. Recent work suggests that equity prices have affected monetary policy decisions above and beyond their indirect effect on the traditional goal variables of the FOMC. However, the correlation between stock price movements and these other goal variables has made the identification of the equity price effect problematic. Previous studies have used a forecast that embodies a different information set from the one used by the FOMC, which could bias the estimated coefficient on equity ...
Journal Article
How farsighted is the FOMC?
The most difficult problem facing monetary policymakers results from the long and variable lags in monetary policy's impact on the economy. The full effect of an interest rate change today is not realized for several quarters, so monetary policymakers must be forward-looking. Yet, it is difficult enough to interpret how the economy is doing now, let alone forecast how it will be performing one year hence. This uncertainty hinders the ability of policymakers to offset future fluctuations with current actions. Even so, the lags leave central bankers no choice but to react to their expectations ...
Working Paper
Is bank supervision central to central banking?
Recently, several central banks have lost their bank supervisory responsibilities, in part because it has not been shown that supervisory authority improves the conduct of monetary policy. This paper finds that confidential bank supervisory information could help the Board staff more accurately forecast important macroeconomic variables and is used by FOMC members to guide monetary policy. These findings suggest that the complementarity between supervisory responsibilities and monetary policy should be an important consideration when evaluating the structure of the central bank.
Speech
Some unpleasant stabilization arithmetic: remarks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's 62nd Economic Conference, \\"What are the Consequences of Long Spells of Low Interest Rates?\\", Boston, Massachusetts, September 8, 2018
These slides represent the combined thoughts of President Rosengren and his co-presenters, Joe Peek and Geoffrey M. B. Tootell.
Journal Article
Restructuring, the NAIRU, and the Phillips curve
Recent news stories about corporate downsizing have increased concerns that the labor market is being permanently restructured. The press implicitly, and some economists explicitly, have concluded that this "restructuring" in the labor market has increased the rate of unemployment that is consistent with stable inflation. This rate is known as the NAIRU, the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment, the unemployment rate below which inflation tends to rise, and above which inflation tends to fall. ; This article examines both macroeconomic data and more disaggregated data in search ...