Search Results
Journal Article
Fear and loathing of central banks in America
The Federal Reserve System is America?s uneasy compromise between our dislike of concentrated financial power and our desire to promote efficiency in our national payments system. In fact, the Federal Reserve is the nation?s third attempt to establish a large national bank?what we now call a central bank?that is in a unique position to influence a nation?s money and credit. This Commentary retells the story of the rise and fall of the two earlier national banks, the Banks of the United States.
Journal Article
Beauty and the bulls: the investment characteristics of paintings
An examination of the investment and consumption characteristics of the paintings market between 1971 and 1984, using the capital asset pricing model.
Journal Article
The consumer price index as a measure of inflation
An estimation of a price index that is immune to some of the weighting biases that can hinder the use of the Consumer Price Index as a reliable measure of inflation.
Journal Article
Island money
On a small group of islands in the South Pacific, the people use a money so astonishing it often gets mentioned in classroom discussions on the subject. This Commentary takes a closer look at the stone money of Yap and asks what such an odd form of money can teach us about our own.
Journal Article
Who is that guy on the $10 bill?
Alexander Hamilton is the least known and most misunderstood of our nation's founders. His contributions include creating a monetary standard, establishing our banking system, and ensuring the young nation's creditworthiness. This Economic Commentary explains how much of our financial strength we owe to Hamilton.
Report
Rethinking the measurement of household inflation expectations: preliminary findings
This paper reports preliminary findings from a Federal Reserve Bank of New York research program aimed at improving survey measures of inflation expectations. We find that seemingly small differences in how inflation is referred to in a survey can lead respondents to consider significantly different price concepts. For near-term inflation, the "prices in general" question in the monthly Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers can elicit responses that focus on the most visible prices, such as gasoline or food. Questions on the "rate of inflation" can lead to responses on the ...
Working Paper
Monitoring core inflation
An analysis of the use of limited-information estimators as measures of core inflation, showing that these estimators, such as the median of the cross-sectional distribution of inflation, have a higher correlation with past money growth and deliver improved forecasts of future inflation relative to the Consumer Price Index.
Journal Article
Voluntary export restraints: the cost of building walls
An illustration of the cost and employment effects of Japanese voluntary export restraints on new-car imports to the U.S.
Journal Article
Midyear report of the Fourth District Economists' Roundtable
A summation of the May 20, 1994 meeting of the Fourth District Economists' Roundtable, at which participants offered their views on the current and prospective state of the economy and discussed the limitations of describing the U.S. business cycle.
Journal Article
Comparing inflation expectations of households and economists: is a little knowledge a dangerous thing?
A comparison of the performance of forecasts by economists (the Livingston survey), households (the Michigan Survey of Consumer Finances), and a time series model (ARIMA).