Category Archives: Monetary Policy

Last week I flew overnight from Cartagena, Colombia (90o F, very humid) to Jackson Hole, USA (37o F, plus wind chill). In both places I was asked a lot about monetary policy—by bankers at the conference in Colombia and by … Continue reading →

This week the House Financial Service Committee voted to approve legislation requiring the Fed to report a policy rule or strategy for setting the instruments of monetary policy.  The legislation now goes to the full House, with a vote likely … Continue reading →

Discussion and debate about new policy rule legislation continued during the past week.  I replied to Alan Blinder’s  article, “An Unnecessary Fix for the Fed,” published in the Wall Street Journal last Friday (July 18).  I show that Alan’s article was … Continue reading →

Last week (July 7) I wrote on this blog about a newly-introduced bill  that would require policy rules for the Fed. Since then a Congressional hearing was held on the bill on July 10, Fed Chair Janet Yellen was cross-examined … Continue reading →

A lot of research and experience shows that more predictable rules-based monetary policy leads to better economic performance—both in terms of price stability and steadier-stronger employment and output growth.  But in practice there have been big swings in Fed policy … Continue reading →

In an interesting recent paper and blog post “Money Still Matters,” Michael Belongia and Peter Ireland report new empirical results with relevance to monetary policy.  They show that the Divisia index of the money supply (not M1 or M2) has effects on … Continue reading →

Today starts a two day conference at Stanford’s Hoover Institution on monetary policy. It’s part of the Fed Centennial. Here is the full agenda which includes talks and commentary by Esther George, Tom Sargent, Charles Plosser,  John Williams, Jeff Lacker, Ed … Continue reading →

Last week’s IMF conference on Monetary Policy in the New Normal revealed a lot of disagreement on the key issue of where policy should be headed in the future. A dispute that broke out between me and Adair Turner is one … Continue reading →

This week the Federal Reserve Board posted for the first time its FRB/US policy evaluation model and related explanatory material on its website. This new transparency is good news for researchers, students and practitioners of monetary policy. Making the model available … Continue reading →