Search Results
Working Paper
What to Expect from the Lower Bound on Interest Rates: Evidence from Derivatives Prices
This paper analyzes the effects of the lower bound for interest rates on the distributions of inflation and interest rates. We study a stylized New Keynesian model where the policy instrument is subject to a lower bound to motivate the empirical analysis. Two equilibria emerge: In the “target equilibrium,” policy is unconstrained most or all of the time, whereas in the “liquidity trap equilibrium,” policy is mostly or always constrained. We use options data on future interest rates and inflation to study whether the decrease in the natural real rate of interest leads to forecast ...
Journal Article
Has the Dollar Become More Sensitive to Interest Rates?
Interest rates in the United States have diverged from the rates of other countries over the past few years. Some commentators have voiced concerns that, as a result, exchange rates might be more sensitive to unanticipated changes in U.S. interest rates now than they were historically. However, an examination of market-based measures of policy expectations finds no convincing evidence that the U.S. dollar has become more sensitive since 2014.
Journal Article
Current Recession Risk According to the Yield Curve
The slope of the Treasury yield curve is a popular recession predictor with an excellent track record. The two most common alternative measures of the slope typically move together but have diverged recently, making the resulting recession signals unclear. Economic arguments and empirical evidence, including its more accurate predictions, favor the difference between 10-year and 3-month Treasury securities. Recession probabilities for the next year derived from this spread so far remain modest.
Working Paper
Tying Down the Anchor: Monetary Policy Rules and the Lower Bound on Interest Rates
This paper uses a standard New Keynesian model to analyze the effects and implementation of various monetary policy frameworks in the presence of a low natural rate of interest and a lower bound on interest rates. Under a standard inflation-targeting approach, inflation expectations will be anchored at a level below the inflation target, which in turn exacerbates the deleterious effects of the lower bound on the economy. Two key themes emerge from our analysis. First, the central bank can eliminate this problem of a downward bias in inflation expectations by following an average-inflation ...
Journal Article
Effects of Asset Valuations on U.S. Wealth Distribution
Net household wealth is highly unequal across U.S. households, and the types of assets people hold tend to change according to their position along the distribution of wealth. The pattern of household portfolios shows that the top 1% of households hold most of their wealth in stocks, while home values are most important for the wealth of the bottom half of the distribution. Higher growth in equity values relative to real estate values therefore tends to widen the wealth distribution, as experienced during the coronavirus pandemic.
Journal Article
Information in the Yield Curve about Future Recessions
The ability of the Treasury yield curve to predict future recessions has recently received a great deal of public attention. An inversion of the yield curve?when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates?has been a reliable predictor of recessions. The difference between ten-year and three-month Treasury rates is the most useful term spread for forecasting recessions?without any adjustment for an estimate of the underlying term premium. However, such correlations in the data do not identify cause and effect, which complicates their interpretation.
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Drivers and the Pricing of Uncertainty, Inflation, and Bonds
This paper analyzes a new stylized fact: The correlation between uncertainty shocks and changes in inflation expectations has declined and turned negative over the past quarter century. It rationalizes this fact within a standard New Keynesian model with a lower bound on interest rates combined with a decline in the natural rate of interest. With a lower natural rate, the likelihood of the lower bound binding increased and the effects of uncertainty on the economy became more pronounced. In such an environment, increases in uncertainty raise the possibility that the central bank will be ...
Working Paper
The Optimal Supply of Central Bank Reserves under Uncertainty
This paper provides an analytically tractable theoretical framework to study the optimal supply of central bank reserves when the demand for reserves is uncertain and nonlinear. We fully characterize the optimal supply of central bank reserves and associated market equilibrium. We find that the optimal supply of reserves under uncertainty is greater than that absent uncertainty. With a sufficient degree of uncertainty, it is optimal to supply a level of reserves that is abundant (on the flat portion of the demand curve) absent shocks. The optimal mean spread between the market interest rate ...
Journal Article
Average-Inflation Targeting and the Effective Lower Bound
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate to essentially zero. It took further measures to support the functioning of financial markets and the flow of credit. Nevertheless, the economic downturn is putting downward pressure on inflation, which had already been running below the Fed’s 2% target for several years. This raises additional concerns that inflation expectations could decline and push inflation down further, ultimately hampering economic activity. A monetary policy framework based on average-inflation targeting could help address these ...
Working Paper
A Financial New Keynesian Model
This paper solves a standard New Keynesian model in terms of risk-neutral expectations and estimates it using a cross-section of longer-dated financial assets at a single point in time. Inflation risk premia appear in the theory and cause inflation to deviate from its target on average. We re-estimate the model based on each day’s closing prices to capture high-frequency changes in the expected path of the economy. Our estimates show that financial markets reacted to the post-COVID surge in inflation with higher short-run inflation expectations, an increase in the inflation risk premium, ...