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Discussion Paper
November 2014 Update of the FRB/US Model
This FEDS Note is a companion to the most recent release of the FRB/US model of the U.S. economy available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/frbus/us-models-about.htm. The purpose of this note is twofold. First, it briefly outlines and describes the changes to the structure of the public version of FRB/US since its introduction in the spring of 2014. In addition, it compares the dynamics of the current version to that of the original version in response to key shocks.
Working Paper
How well does the New Keynesian sticky-price model fit the data?
The New Keynesian sticky-price model has become increasingly popular for monetary-policy analysis. However, there have been conflicting results on the empirical performance of the model. In this paper, I attempt to reconcile these conflicting claims by examining various specifications of the model within the context of a single framework. I find that the New Keynesian model does not fit the U.S. data well; in particular, the model requires additional lags of inflation not implied by the model under rational expectations. These additional lags have the interpretation that some fraction of the ...
Working Paper
From many series, one cycle: improved estimates of the business cycle from a multivariate unobserved components model
We construct new estimates of potential output and the output gap using a multivariate approach that allows for an explicit role for measurement errors in the decomposition of real output. Because we include data on hours, output, employment, and the labor force, we are able to decompose our estimate of potential output into separate trends in labor productivity, labor-force participation, weekly hours, and the NAIRU. We find that labor-market variables?especially the unemployment rate?are the most informative individual indicators of the state of the business cycle. Conditional on including ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy in a Low Interest Rate World
Nominal interest rates may remain substantially below the averages of the last half-century, as central bank?s inflation objectives lie below the average level of inflation and estimates of the real interest rate likely to prevail over the long run fall notably short of the average real interest rate experienced over this period. Persistently low nominal interest rates may lead to more frequent and costly episodes at the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. We revisit the frequency and potential costs of such episodes in a low-interest-rate world in a ...
Working Paper
Monetary policy and inflation dynamics
Since the early 1980s, the United States economy has changed in some important ways: Inflation now rises considerably less when unemployment falls and the volatility of output and inflation have fallen sharply. This paper examines whether changes in monetary policy can account for these phenomena. The results suggest that changes in the parameters and shock volatility of monetary policy reaction functions can account for most or all of the change in the inflation-unemployment relationship. As in other work, monetary-policy changes can explain only a small portion of the output growth ...
Working Paper
Is inflation sticky?
Discussion Paper
Inflation Thresholds and Policy-Rule Inertia: Some Simulation Results
In August 2020, the Federal Open Market Committee approved a revised Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy (FOMC, 2020) and in the subsequent FOMC meetings, the Committee made material changes to its forward guidance to bring it in line with the new framework. Clarida (2021) characterizes the new framework as comprising a number of key features.
Working Paper
When Can Trend-Cycle Decompositions Be Trusted?
In this paper, we examine the results of GDP trend-cycle decompositions from the estimation of bivariate unobserved components models that allow for correlated trend and cycle innovations. Three competing variables are considered in the bivariate setup along with GDP: the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, and gross domestic income. We find that the unemployment rate is the best variable to accompany GDP in the bivariate setup to obtain accurate estimates of its trend-cycle correlation coefficient and the cycle. We show that the key feature of unemployment that allows for precise ...