Search Results
Briefing
The Road to Cyberinfrastructure at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
As economic models grow in computational complexity and researchers increase their data needs, the staff at the Center for the Advancement of Data and Research in Economics (CADRE) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City needed to develop an environment that could facilitate better research accommodating these new factors. Staff have worked through multiple technological changes to design and deliver the right infrastructure to meet researchers’ needs, from the development of the first high-performance computing (HPC) environment at the Bank, to the research and coincident development of ...
Discussion Paper
How the Fed Managed the Treasury Yield Curve in the 1940s
The coronavirus pandemic has prompted the Federal Reserve to pledge to purchase Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities in the amount needed to support the smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy to the economy. But some market participants have questioned whether something more might not be required, including possibly some form of direct yield curve control. In the first half of the 1940s the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) sought to manage the level and shape of the Treasury yield curve. In this post, we examine what can be learned ...
Conference Paper
Peer effects in the workplace: evidence from professional transitions for the superstars of medicine
Pierre Azoulay?s presentation reported the progress on a very data-intensive project trying to understand the role of superstars in the medical sciences. Here the researchers are building a large panel data set on medical researchers and tracking the movement of superstars across institutions to better understand the effect of superstars on the research productivity of their colleagues.
Working Paper
Replication and scientific standards in economics a decade later: the impact of JMCB project
Scientific inquiry embodies skepticism. Researchers are trained to scrutinize every result, doubting not only the truth but also the tests of every hypothesis. Research papers in professional journals typically present only summaries of results, however, providing neither the programs nor data that a reader requires fully understanding -- and questioning -- the authors' tests. The Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking project a decade ago was the first attempt by the editor of a major journal to furnish readers with the data and programs used by the journal's authors. The project revealed the ...
Journal Article
A journal ranking for the ambitious economist
The authors devise an "ambition-adjusted" journal ranking based on citations from a short list of top general-interest journals in economics. Underlying this ranking is the notion that an ambitious economist wishes to be acknowledged not only in the highest reaches of the profession, but also outside his or her subfield. In addition to the conceptual advantages that they find in their ambition adjustment, they see two main practical advantages: greater transparency and a consistent treatment of subfields. They compare their 2008 ranking based on citations from 2001 to 2007 with a ranking ...
Journal Article
Replicability, real-time data, and the science of economic research: FRED, ALFRED, and VDC
This article discusses the linkages between two recent themes in economic research: "real time" data and replication. These two themes share many of the same ideas, specifically, that scientific research itself has a time dimension. In research using real-time data, this time dimension is the date on which particular observations, or pieces of data, became available. In work with replication, it is the date on which a study (and its results) became available to other researchers and/or was published. Recognition of both dimensions of scientific research is important. A project at the ...
Conference Paper
Research in the policy process
Journal Article
Interview with James Poterba
James Poterba, MIT economist and incoming president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, on the potential for tax reform, the wealth effect of housing prices, and the future of economic research.
Journal Article
Monetary economic research at the St. Louis Fed during Ted Balbach's tenure as research director
Ted Balbach served as research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from 1975 to 1992. This paper lauds his contributions during that time, including the expanded influence of the Review, enhanced databases and data publications, and a visiting scholar program that attracted leading economists from around the world. Balbach is remembered fondly as a visionary leader and gracious mentor.
Discussion Paper
Interest-Bearing Securities When Interest Rates are Below Zero
Negative interest rates have evolved, over the past few years, from a topic of modest academic interest to a practical reality. Short- and intermediate-term sovereign debt of several European countries, including Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland, now trades at negative yields.