Search Results
Journal Article
Technological Change and Central Banking
The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) represents a radically new way to manage databases. Since money and payments are all about managing databases and since banks play a central role in money and payments, DAO-based money and payments systems are potentially a disruptive force in the banking system—which includes central banks. One would normally expect regulatory frameworks to evolve with a changing technological landscape. However, the decentralized governance structure characteristic of DAOs renders it near impossible to regulate these entities directly—a property that makes ...
Speech
The Outlook for the Economy and Monetary Policy: Low-Frequency Policymaking in a High-Frequency World
Good afternoon. I thank Ellen Zentner and the New York Association for Business Economics for the invitation to speak to you today. I believe that one of the important responsibilities of a Federal Reserve policymaker is to share his or her economic perspectives with the public. Congress has wisely given the Fed independence in making monetary policy decisions in pursuit of our statutory goals of price stability and maximum employment. I say "wisely" because a body of research and practical experience both here and abroad show that when central banks formulate monetary policy free from ...
Speech
A Solution to Every Puzzle
Remarks at the 2020 U.S. Treasury Market Conference (delivered via videoconference).
Speech
Considerations on the Road Ahead for Monetary Policy Implementation
Remarks at the New York Fed and Columbia SIPA Monetary Policy Implementation Workshop, New York City.
Working Paper
A journal ranking based on central bank citations
We present a ranking of journals geared toward measuring the policy relevance of research. We compute simple impact factors that count only citations made in central bank publications, such as their working paper series. Whereas this ranking confirms the policy relevance of the major general interest journals in the field of economics, the major finance journals fare less favourably. Journals specialising in monetary economics, international economics and financial intermediation feature highly, but surprisingly not those specialising in econometrics. The ranking is topped by the Brookings ...
Working Paper
FOMC Responses to Calls for Transparency
I apply latent semantic analysis to Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) transcripts and minutes from 1976 to 2008 in order to analyze the Fed's responses to calls for transparency. Using a newly constructed measure of the transparency of deliberations, I study two events that define markedly different periods of transparency over this 32-year period. First, the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act increased the degree to which the FOMC used meeting minutes to convey the content of its meetings. Historical evidence suggests that this increased transparency reflected a response to the Act's requirement ...
Speech
A Steady Anchor in a Stormy Sea
Remarks at SNB-FRB-BIS High-Level Conference on Global Risk, Uncertainty, and Volatility, Zurich, Switzerland.
Working Paper
Death of a Reserve Currency
The Dutch bank florin was the dominant currency in Europe during much of the 17th and 18th centuries. The florin, a fiat money, was managed by an early central bank, the Bank of Amsterdam. Using a new reconstruction of the Bank of Amsterdam's balance sheet, we analyze the florin's loss of reserve currency status during the period 1781?92. The reconstruction shows that by 1784, accommodative policies rendered the Bank of Amsterdam "policy insolvent," meaning that its net worth would have been negative under continuation of its policy objectives. Policy insolvency coincided with the Bank of ...
Working Paper
More Stories of Unconventional Monetary Policy
This article extends the work of Fawley and Neely (2013) to describe how major central banks have evolved unconventional monetary policies to encourage real activity and maintain stable inflation rates from 2013 through 2019. By 2013, central banks were moving from lump-sum asset purchase programs to continuing asset purchase programs, which are conditioned on economic conditions, careful communication strategies, bank lending programs with incentives and negative interest rates. This article reviews how central banks tailored their unconventional monetary methods to their various challenges ...
Speech
Inflation: Four Questions Requiring Further Research to Inform Monetary Policy, Closing Remarks, Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics Conference 2023
Let me start by thanking the organizers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the European Central Bank for putting together such a strong program and the ECB for its hospitality. It has been a very productive two days focused on frontier research on inflation. High inflation has been the major challenge facing many central banks over the past two years. Returning the economy to price stability in a sustainable and timely way has driven monetary policy decisions. Maintaining price stability is the responsibility of the central bank and only the central bank can deliver on this goal ...