The European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve

In the 4 years of its existence, the European Central Bank (ECB)has made significant contributions to the macroeconomic stabilityof the euro area. This paper takes a critical look at the ECBand compares its institutional structure, policy framework,and operational procedures with those of the longer-establishedUS central bank. We discuss the implications of various differencesbetween the ECB and the Federal Reserve with a view toward identifyingsuccessful elements of the practices of both these institutions.The paper recommends that the ECB abandon the first pillar ofits monetary policy strategy that affords a special role tomonetary aggregates in the evaluation of financial market conditions.It also suggests that the Federal Reserve should follow theECB's lead and provide an explicit definition of price stability.     

How were the Federal Reserve Bank locations selected?

The Reserve Board Organization Committee decision to locate 12 Federal Reserve Banks is reviewed. Probability choice models estimate a city’s selection probability for a Federal Reserve Bank location. Results of predicted selections show reserve cities were selected for their spatial economic characteristics, including information contained in bankers’ preferences, infrastructure development, population and recent National Banking System growth, rather than Democratic Party politics. The Reserve Board Organization Committee placed Federal Reserve Banks in preeminent financial and commercial centers, and relied upon bankers’ preferences for the remaining non-obvious selections. Given 12 cities were to be selected, the conclusion drawn is the decision was in the public interest.     

Banker preferences,interbank connections,and the enduring structure of the Federal Reserve System

Established by a three person committee in 1914, the structure of the Federal Reserve System has remained essentially unchanged ever since, despite criticism at the time and over ensuing decades. This paper examines the original selection of cities for Reserve Banks and branches, and placement of district boundaries. We show that each aspect of the Fed's structure reflected the preferences of national banks, including adjustments to district boundaries after 1914. Further, using newly-collected data on interbank connections, we find that banker preferences mirrored established correspondent relationships. The Federal Reserve was thus formed on top of the structure that it was largely meant to replace.     

后危机时代美国货币政策的走势——兼论资产价格与货币政策操作规则

次贷危机使人们认识到,美联储货币政策操作失误难辞其咎。在全球化日益加深和美元为核心的国际货币体系下,美国不断下调利率的扩张性货币政策效应没有像过去那样迅速反映在商品价格上,而是主要表现为资产价格的攀升。由于美联储货币政策操作遵循了"泰勒规则"——把CPI当作最主要的监控对象,致使美联储错过了适时调整货币政策最佳的时机,导致美国信用扩张过度、资产泡沫,特别是房产泡沫不断升级。资产价格的上升最终会通过"财富效应"、"托宾q效应"、"金融加速器效应"等逐渐传导到商品价格上,随着石油等大宗商品价格的持续攀升,美联储开始急速提高利率,最终引发了次贷危机的爆发。后危机时代,美国的资产价格开始了迅速的回升,美联储应该吸取货币政策调整滞后的教训,适时地退出刺激,避免资产价格迅速上升和通货膨胀对经济复苏带来的不利影响。     

Measuring the Accuracy of Federal Reserve Forecasts

Markets across the world pay enormous attention to every economic forecast made by Federal Reserve governors, particularly those from the chair. This article develops a new way that the academic literature can assess the accuracy of these Federal Reserve forecasts. In particular, our proposed method allows for both general and specific predictions to be assessed, while also accounting for the macroeconomic volatility that prevails at the time of the forecast. To develop this measure, we expand upon a methodology proposed by the Wall Street Journal to score the accuracy of forecasts made by the Fed. Our results show that Alan Greenspan was consistently the most accurate forecaster among Fed governors, while the most recent chair in our sample, Janet Yellen, has performed relatively poorly. More generally, we find that the chairs have become less accurate over time with their forecasts and have also tended to make fewer specific predictions.     

Reverse-lag reserve accounting,bank behavior,and monetary control: A formal analysis

Conclusion The fundamental conclusion of the analysis contained in this paper is that Laurent's claims concerning the potential monetary control enhancements of the adoption of a reverse-lag reserve accounting system are correct. This result conflicts with those reached by other studies of the monetary control properties of RLA, because the model of RLA used in this paper has been based on an analysis of the microeconomic behavior of banks. The conclusion that monetary control could be improved by adoption of RLA vindicates Laurent's [1984] argument that a “microbank analysis” is fundamental to understanding correctly the workings of an RLA system. An important qualification that prohibits a conclusion that RLA clearly is superior to lagged or contemporaneous accounting is that the monetary control enhancements resulting from adoption of RLA are mitigated to some extent by the existence of the Federal Reserve discount window. Indeed, the relative desirability of RLA as compared to alternative reserve accounting systems cannot be evaluateda priori in the presence of a discount window. Any serious consideration of RLA would need to be prefaced by a careful study of the relationship of the money stock to bank borrowing in an RLA setting. The final version of this paper was written while the author was a visiting economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. This paper has benefited considerably from comments and suggestions by Robert Laurent, Kenneth Kopecky, Daniel Friel, Chris Waller, Elmus Wicker, and participants in a seminar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and in the Indiana University Money and Banking Seminar. Initial work on this topic was supported by an Indiana University Summer Faculty Fellowship. Any errors are the author's responsibility, and any views expressed in the paper do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or its staff.     

The Financial Crisis: Miss-Diagnosis and Reactionary Responses

This paper divides the current financial crisis into three phases and describes the policy responses to each. In Phase I policy makers misdiagnosed it as a traditional liquidity crisis. Phase II was a triage period as policy makers addressed the significant solvency problems that became apparent in the country’s largest financial institutions. Phase III was the pronounced slowdown in the real U.S. economy during which the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet by purchasing long term Treasuries and newly issued mortgage backed securities from GSEs. This paper describes the financial market conditions that characterized each of the three phases, describes the policy responses, and finally, attempts to sort out what we have learned and not learned from this crisis and how to handle it so far.     

The Fed as the Engine of Worldwide Inflation

The United States is a sovereign country that has the right to follow its own monetary policy. By an accident of history, since 1945 it is also the center of the world dollar standard—which remains surprisingly robust to the present day. So the choice of monetary policy by the U.S. Federal Reserve can strongly affect its neighbors for better or for worse. Beginning with the Nixon shock in 1971, American policy makers have frequently ignored foreign complaints. But by ignoring feedback effects from the rest of the world, the Fed has made both the world and American economies less stable.     

An Assessment of the Causes of the Abandonment of the Gold Standard by the U.S. in 1933

In this paper we present an investigation of the pressures on the United States to devalue the dollar against the franc and gold in the early 1930s. We calculate monthly time-series of realignment expectations and find that these are well explained by a set of fundamental economic variables. The implication is drawn that macroeconomic events were at least in part responsible for jolting the U.S. off the gold standard and that the Federal Reserve was constrained in its response to the Depression by the United States' commitment to gold.     

Duopoly conjectures

This paper embodies the views of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or of the Federal Reserve System.     

美联储独立性的影响因素分析——政治系统论的视角

美国金融市场的繁荣一定程度上归功于美联储的超凡独立性,这一点被诸多学者所推崇。但是从政治系统论的角度来审视美联储的法律地位,国会、总统、法院、利益集团等都以自己独特的方式对美联储的独立性问题提出了挑战与制约,而美联储亦适时地调整自己的行为做以应对。美国经验告诉我们,一国政治体制对该国中央银行独立性的影响是深刻的,中国在对中国人民银行独立性进行探讨时,与其从法律角度来重构中国人民银行的独立性,倒不如在既有制度框架内实现各机构的协调。     

美联储货币互换工具的实践及对我国央行的启示

货币互换是指两国央行之间签订的为了解决流动性问题的一种金融管理工具。布雷顿森林体系成立以来,美联储基于不同目的多次与其它央行签订了货币互换协议。我国央行为便利双边贸易和投资于2001年开始使用货币互换工具。通过对比分析,我们认为美联储货币互换的实践对我国央行进一步实施、完善和拓展货币互换工具的使用有借鉴意义。     

Testing for shifts in variability

This paper embodies the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or of the Federal Reserve System.     

Annuities and inflation

This paper embodies the views of the author and does not represent the views or policy of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System.     

Estimating Key Economic Variables: The Policy Implications

The current monetary policy debate has focused on current estimates and the future path of the natural rate of unemployment and the equilibrium interest rate. Estimates of the natural rate of unemployment should vary over time with changes in demographics and improvements in human capital. However, these changes should be gradual. This paper shows that the estimates of the natural rate of unemployment by Federal Reserve officials and private-sector economists seem to move pro-cyclically, potentially showing too much weight given to short-term fluctuations in economic variables. As with the natural rate, there are good reasons to expect the equilibrium interest rate to change over time. In fact, the level may actually be more responsive to current economic data, reflecting changes in aggregate savings and investment. Yet, we see that equilibrium interest rate estimates by both Federal Reserve officials and private-sector economists have declined quite dramatically over the past five years. A potential concern raised in this paper is that estimates of these critical economic variables for policy determination appear to be overly sensitive to high frequency economic data.     

The determinants of covered margins

Conclusion The empirical evidence of the covered margin regressions tends to corroborate the theoretical analysis of theCM indicator. The hedging and opportunity-cost-of-arbitrage variables, as well as the speculative variable, appear in many cases as significant determinants of the size of the covered margin. This undermines the accuracy of theCM indicator because its accuracy requires that speculation alone heavily dominates the determination ofCM. Furthermore, the view that primitive arbitrage facilities interfere with the ability of arbitrage to restrain covered margins to small values was supported by the examination of the Canadian experience of the 1950's. The author would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Leland Yeager on previous drafts of this paper. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.     

Applications of general equilibrium models to the 1986 tax reform act in the United States

Summary This paper examines the structure and predictions of six applied general equilibrium models used to evaluate the 1986 Tax Reform Act in the United States. The models agree that the effects on national income will be fairly small. They disagree on the size of the improvement in economic efficiency from more neutral taxation of different capital assets, and on the size of the intertemporal inefficiency when capital formation is discouraged through a higher rate of taxation. This new application of general equilibrium models to an actual reform highlights the need to test predictions against empirical evidence.The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston or the Federal Reserve System. The author is grateful to J. von Sinderen, Laus Bovenberg, Lawrence Goulder, and other participants at the conference for their helpful comments, and to the authors of the studies reviewed in this paper for instructive discussions.Prepared for The Netherlands Central Planning Bureau Symposium on Applied General Equilibrium Models, Noordwijk, December 4–5, 1989.     

Is the US quantitative easing more effective than China's? A second thought

We study the balance sheet of the People's Bank of China and the Federal Reserve Bank in a historical context and analyze whether the recent round of global expansionary monetary policy has been effective in achieving its desired economic effects. In particular, we focus on the roles played by excess reserves, monetary aggregates and financing to the real economy and highlight the tension between a liquid financial sector and an illiquid real sector. We show that, while both China and the US have followed reserve-driven growth strategies, the compositions and relative sizes of these quantities are quite different. In relative terms, excess reserves and lackluster corporate lending constitute a big problem for the US, whereas for China the pertinent question is how to further mobilize funds tied up in the real estate and stock market. We provide some thoughts on possible solutions to the current policy dilemma at the end.     

Responding to a Monetary Superpower: Investigating the Behavioral Spillovers of U.S. Monetary Policy

Between 2002 and 2006, the Federal Reserve set interest rates significantly below the rates suggested by well-known monetary policy rules. There is a growing body of research suggesting that this helped fuel an excess of liquidity in the U.S. that contributed to the 2008 worldwide financial crash. It is less well known that a number of other central banks also lowered interest rates during this period. An important question, then, is what role the Federal Reserve played in influencing other central banks to alter their own monetary policies, which could have magnified the Fed’s actions in creating global liquidity. This paper addresses the issue by showing how spillovers in central bank behavior occur in theoretical rational expectations models. It then establishes empirically how U.S. monetary policy actions affect the actions of other major central banks, particularly in terms of interest rates and currency interventions. The models and data suggest that the U.S. lowering its policy rate, either in general or in reference to a monetary policy rule, influences other central banks to lower their own policy rates and intervene in currency markets, even when controlling for worldwide macroeconomic trends. It thus appears that U.S. actions were a factor in the worldwide lowering of interest rates and the increase in currency reserves in the early 2000s that may have contributed to the subsequent global liquidity boom.