| Abstract: | We identify two major changes in the dynamics of the federal funds rate in the 1990s. We model the desired rate in a two‐regime setting, one when the Fed makes no change and the other when the Fed is moving the desired rate to a new level. We find that the 1990s saw a longer duration in the no‐change regime as well as smaller changes in the other regime. The smaller changes were neither due to a less aggressive Fed nor due to lower volatility of the fundamentals. In fact, the Fed responded more aggressively to changes in fundamentals in the 1990s. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
