It is widely believed that, in the wake of the dot.com crash, the Fed kept the federal funds target rate too low for too long, inadvertently contributing to the subprime boom. We attribute this and other Fed departures from a “neutral” policy stance to the Fed's failure to respond...

Is the United States best served by a single currency? This question is explored in this paper by looking at the regional effects of US monetary policy shocks through the perspective of the optimal currency area framework. Using monthly state-level data for the period 1983:1-2008:3, this paper...