In an environment of low inflation, the Federal Reserve faces the risk that it has not provided enough monetary stimulus even when it has pushed the short-term nominal interest rate to its lower bound of zero. Assuming the nominal Treasury-bill rate has been lowered to zero, this paper considers...

In this paper, we empirically examine the portfolio-rebalancing effects stemming from the policy of "quantitative monetary easing" recently undertaken by the Bank of Japan when the nominal short-term interest rate was virtually at zero. Portfolio-rebalancing effects resulting from the open...

This paper formalizes the process of updating the nowcast and forecast on output and inflation as new releases of data become available. The marginal contribution of a particular release for the value of the signal and its precision is evaluated by computing "news" on the basis of an evolving...

Forecasts by rational agents contain embedded initial and terminal boundary conditions. Standard time series models generate two types of long-run "endpoints"---fixed endpoints and moving average endpoints. Neither can explain the shifting endpoints implied by postwar movements in the...

A standard macroeconomic specification is that the aggregate economy is directed by a single, smart representative agent using optimal decision rules. This paper explores an alternative conjecture--that the dynamic behavior of markets is often better interpreted as the interactions of many...