We review the recent U.S. monetary policy experience with large scale asset purchases (LSAPs) and draw lessons for monetary policy going forward. A rough consensus from previous studies is that LSAP purchases reduced yields on 10-year Treasuries by about 100 basis points. We argue that the...

This paper explores the link between financial conditions and economic activity. We first review existing measures, including both single indicators and composite financial conditions indexes (FCIs). We then build a new FCI that features three key innovations. First, besides interest rates and...

This paper reviews a substantial range of empirical evidence on whether the Phillips curve is dead, i.e. that its slope has flattened to zero. National data going back to the 1950s and 60s yield strong evidence of negative slopes and significant nonlinearity in those slopes, with slopes much...

This paper summarizes a forthcoming book that describes issues and recent innovations in the measurement of international transactions. A number of distinguished authors assess data measuring trade in merchandise, services, and foreign-direct investment claims. Others assess international prices...

This paper argues that a linear statistical model with homoskedastic errors cannot capture the nineteenth-century notion of a recurring cyclical pattern in key economic aggregates. A simple nonlinear alternative is proposed and used to illustrate that the dynamic behavior of unemployment seems...

Many economic time series exhibit dramatic breaks associated with events such as economic recessions, financial panics, and currency crises. Such changes in regime may arise from tipping points or other nonlinear dynamics and are core to some of the most important questions in macroeconomics....

This year the oil industry celebrated its 155th birthday, continuing a rich history of booms, busts and dramatic technological changes. Many old hands in the oil patch may view recent developments as a continuation of the same old story, wondering if the high prices of the last decade will prove...

Much attention has been given to the recent growth of the U.S. federal debt. This paper examines the growth of federal liabilities that are not included in the officially reported numbers. These take the form of implicit or explicit government guarantees and commitments. The five major...

This paper explores details behind the phenomenal increase in global crude oil production over the last century and a half and the implications if that trend should be reversed. I document that a key feature of the growth in production has been exploitation of new geographic areas rather than...

This paper surveys the history of the oil industry with a particular focus on the events associated with significant changes in the price of oil. Although oil was used much differently and was substantially less important economically in the nineteenth century than it is today, there are...