This brief examines an issue of current importance to the conduct of U.S. economic policy: how has the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) plan to purchase up to $600 billion of Treasury securities by June 30, 2011 affected the movement of inflation, GDP, and employment to more desirable...

This brief examines two issues of current interest concerning inflation: (1) whether "well-anchored" expectations will help to restrain inflation's decline and whether an "un-anchoring" of expectations could lead to undesirably high inflation and (2) to what extent output (or utilization) gaps...

Since the start of the Great Recession, one of the most striking developments in the U.S. labor market has been the pronounced decline in the labor force participation rate. The crucial issue in interpreting the decline in U.S. labor force participation is how much of the decline reflects...

We provide summary measures for a broad set of questions from the Michigan Surveys of Consumers. These measures summarize consumers' attitudes and expectations with respect to income, wealth, prices, and interest rates. They contain information that goes beyond the information captured by the...

Much recent commentary has centered on the importance of well-anchored inflation expectations serving as the foundation of a well-behaved inflation rate. But the difficulty in relying on this principle is that inflation expectations are not directly observable, and thus it is hard to know...