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...

Standard estimates of the NAIRU or natural rate of unemployment are subject to considerable uncertainty. We show in this paper that using multiple indicators to extract an estimated NAIRU cuts in half uncertainty as measured by variance and gives a 33% reduction in the confidence band. The...

In this paper, 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 longer...

Standard estimates of the NAIRU or natural rate of unemployment are subject to considerable uncertainty. We show in this paper that using multiple indicators to extract an estimated NAIRU cuts in half uncertainty as measured by variance. The inclusion of an Okun’s Law relation is particularly...

Output effects of currency crises are often estimated to be negative and persistent. A new banking crisis database allows us to construct pure currency collapses that are not associated with banking crises. The estimates show that countries facing a pure currency crisis have full recovery of...

<section xml:id="fut21639-sec-0001"> This paper examines the effect of monetary policy surprises on energy prices at intraday, daily, and monthly frequencies. We measure monetary policy shocks using changes in interest rate futures prices that capture unexpected changes in the fed funds target rate. We find a significant response...</section>

Recent studies debate the effect of a permanent productivity shock on hours per capita within a structural VAR context. This paper examines the issue using a correlated unobserved components (UC) framework. The estimates show that permanent shocks to productivity are negatively correlated with...