A popular way to approximate Federal Reserve policy is through the use of estimated interest rate equations, or policy "rules." In these rules, the dependent variable is the interest rate that the Federal Reserve is assumed to control and the explanatory variables are those factors assumed to...

Tick data on the S&P 500 futures contract and newswire searches are used to match events to large five minute stock price changes. 58 events that led to large stock price changes are identified between 1982 and 1999, 41 of which are directly or indirectly related to monetary policy. Many large...

A stochastic-simulation method is proposed in this paper for obtaining median unbiased estimates of lagged dependent variable coefficients in macroeconomic models. Estimated biases for 13 equations of a macroeconomic model are computed. These biases are on average somewhat smaller in absolute...

This paper uses a structurally estimated macroeconometric model, denoted the MC model, to evaluate inflation targeting in the United States. Various interest rate rules are tried with differing weights on inflation and output, and various optimal control problems are solved using differing...

The informational content of different forecasts can be compared by regressing the actual change in a variable to be forecasted on forecasts of the change. We use the procedure in Fair and Shiller (1987) to examine the informational content of three sets of ex ante forecasts: the American...

This paper examines various interest rate rules, as well as policies derived by solving optimal control problems, for their ability to dampen economic fluctuations caused by random shocks. A tax rate rule is also considered. A multicountry econometric model is used for the experiments. The...