We evaluate the decentralized structure of the Federal Reserve System as a mechanism for generating and processing new ideas on monetary policy over the 1960 - 2000 period. We document the introduction of monetarism, rational expectations, credibility, transparency, and other monetary policy...

The paper assesses the role of a Reserve Bank in the Federal Reserve System. It compares the Eurosystem with the Fed System, and offers suggestions for the Eurosystem based on the Fed's experience. A regional presence facilitates surveillance of the economy and helps a central bank to...

Laws requiring banks to hold a volume of reserves equal to a prescribed fraction of their deposits originated in this country more than a century ago. Since then both the financial system and the rationales supporting reserve requirements have changed considerably. Nevertheless, the practice of...

The 1920s and 1930s saw the Fed reject a state-of-the-art empirical policy framework for a logically defective one. Consisting of a quantity theoretic analysis of the business cycle, the former framework featured the money stock, price level, and real interest rates as policy indicators. By...