Deciding to undertake a series of tightening actions present unique challenges for Federal Reserve policymakers. These challenges are both political and economic. Using a variety of economic and financial market metrics, this article examines how the economy and financial markets evolved in...

Oil prices rose sharply prior to the onset of the 2007-2009 recession. Hamilton (2005) noted that nine of the last ten recessions in the United States were preceded by a substantial increase in the price of oil. In this paper, we consider whether oil price shocks significantly increase the...

We consider the effects of uncertainty shocks in a nonlinear VAR that allows uncertainty to have amplification effects. When uncertainty is relatively low, fluctuations in uncertainty have small, linear effects. In periods of high uncertainty, the effect of a further increase in uncertainty is...