The authors examine whether risk premiums can predict future economic growth and whether monetary policy can influence risk premiums.

The Federal Reserve has increased communication about the future path of the federal funds target rate over time. The use of forward guidance as a policy tool has raised questions about changes in how it influences the economy.

The Federal Reserve increasingly has relied on forward guidance about the future path of the federal funds rate to implement monetary policy since the federal funds target rate reached its effective lower bound. The enhanced use of forward policy guidance has drawn attention to any change in its...

We construct a new measure of monetary policy surprise based on a natural language processing algorithm designed to capture contextual nuances in FOMC statements. Specifically we exploit cross-sectional variations across alternative FOMC statements to identify the statement's tone, and compare...

A purported benefit of state-based forward guidance is that the private sector adjusts the expected stance of policy without further policymaker communications. This assumes a shared understanding of how policymakers are interpreting the data and that policymakers are consistent in their...