As the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act approaches, we assess whether the nation’s experiment with the Federal Reserve has been a success or a failure. Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed’s full history (1914 to present)...

We estimate how spending in Texas responded to a 1997 constitutional amendment that relaxed severe restrictions on home equity lending. We use this event as a natural experiment to estimate the importance of credit constraints. If households are credit-constrained, such an increase in credit...

The impact of monetary policy on agriculture has been much debated. This study examines the dynamic responses of U.S. agricultural prices to money-supply shocks using three innovations. First, the variables' responses are identified by long-run money neutrality restrictions instead of the more...