At the center of the financial market crisis of 2007-2008 was a highly unusual jump in spreads between the overnight inter-bank lending rate and term London inter-bank offer rates (Libor). Because many private loans are linked to Libor rates, the sharp increase in these spreads raised the cost...

This paper analyzes a new stylized fact: According to financial market prices, the correlation between uncertainty shocks, as measured by changes in the VIX, and changes in break-even inflation rates has declined and turned negative over the past quarter century. It rationalizes this...

We propose a new approach to assessing the anchoring of inflation expectations using “strategic surveys.” Namely, we measure households’ revisions in long-run inflation expectations after they are presented with different economic scenarios. A key advantage of this approach is that it...

We examine the performance and robustness properties of monetary policy rules in an estimated macroeconomic model in which the economy undergoes structural change and where private agents and the central bank possess imperfect knowledge about the true structure of the economy. Policymakers...

We develop an estimated model of the U.S. economy in which agents form expectations by continually updating their beliefs regarding the behavior of the economy and monetary policy. We explore the effects of policymakers' misperceptions of the natural rate of unemployment during the late 1960s...