Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

About: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is a other organization based out in St Louis, Missouri, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 203 authors who have published 1650 publications receiving 46084 citations.

How Did We Get to Inflation Targeting and Where Do We Go Now? A Perspective from the U.S. Experience

Abstract: This paper advances the hypothesis that the transition from there-is-little-central-banks-can-do-to-control-inflation to inflation targeting occurred because central banks, especially the Federal Reserve, demonstrated that central banks can control inflation rather than a consequence of marked improvement in the professions understanding of how monetary policy controls inflation. As consequence, monetary theorists and central bankers have returned to a Phillips curve framework for formulating and evaluating the monetary policy. I suggest that the return to the Phillips curve framework endangers the continued effectiveness, and perhaps even viability, of inflation targeting, recommend three steps that inflation-targeting central banks should take to preserve and strengthen inflation targeting.

Further analysis of the expectations hypothesis using very short-term rates

Abstract: Longstaff [Longstaff, F., 2000. The term structure of very short-term rates: new evidence for the expectations hypothesis. Journal of Financial Economics 58, 397–415] finds support for the expectations hypothesis at the very short end of the repurchase agreement (repo) term structure while other studies find calendar-time-based regularities cause rejection of the expectations hypothesis. Using Longstaff’s methods on a sample of repo rates that pre-dates Longstaff’s sample, we reject the expectations hypothesis for every maturity. The pre-Longstaff-sample repo data comes from a time period where the behavior of short-term interest rates is similar to the long-run average behavior of short-term interest rates. Our results imply that expectations hold when rates are less volatile and/or that we may be entering a period of lower volatility.

Greenspan’s Conundrum and the Fed’s Ability to Affect Long-Term Yields

Abstract: In February 2005 Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noticed that the 10-year Treasury yields failed to increase despite a 150-basis-point increase in the federal funds rate as a “conundrum.” This paper shows that the connection between the 10-year yield and the federal funds rate was severed in the late 1980s, well in advance of Greenspan’s observation. The paper hypothesize that the change occurred because the Federal Open Market Committee switched from using the federal funds rate as an operating instrument to using it to implement monetary policy and presents evidence from a variety of sources supporting the hypothesis. The analysis has implications for central banks’ interest rate policies.

How Did the Financial Crisis Alter the Correlations of U.S. Yield Spreads

Abstract: We investigate the pairwise correlations of 11 U.S. fixed income yield spreads over a sample that includes the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. Using cross-sectional methods and nonparametric bootstrap breakpoint tests, we characterize the crisis as a period in which pairwise correlations between yield spreads were systematically and significantly altered in the sense that spreads comoved with one another much more than in normal times. We find evidence that, for almost half of the 55 pairs under investigation, the crisis has left spreads much more correlated than they were previously. This evidence is particularly strong for liquidity- and default-risk-related spreads, long-term spreads, and the spreads that were most likely directly affected by policy interventions.