Federal Reserve System

About: Federal Reserve System is a other organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 2373 authors who have published 10301 publications receiving 511979 citations.

Measuring the effects of monetary policy: a factor-augmented vector autoregressive (FAVAR) approach

Abstract: Structural vector autoregressions (VARs) are widely used to trace out the effect of monetary policy innovations on the economy. However, the sparse information sets typically used in these empirical models lead to at least two potential problems with the results. First, to the extent that central banks and the private sector have information not reflected in the VAR, the measurement of policy innovations is likely to be contaminated. A second problem is that impulse responses can be observed only for the included variables, which generally constitute only a small subset of the variables that the researcher and policymaker care about. In this paper we investigate one potential solution to this limited information problem, which combines the standard structural VAR analysis with recent developments in factor analysis for large data sets. We find that the information that our factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) methodology exploits is indeed important to properly identify the monetary transmission mechanism. Overall, our results provide a comprehensive and coherent picture of the effect of monetary policy on the economy.

Oil Price Shocks and the U.S. Economy: Where Does the Asymmetry Originate?

Abstract: Rising oil prices appear to retard aggregate U.S. economic activity by more than falling oil prices stimulate it. Past research suggests adjustment costs, financial stress, and/or monetary policy may be possible explanations for the asymmetric response. This paper uses a near vector autoregressive model of the U.S. economy to examine where the asymmetry might originate. The analysis uses counterfactual experiments to determine that monetary policy alone cannot account for the asymmetry.

The Cyclicality of Separation and Job Finding Rates

Abstract: This paper uses CPS gross flow data to analyze the business cycle dynamics of separation and job finding rates and to quantify their contributions to overall unemployment variability. Cyclical changes in the separation rate are negatively correlated with changes in productivity and move contemporaneously with them, while the job finding rate is positively correlated with and tends to lag productivity. Contemporaneous fluctuations in the separation rate explain between 40 and 50 percent of fluctuations in unemployment, depending on how the data are detrended. This figure becomes larger when dynamic interactions between the separation and job finding rates are considered.