Review

A monetary policy rule is nothing more than a systematic decision-making process that uses information in a consistent and predictable way. In this article, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President, William Poole, critically examines past instances when policy failed to deliver price stability.

Most occupational credit unions serve (in part) as a means for corporate sponsors to deliver tax-favored benefits to their employees. Credit union managers administer this transfer of benefits, but their performance is difficult to measure, particularly in larger credit unions. In this article, the authors develop a model of efficiency wages and optimal risk-taking and then provide empirical evidence from a large sample of occupational credit unions.

The Asian financial and economic crisis has attracted much attention to the trade links among the United States and countries throughout Asia. Until the crisis, U.S. exports to East Asia were growing rapidly. In this article, the authors examine the abrupt decline in exports and provide estimates of the sizes of the export shock both to the U.S. economy as a whole and to specific sectors.

The author estimates a simple model that illustrates whether inflation persistence has changed in a significant fashion in inflation targeting vs. non inflation-targeting countries. Although he notes that it is too early for a definitive assessment of inflation targeting, he add that from the standpoint of economic analysis and empirical performance to date, a policy of inflation control offers as good a chance as any policy regime to produce consistently good macroeconomic performance.