The lecture published here examines what we have learned about how central banks should be set up to conduct monetary policy. It provides seven guiding principles for central banks and then applies them to see whether there is room for improvement in the way the Federal Reserve System operates.
Self-employment is often viewed as an important route for advancement up the income ladder. For some it may be a better route than paid employment, while for others, who may be disadvantaged when pursuing paid employment, it may be the only route.
Unites States Treasury Inflation–Indexed Securities (TIIS) were first issued in January 1997. They are now a small but growing fraction of outstanding Treasury debt. This article describes TIIS and explores what they can—and cannot—tell us about financial-market expectations of inflation and real interest rates.
Researchers depend on observed regularities in macroeconomic data to guide the development of theory. One problem in developing monetary models of the business cycle is that there seems to be a great deal of instability in nominal data. Using data from 1959:Q1 to 1998:Q4, authors Gavin and Kydland document changes in the cyclical behavior of nominal data series that appear after 1979:Q3 when the Federal Reserve implemented a policy to end the acceleration of inflation.
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