From the Vault: Supplementing a Monetary Policy Syllabus

Anna Snider

The San Francisco Fed’s John Williams gave an interesting speech awhile back on the challenge of teaching economics after the financial crisis, since the Federal Reserve had deployed new monetary policy and lending tools that “were not found in any textbook.”

Since the Liberty Street Economics launch in 2011, our bloggers have written numerous posts documenting the changes that have swept through the economy and influenced the direction of monetary policy. For professors, these posts can serve as supplementary teaching tools and help keep students of the Fed up to date.

Take a tour through our blog archive for analysis of:

• The evolution of the discount window and the Fed’s role as lender of last resort;
• The macroeconomic effects of the Fed’s large-scale asset purchase programs;
• Changes that allowed the Fed to pay interest on bank reserves;
• The source of the zero lower bound on interest rates;
• The extent of the monetary policy “pass-through” to consumer rates;
• A new approach to calculating the fed funds rate; and
• What’s keeping the “natural rate of interest” low.

As Williams noted, Keynes, Friedman, and Tobin are still central to any monetary policy syllabus. But for a solid base today, there are new developments to cover.

Selected Posts:

Why Do Central Banks Have Discount Windows?

João Santos and Stavros Peristiani

Will “Quantitative Easing” Trigger Inflation?
Kenneth Garbade

Why (or Why Not) Keep Paying Interest on Excess Reserves?
Gara Afonso

Why Is There a “Zero Lower Bound” on Interest Rates?

Todd Keister

Why Isn’t the Thirty-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage at 2.6 Percent?

Andreas Fuster and David Lucca

The FR 2420 Data Collection: A New Base for the Fed Funds Rate

Marco Cipriani and Jonathan Cohn

Why Are Interest Rates So Low?

Marco Del Negro, Marc Giannoni, Matthew Cocci, Sara Shahanaghi, and Micah Smith

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author.

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Anna Snider is a cross-media editor in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group.