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170 posts on "Monetary Policy"January 13, 2022The Fed’s Latest Tool: A Standing Repo Facility
In July 2021, the Federal Open Market Committee announced a new tool for monetary policy implementation: a domestic standing repurchase agreement facility. In the last post of this series, we explain what this new tool is and how it will support the effective implementation of monetary policy in the floor system through which the Fed implements policy.
Posted at 7:00 am in Central Bank, Federal Reserve, FOMC, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)January 12, 2022How the Fed Adjusts the Fed Funds Rate within Its Target Range
At its June 2021 meeting, the FOMC maintained its target range for the fed funds rate at 0 to 25 basis points, while two of the Federal Reserve’s administered rates—interest on reserve balances and the overnight reverse repo (ON RRP) facility offering rate—each were increased by 5 basis points. What do these two simultaneous decisions mean? In today’s post, we look at “technical adjustments”—a tool the Fed can deploy to keep the FOMC’s policy rate well within the target range and support smooth market functioning.
Posted at 7:00 am in Central Bank, Fed Funds, Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)January 11, 2022How the Fed’s Overnight Reverse Repo Facility Works
Daily take-up at the overnight reverse repo (ON RRP) facility increased from less than $1 billion in early March 2021 to just under $2 trillion on December 31, 2021. In the second post in this series, we take a closer look at this important tool in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy implementation framework and discuss the factors behind the recent increase in volume.
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Banks, Central Bank, COVID-19 Facilities, Credit, Crisis, Fed Funds, Federal Reserve, Financial Institutions, Monetary Policy, Pandemic, Repo | Permalink | Comments (0)January 10, 2022How the Federal Reserve’s Monetary Policy Implementation Framework Has Evolved
In a series of four posts, we review key elements of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy implementation framework. The framework has changed markedly in the last two decades. Prior to the global financial crisis, the Fed used a system of scarce reserves and fine-tuned the supply of reserves to maintain rate control. However, since then, the Fed has operated in a floor system, where active management of the supply of reserves no longer plays a role in rate control, but rather the Fed’s administered rates influence the federal funds rate. In this first post, we discuss the salient features of the implementation framework in a stylized way.
Posted at 7:00 am in Central Bank, Fed Funds, Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)January 7, 2022The Effect of Inequality on the Transmission of Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Monetary policy can have a meaningful impact on inequality, as recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest. In light of this, how should policy be conducted? And how does inequality affect the transmission of monetary policy? These are the topics covered in the second part of the recent symposium on “Heterogeneity in Macroeconomics: Implications for Policy,” hosted by the new Applied Macroeconomics and Econometrics Center (AMEC) of the New York Fed on November 12.
Posted at 7:00 am in Fiscal Policy, Inequality, Macroecon, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)January 6, 2022The Effect of Monetary and Fiscal Policy on Inequality
How does accounting for households’ heterogeneity—and in particular inequality in income and wealth—change our approach to macroeconomics? What are the effects of monetary and fiscal policy on inequality, and what did we learn in this regard from the COVID-19 pandemic? What are the implications of inequality for the transmission of monetary policy, and its ability to stabilize the economy? These are some of the questions that were debated at a recent symposium on “Heterogeneity in Macroeconomics: Implications for Policy” organized by the new Applied Macroeconomics and Econometrics Center (AMEC) of the New York Fed on November 12.
Posted at 7:00 am in FOMC, Inequality, Macroecon, Monetary Policy, Pandemic, Recession, Unemployment | Permalink | Comments (0)November 24, 2021The Term Spread as a Predictor of Financial Instability
The term spread is the difference between interest rates on short- and long-dated government securities. It is often referred to as a predictor of the business cycle. In particular, inversions of the yield curve—a negative term spread—are considered an early warning sign. Such inversions typically receive a lot of attention in policy debates when they […]
Posted at 7:00 am in Crisis, Financial Intermediation, Forecasting, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)October 15, 2021At the New York Fed: Implications of Federal Reserve Actions in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
On September 30 and October 1, 2021, the New York Fed held a virtual conference on the implications of the Fed’s actions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. New York Fed President John Williams gave the opening and concluding remarks.
Posted at 12:00 pm in COVID-19 Facilities, Crisis, Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy, Recession | Permalink | Comments (0)September 7, 2021The Housing Boom and the Decline in Mortgage Rates
During the pandemic, national home values and housing activity soared as mortgage rates declined to historic lows. Under the canonical “user cost” house price model, home values are held to be very sensitive to interest rates, especially at low interest rate levels. A calibration of this model can account for the house price boom with the observed decline in interest rates. But empirically, we find that home values are nowhere near as sensitive to interest rates as the user cost model predicts. This lower sensitivity is also found in prior economic research. Thus, the historical experience suggests that lower interest rates can only account for a tiny fraction of the pandemic house price boom. Instead, we find more scope for lower interest rates to explain the rise in housing activity, both sales and construction.
Posted at 7:00 am in Housing, Macroecon, Monetary Policy, Mortgages, Pandemic | Permalink | Comments (0)May 17, 2021How Does U.S. Monetary Policy Affect Emerging Market Economies?
The question of how U.S. monetary policy affects foreign economies has received renewed interest in recent years. The bulk of the empirical evidence points to sizable effects, especially on emerging market economies (EMEs). A key theme in the literature is that these spillovers operate largely through financial channels—that is, the effects of a U.S. policy tightening manifest themselves abroad via declines in international risky asset prices, tighter financial conditions, and capital outflows. This so-called Global Financial Cycle has been shown to affect EMEs more forcefully than advanced economies. It is because higher U.S. policy rates have a disproportionately larger impact on rates in EMEs. In our recent research, we develop a model with cross-border financial linkages that provides theoretical foundations for these empirical findings. In this Liberty Street Economics post, we use the model to illustrate the spillovers from a tightening of U.S. monetary policy on credit spreads and on the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) premium in EMEs with dollar-denominated debt.
Posted at 7:00 am in Credit, Currency, DSGE, Exchange Rates, International Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (0)Economic Research Tracker
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