Measuring Federal Reserve officials’ secret disagreement behind locked doors of FOMC meetings

Dissent votes in Federal Reserve policy meetings are rare, accounting for only 6.37% of the votes between 1976 and 2017. However, opting not to vote against the FOMC consensus doesn't necessarily mean committee members don't "disagree" with it.

Early signs of inflation expectation de-anchoring back in 2021

Ricardo Reis, economics professor at the London School of Economics, explained that there were telling signs that the increase in cost of living started ealry-2021 was not a "transitory" phenomenon.

Dallas Fed’s Logan cites neutral rate uncertainty as reason to ‘proceed cautiously’ on rate...

Lorie Logan, president of Dallas Fed, expressed worry about uncertainty surrounding the exact level of neutral rate of interest and hinted at the risk that the Federal Reserve's policy rate might already near the point which further rate may starts to fuel inflation again

Why is the Hong Kong-US interest rate spread so persistent? — Currency peg in...

A spread of over 3.5 percentage points between US and Hong Kong Interest rate persisted for close to two months and so far arbitrage has failed to close the gap, leading to discussion of whether Hong Kong's Linked Exchange System is failing. This article, however, will explore some technical factors behind this interesting interest rate gap.

What is FTPL (Fiscal Theory of Price Level)?

The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level says that money has value because the government accepts it for taxes, and inflation is fundamentally a fiscal phenomenon

A skeptical review of the QEs – why they might not be powerful as...

In their working paper "A Skeptical View of the Impact of the Fed's Balance Sheet," economists David Greenlaw, James D. Hamilton, Ethan Harris, and Kenneth D. West challenge some earlier studies that concluded QEs have a significant economic impact. Their major argument is that those research used simple event studies to quantify the impact of QE.

Why Negative Rate is a better policy tool to Higher Inflation Target? Bernanke Explains…

In his latest Brookings blog post "Modifying the Fed’s policy framework: Does a higher inflation target beat negative interest rates?", Ben Bernanke compares two...

Blanchard’s “Policy Model” v “Theory Model”

Back in November last year, Professor Olivier Blanchard discussed with me about his view that there should be four types of macroeconomics, and "theory...

What is Payment on Reserves Process?

The payment on reserve process proposed by Robert Hall and Ricardo Reis is a way of remunerating reserves which would give the central bank...

Should Federal Reserve use scenario analysis to handle trade war uncertainty?

The Fed is currently in a "wait and see" mode in deciding what is the reaction to Trump's trade policy. But is it possible for the Fed to be a bit more proactive than merely saying "we will be able to update you further when we know more details"? Enters scenario analysis.

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