题目: Estimating Monetary Policy Rules When Nominal Interest Rates Are Stuck at Zero

主讲人：Jinill Kim, Professor of Economics, Korea University

Abstract

Did the Federal Reserve's response to economic fundamentals change with the onset of the Global Financial Crisis? Answering this question is difficult because the U.S. hort-term policy rate started to be targeted between zero and 25 basis points shortly after the Crisis began, therefore preventing meaningful covariation between nominal short rates and economic fundamentals. Data from surveys of economic forecasts allow us to sidestep the censoring problem and to use a simple regression to estimate monetary policy rules. Regression results indicate that the Fed's inflation response has decreased and that the unemployment response remained as strong. In terms of central bank communication, our results can be viewed as an argument that the Federal Reserve's commitment to stable inflation has become weaker in the eyes of the professional forecasters---and probably the financial markets as well.