IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/udb/wpaper/uwec-2002-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Were Changes in the Federal Funds Rate Smaller in the 1990s?

Author

Listed:
  • Arabinda Basistha

    (University of Washington)

  • Richard Startz

    (University of Washington)

Abstract

In this paper, we identify two major changes in the dynamics of the federal funds rate in the 1990s. We model the desired rate in a two-regime setting, one when the Fed makes no change and the other when the Fed is moving the desired rate to a new level. We find that the 1990s saw longer duration in the no-change regime as well as smaller changes in the other regime. We show the smaller changes were neither due to a less aggressive Fed nor due to lower volatility of the fundamentals. In fact, the Fed responded more aggressively to changes in fundamentals in the 1990s. The results also suggest that the Fed became more forward-looking in the last decade.

Suggested Citation

  • Arabinda Basistha & Richard Startz, 2002. "Why Were Changes in the Federal Funds Rate Smaller in the 1990s?," Working Papers UWEC-2002-02, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:udb:wpaper:uwec-2002-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.washington.edu/user/startz/Working_Papers/FederalFunds.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dean Croushore, 1998. "Evaluating inflation forecasts," Working Papers 98-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    2. Richard Clarida & Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 147-180.
    3. James D. Hamilton & Oscar Jorda, 2002. "A Model of the Federal Funds Rate Target," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(5), pages 1135-1167, October.
    4. Mishkin, Frederic S., 1990. "What does the term structure tell us about future inflation?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 77-95, January.
    5. Sack, Brian & Wieland, Volker, 2000. "Interest-rate smoothing and optimal monetary policy: a review of recent empirical evidence," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 205-228.
    6. Clarida, Richard & Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1998. "Monetary policy rules in practice Some international evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1033-1067, June.
    7. Kim, Chang-Jin & Nelson, Charles R & Piger, Jeremy, 2004. "The Less-Volatile U.S. Economy: A Bayesian Investigation of Timing, Breadth, and Potential Explanations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 22(1), pages 80-93, January.
    8. Estrella, Arturo & Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1991. "The Term Structure as a Predictor of Real Economic Activity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 555-576, June.
    9. Mark W. Watson, 1999. "Explaining the increased variability in long-term interest rates," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Fall, pages 71-96.
    10. Michael Woodford, 1999. "Optimal monetary policy inertia," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    11. Yash P. Mehra, 1998. "The bond rate and actual future inflation," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 27-47.
    12. repec:bla:manchs:v:67:y:1999:i:0:p:1-35 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Rudebusch, Glenn D., 1995. "Federal Reserve interest rate targeting, rational expectations, and the term structure," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 245-274, April.
    14. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bennani, Hamza & Kranz, Tobias & Neuenkirch, Matthias, 2018. "Disagreement between FOMC members and the Fed’s staff: New insights based on a counterfactual interest rate," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 139-153.
    2. Hamza Bennani, 2016. "Measuring Monetary Policy Stress for Fed District Representatives," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 63(2), pages 156-176, May.
    3. Arabinda Basistha & Richard Startz, 2022. "Monetary shock measurement and stock markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(2-3), pages 685-706, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. George Monokroussos, 2011. "Dynamic Limited Dependent Variable Modeling and U.S. Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 519-534, March.
    2. Rudebusch, Glenn D., 2002. "Term structure evidence on interest rate smoothing and monetary policy inertia," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1161-1187, September.
    3. Coenen, Gunter & Wieland, Volker, 2005. "A small estimated euro area model with rational expectations and nominal rigidities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1081-1104, July.
    4. Clémentine Florens & Eric Jondeau & Hervé Le Bihan, 2001. "Assessing GMM Estimates of the Federal Reserve Reaction Function," Econometrics 0111003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Éric Jondeau & Hervé Le Bihan, 2002. "Evaluating Monetary Policy Rules in Estimated Forward-Looking Models: A Comparison of US and German Monetary Policies," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 67-68, pages 357-388.
    6. James Bullard & Kaushik Mitra, 2007. "Determinacy, Learnability, and Monetary Policy Inertia," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(5), pages 1177-1212, August.
    7. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2006. "Monetary Policy Inertia: Fact or Fiction?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(4), December.
    8. Sarno, Lucio & Thornton, Daniel L & Valente, Giorgio, 2005. "Federal Funds Rate Prediction," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 449-471, June.
    9. Carlos Montoro, 2007. "Monetary Policy Committees and Interest Rate Smoothing," CEP Discussion Papers dp0780, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    10. Kozicki, Sharon & Tinsley, P.A., 2005. "Permanent and transitory policy shocks in an empirical macro model with asymmetric information," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1985-2015, November.
    11. Florian Ielpo & Dominique Gúegan, 2009. "Understanding the Importance of the Duration and Size of the Variations of Fed’s Target Rate," The IUP Journal of Monetary Economics, IUP Publications, vol. 0(3-4), pages 44-72, August.
    12. John Driffill & Zeno Rotondi, 2007. "Inertia in Taylor Rules," WEF Working Papers 0032, ESRC World Economy and Finance Research Programme, Birkbeck, University of London.
    13. Manuel Joaquim Da Natividade Silva & Gutemberg Hespanha Brasil & Ricardo Ramalhete Moreira, 2016. "Dynamic relations of the inertia of monetary policy: application to the Brazilian case by a Kalman approach," International Journal of Monetary Economics and Finance, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(1), pages 1-24.
    14. Jiri Podpiera, 2006. "The Role of Policy Rule Misspecification in Monetary Policy Inertia Debate," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp315, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    15. Edilean Silva Bejarano Aragón & Gabriela Medeiros, 2015. "Monetary policy in Brazil: evidence of a reaction function with time-varying parameters and endogenous regressors," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 557-575, March.
    16. Michael Woodford, 2003. "Optimal Interest-Rate Smoothing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(4), pages 861-886.
    17. de Sá, Rodrigo & Savino Portugal, Marcelo, 2015. "Central bank and asymmetric preferences: An application of sieve estimators to the U.S. and Brazil," MPRA Paper 72746, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Hibiki Ichiue, 2004. "Why Can the Yield Curve Predict Output Growth, Inflation, and Interest Rates? An Analysis with an Affine Term Structure Model," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 04-E-11, Bank of Japan.
    19. Carlos Montoro, 2007. "Why Central Banks Smooth Interest Rates? A Political Economy Explanation," Working Papers 2007-003, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú.
    20. de Sá, Rodrigo & Portugal, Marcelo S., 2015. "Central bank and asymmetric preferences: An application of sieve estimators to the U.S. and Brazil," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 72-83.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:udb:wpaper:uwec-2002-02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael Goldblatt (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuwaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.