Shifts in US Federal Reserve Goals and Tactics for Monetary Policy: A Role for Penitence?

摘要

During its first century, the Federal Reserve has made a substantial number of changes in the conduct of monetary policy. Figure 1 plots a short-term interest rate, a measure of inflation, and the dates of recessions (shaded areas), which allows one to separate the 100-year history of policy making at the Fed into distinct periods. I focus on four of them.