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The effects of the Federal Reserve's date-based forward guidance

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  • Matthew Raskin
Abstract
Between August 2011 and December 2012 the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) used date-based forward guidance to help stimulate the U.S. economy and promote its objectives of maximum employment and price stability. Some have argued that the formulation of the guidance that the FOMC used may have reduced interest rates primarily by signaling a weak economic outlook rather than by signaling a more accommodative stance of monetary policy. I examine the impact of the date-based guidance, with the principal goal of discerning the extent to which it altered investors' views of the FOMC's policy reaction function. I show that one seemingly straightforward way to address this question--using estimates of the sensitivity of money market futures rates to macroeconomic data surprises--is confounded by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates, a point that has more general implications for the analysis of the effects of monetary policy at the zero bound. I demonstrate that the problem can be overcome using distributions of investors' short-term interest rate expectations constructed from interest rate options. Using PDFs constructed from these options, along with survey measures of macroeconomic surprises, I find the date-based guidance led to a statistically significant and economically meaningful change in investors' perceptions of the FOMC's reaction function. This finding is robust to various regression specifications and the use of alternative options contracts and PDF fitting methodologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Raskin, 2013. "The effects of the Federal Reserve's date-based forward guidance," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2013-37, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2013-37
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    Cited by:

    1. Kedan, Danielle & Stuart, Rebecca, 2014. "Central Bank Communications: A Comparative Study," Quarterly Bulletin Articles, Central Bank of Ireland, pages 89-104, April.
    2. Gábor Dávid Kiss & Mercédesz Mészáros, 2020. "Gravity Among Central Bank Balance Sheets: Monetary Policy Spill-Over on FX Volatility," Econometric Research in Finance, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis, vol. 5(1), pages 33-57, June.
    3. Moessner, Richhild, 2015. "Reactions of US government bond yields to explicit FOMC forward guidance," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 217-233.
    4. Maria Lucia Florez-Jimenez & Julian A. Parra-Polania, 2016. "Forward guidance with an escape clause: when half a promise is better than a full one," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(15), pages 1372-1381, March.
    5. Goy, Gavin & Hommes, Cars & Mavromatis, Kostas, 2022. "Forward guidance and the role of central bank credibility under heterogeneous beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1240-1274.
    6. Richhild Moessner & David-Jan Jansen & Jakob de Haan, 2017. "Communication About Future Policy Rates In Theory And Practice: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 678-711, July.
    7. Thornton, Daniel L., 2017. "Effectiveness of QE: An assessment of event-study evidence," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 56-74.
    8. Emilian DOBRESCU, 2020. "Self-fulfillment degree of economic expectations within an integrated space: The European Union case study," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(4), pages 5-32, December.
    9. Gavin Goy & Cars Homme & Kostas Mavromatis, 2018. "Forward Guidance and the Role of Central Bank Credibility," DNB Working Papers 614, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.

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