IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1365.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dynamics of the Federal Funds Target Rate: A Nonstationary Discrete Choice Approach

Author

Abstract

We apply a discrete choice approach to model the empirical behavior of the Federal Reserve in changing the federal funds target rate, the benchmark of short term market interest rates in the US. Our methods allow the explanatory variables to be nonstationary as well as stationary. This feature is particularly useful in the present application as many economic fundamentals that are monitored by the Fed and are believed to affect decisions to adjust interest rate targets display some nonstationarity over time. The empirical model is determined using the PIC criterion (Phillips and Ploberger, 1996; Phillips, 1996) as a model selection device. The chosen model successfully predicts the majority of the target rate changes during the time period considered (1985-2001) and helps to explain strings of similar intervention decisions by the Fed. Based on the model-implied optimal interest rate, our findings suggest that there a lag in the Fed's reaction to economic shocks and that the Fed is more conservative in raising interest rates than in lowering rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Ling Hu & Peter C.B. Phillips, 2002. "Dynamics of the Federal Funds Target Rate: A Nonstationary Discrete Choice Approach," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1365, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1365
    Note: CFP 1112.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d13/d1365.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joon Y. Park & Peter C. B. Phillips, 2000. "Nonstationary Binary Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1249-1280, September.
    2. Hu, Ling & Phillips, Peter C. B., 2004. "Nonstationary discrete choice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 103-138, May.
    3. Graciela Kaminsky & Saul Lizondo & Carmen M. Reinhart, 1998. "Leading Indicators of Currency Crises," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 45(1), pages 1-48, March.
    4. Phillips, Peter C B, 1996. "Econometric Model Determination," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 763-812, July.
    5. Peter C. B. Phillips, 2001. "Descriptive econometrics for non-stationary time series with empirical illustrations," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 389-413.
    6. Ray C. Fair, 2001. "Actual Federal Reserve policy behavior and interest rate rules," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Mar, pages 61-72.
    7. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226791258 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Brian P. Sack, 1998. "Does the Fed act gradually? a VAR analysis," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1998-17, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Peter C. B. Phillips, 2005. "Econometric Analysis of Fisher's Equation," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(1), pages 125-168, January.
    11. Chang Sik Kim & Peter C.B. Phillips, 2006. "Log Periodogram Regression: The Nonstationary Case," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1587, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    12. Michael J. Dueker, 1999. "Measuring monetary policy inertia in target Fed funds rate changes," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 81(Sep), pages 3-10.
    13. Fama, Eugene F & Bliss, Robert R, 1987. "The Information in Long-Maturity Forward Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 680-692, September.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Katsumi Shimotsu & Peter C.B. Phillips, 2000. "Local Whittle Estimation in Nonstationary and Unit Root Cases," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1266, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Sep 2003.
    17. Phillips, Peter C B & Ploberger, Werner, 1996. "An Asymptotic Theory of Bayesian Inference for Time Series," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(2), pages 381-412, March.
    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. Rebeca I. Muñoz Torres & David Shepherd, 2014. "Inflation Targeting and the Consistency of Monetary Policy Decisions in Mexico: an Empirical Analysis with Discrete Choice Models," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82, pages 21-46, December.
    2. Dong He & Laurent L. Pauwels, 2008. "What Prompts the People's Bank of China to Change Its Monetary Policy Stance? Evidence from a Discrete Choice Model," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 16(6), pages 1-21, November.
    3. Hu, Ling & Phillips, Peter C. B., 2004. "Nonstationary discrete choice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 103-138, May.
    4. Farrokh Nourzad & James Calhoun & Adam Kurkiewicz, 2012. "Federal funds futures, risk premium and monetary policy actions," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(16), pages 1317-1330, August.

    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. Eric Jondeau & Frédéric Sedillot, 1998. "La pr vision des taux longs fran ais et allemands partir d'un modele anticipations rationnelles," Working papers 55, Banque de France.
    2. Phillips, Peter C. B., 2001. "Trending time series and macroeconomic activity: Some present and future challenges," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 21-27, January.
    3. Hu, Ling & Phillips, Peter C. B., 2004. "Nonstationary discrete choice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 103-138, May.
    4. Kozicki, Sharon & Tinsley, P.A., 2005. "What do you expect? Imperfect policy credibility and tests of the expectations hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 421-447, March.
    5. Jef Boeckx, 2011. "Estimating monetary policy reaction functions : A discrete choice approach," Working Paper Research 210, National Bank of Belgium.
    6. Monika Piazzesi, 2001. "An Econometric Model of the Yield Curve with Macroeconomic Jump Effects," NBER Working Papers 8246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Hong, Seung Hyun & Phillips, Peter C. B., 2010. "Testing Linearity in Cointegrating Relations With an Application to Purchasing Power Parity," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 28(1), pages 96-114.
    8. Huse, Cristian, 2011. "Term structure modelling with observable state variables," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3240-3252.
    9. Sharon Kozicki & Peter A. Tinsley, "undated". "Moving Endpoints in Macrofinance," Computing in Economics and Finance 1996 _058, Society for Computational Economics.
    10. Söderström, Ulf, 1999. "Should central banks be more aggressive?," Working Paper Series 84, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    11. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5221 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Buraschi, Andrea & Jiltsov, Alexei, 2005. "Inflation risk premia and the expectations hypothesis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 429-490, February.
    13. Kozicki, Sharon & Tinsley, P. A., 2001. "Shifting endpoints in the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 613-652, June.
    14. Wang, Qiying & Phillips, Peter C.B., 2009. "Asymptotic Theory For Local Time Density Estimation And Nonparametric Cointegrating Regression," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 710-738, June.
    15. Favero, Carlo A., 2006. "Taylor rules and the term structure," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1377-1393, October.
    16. Michael Woodford, 1999. "Optimal Monetary Policy Inertia," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 67(s1), pages 1-35.
    17. Kozicki, Sharon & Tinsley, P A, 1998. "Moving Endpoints and the Internal Consistency of Agents' Ex Ante Forecasts," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 11(1-2), pages 21-40, April.
    18. Hyeongwoo Kim & John Jackson & Richard Saba, 2009. "Forecasting the FOMC's interest rate setting behavior: a further analysis," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 145-165.
    19. Michael Woodford, 2003. "Optimal Interest-Rate Smoothing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(4), pages 861-886.
    20. Phillips, Peter C.B. & Jin, Sainan & Hu, Ling, 2007. "Nonstationary discrete choice: A corrigendum and addendum," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 1115-1130, December.
    21. John Y. Campbell, 1995. "Some Lessons from the Yield Curve," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 129-152, Summer.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Extended arc sine laws; Federal funds target rate; Interest rate; Monetary policy; Nonstationary discrete choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    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:cwl:cwldpp:1365. 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: Brittany Ladd (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cowleus.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.