Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

This paper uses the IMF's Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model to compute shortrun multipliers of fiscal stimulus measures and long-run crowding-out effects of higher debt. Multipliers of two-year stimulus range from 0.2 to 2.2 depending on the fiscal instrument, the extent of monetary accommodation and the presence of a financial accelerator mechanism. A permanent 0.5 percentage point increase in the U.S. deficit to GDP ratio raises the U.S. tax burden and world real interest rates in the long run, thereby reducing U.S. and rest of the world output by 0.3-0.6 and 0.2 percent, respectively.

More than two years ago the European Central Bank (ECB) adopted a negative interest rate policy (NIRP) to achieve its price stability objective. Negative interest rates have so far supported easier financial conditions and contributed to a modest expansion in credit, demonstrating that the zero lower bound is less binding than previously thought. However, interest rate cuts also weigh on bank profitability. Substantial rate cuts may at some point outweigh the benefits from higher asset values and stronger aggregate demand. Further monetary accommodation may need to rely more on credit easing and an expansion of the ECB’s balance sheet rather than substantial additional reductions in the policy rate.

This paper uses two of the IMF’s DSGE models to simulate the benefits of international fiscal and macroprudential policy coordination. The key argument is that these two policies are similar in that, unlike monetary policy, they have long-run effects on the level of GDP that need to be traded off with short-run effects on the volatility of GDP. Furthermore, the short-run effects are potentially much larger than those of conventional monetary policy, especially in the presence of nonlinearities such as the zero interest rate floor, minimum capital adequacy regulations, and lending risk that depends in a convex fashion on loan-to-value ratios. As a consequence we find that coordinated fiscal and/or macroprudential policy measures can have much larger stimulus and spillover effects than what has traditionally been found in the literature on conventional monetary policy.

Contents: (1) Background: Severity of the 2008-2009 Recession; Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis and Recession: Monetary Policy Actions; Fiscal Policy Actions; (2) Is Sustained Economic Recovery Underway?; (3) The Shape of Economic Recovery: Demand Side Problems?: Consumption Spending; Investment Spending; Net Exports; Supply Side Problems?; Policy Responses to Increase the Pace of Economic Recovery: The Case for More Fiscal Stimulus; The Case Against More Fiscal Stimulus; The Case Against More Monetary Stimulus; Economic Projections. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The focus is on the size of fiscal multipliers, and on the possibility that multipliers can turn negative (i.e., that fiscal contractions can be expansionary). The paper concludes that fiscal multipliers are overwhelmingly positive but small. However, there is some evidence of negative fiscal multipliers.

Marshaling an array of data, Less Work for Less Pay shows rather than tells us why economic prosperity for America and other Western nations is now beyond the ability of central bankers and federal governments to accelerate through their creative stimulus actions. Instead, these measures often serve to delay the inevitable rebalancing of labor, debt, taxes and regulatory reform that is vital for greater economic competitiveness among these nations. Multinational corporations figured this out years ago as they continue to aggressively pursue foreign markets and tax advantages in the world economy. Meanwhile, workers within Western economies are grudgingly adjusting to a world of contingency, contract and part-time employment as opportunities for permanent well-paying jobs shrink. Regrettably, the United States and other developed nations remain obliviously stuck to antiquated labor, debt, and regulatory policies that fail to reflect the dynamic economic environment globalization and technology has created. More optimistically, remedies are offered to undertake many of the modern employment challenges neglected by current public policies.