Forecasting Feds Fund Rate: 1982-2014

Abstract

Federal funds rate in the US is the interest rate that the banks pay each other for lending funds overnight. Fed funds rate is an important benchmark in the economy because of its significant impact on many other financial indices. The target rate is determined by Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Federal Reserve’s method of determining “reaction function” is subject to speculation for a long time. Taylor believed that the reaction function can be specified as a weighted average of deviations of inflation and unemployment from target values. But this model, even though worked for a long time, are under attack by new economists and like many old models are obsolete because of the various structural change in the society and economy. In this work, different models and different parameters are used to determine the reaction function. According to the results, VAR model gives the best FERMS (5.7%). Another interesting observation is that the inflation rate does not granger-cause Feds fund target rate which is not consistent with Taylor rule. On the other hand, the unemployment rate plays an important role in the Feds reaction function.