Stylized Facts of the FOMC’s Longer-Run Forecasts

Abstract

Conventional explanations of monetary policy decisions in the United States assume that the longer-run Federal funds rate is determined by a representative central banker (i.e., the Fed) using longer-term forecasts of economic activity and unemployment. This assumption is inconsistent with the federalist structure of the Federal Reserve in which the Federal funds rate is determined by a committee made up of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. This inconsistency would be irrelevant if differences in the Fed participants’ longer-run projections were small or constant, but they are not: disparities in these longer-run projections are large and volatile. This finding raises several questions: Are FOMC participants relying on the same forecasting framework (i.e., model or rules of thumb) but using different values for the forecast drivers? Or are these participants using the same forecast drivers but relying on different frameworks?