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This study aims to both test the asymmetric information hypothesis and explore the factors influencing the one‐ through four‐quarter‐ahead Federal Reserve inflation forecasts for 1983‐2002.

Encompassing tests are used to examine the asymmetric information hypothesis. In modeling the Federal Reserve inflation forecasts, the authors are mindful of alternative theories of inflation which emphasize such determinants as cost‐push, demand‐pull and inertial factors.

First, the Federal Reserve inflation forecasts embody useful predictive information beyond that contained in the private forecasts. Second, with the private forecasts controlled for, the near‐term Federal Reserve inflation forecasts make use of qualitative information, and the longer‐term forecasts are influenced by the forecasts of growth in both unit labor costs and aggregate demand as well as the preceding‐quarter inflation forecasts and monetary policy shifts.

The Federal Reserve forecasts are released to the public with a five‐year lag and are currently available up to the fourth quarter of 2002. This limits the use of the most up‐to‐date forecasts desirable for this study.

The factors influencing the Federal Reserve inflation forecasts are basically those emphasized publicly by monetary authorities. This finding points to the Fed's transparency and should thus help enhance its credibility with the public. Also, our results (which shed light on the predictive information in the Federal Reserve inflation forecasts not included in the private forecasts) are of value, since they can help the Fed better predict how inflation will respond to policy actions, and they can help the public form more informative inflationary expectations.

Eugene Meyer governed the Federal Reserve Board during most of the Great Contraction. Yet his role and import are almost unknown. He was not misguided by incorrect policy indicators or the real bills doctrine; the usual explanations for the failure of monetary policy. Meyer urged the adoption of expansionary policies and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to assist banks, especially nonmembers. However, the diffusion of power enabled the district bank Governors to stifle his efforts, although an expansionary policy was finally adopted in 1932. His unquestioning commitment to gold and lack of operational authority are the reasons policy failed.

During the contraction from 1929 to 1933, the Federal Reserve System tracked changes in the status of all banks operating in the United States and determined the cause of each bank suspension. This chapter introduces that hitherto dormant data and presents aggregate series constructed from it. The new data series will supplement, and in some cases, supplant the data currently used to study banking panics during the period, which were published by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 1937.

The increased use of checks in nonlocal payments at the end of the nineteenth century presented problems for their clearing and collection. Checks were required to be paid in full (at par) only when presented directly to the drawn-upon bank at its counter. Consequently, many, primarily rural or small-town, banks began to charge remittance fees on checks not presented for collection in person. Such fees and the alleged circuitous routing of checks in the process of collection to avoid them were widely criticized defects of the pre-Federal Reserve payments system. As the new Federal Reserve established its own system for check clearing and collection, it also took as an implicit mandate the promotion of universal par clearing and collection. The result was a bitter struggle with non-par banks, the numbers of which initially shrunk dramatically but then rebounded. A 1923 Supreme Court decision ended the Fed’s active (or coercive) pursuit of universal par clearing, and non-par banking persisted thereafter for decades. Not until the Monetary Control Act of 1980 was universal par clearing and true monetary union, in which standard means of payment are accepted at par everywhere, achieved.

Soon after beginning operations, the Federal Reserve established a nationwide network for collecting information about the economy. In 1919, the Fed began tabulating data by about retail sales, which it viewed as a fundamental measure of consumption. From 1920 until 1929, the Federal Reserve published data about retail sales each month by Federal Reserve district, but ceased to do so after 1929. It continued to compile monthly data on retail sales by reserve district, but this data remained in house. We collected these in-house reports from the archives of the Board of Governors and constructed a consistent series on retail trade at the district level. The new series enhances our understanding of economic trends during the Roaring ‘20s and Great Depression.

This paper analyzes the two main divergent interpretations of Federal Reserve monetary policy in the 1920s, the expansionary view described by Rothbard (2008a [1963]) and earlier “Austrian” writers, and the contractionary view most notably held by Friedman and Schwartz (1993 [1963]) and later monetary historians. This paper argues in line with the former that the Federal Reserve engaged in expansionary monetary policy during the 1920s, as opposed to the gold sterilization view of the latter. The main rationale for this argument is that the increase in the money supply was driven by the increase in the money multiplier and total bank reserves, both of which were caused primarily by Fed policy (i.e., a decrease in reserve requirements and an increase in controlled reserves, respectively). Showing that this expansion did in fact occur provides the first step in supporting an Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) interpretation of the 1920s, namely that the Federal Reserve created a credit fueled boom that led to the Great Depression, although this is not pursued in the paper.

In speeches and testimonies, Alan Greenspan claimed intellectual links between his financial policies and the ideas of Milton Friedman and Joseph A. Schumpeter on banks, central banks, and financial crises. As the financial crisis deepened in 2008, Greenspan admitted that his policies had been shockingly wrong. The purpose of this paper is to explain why his claims of intellectual links between those policies and the ideas of Friedman and Schumpeter were also wrong.

Beginning with representative examples of Greenspan's citations of Friedman and of Schumpeter as supporting his financial policies, the authors review the economic ideas of Friedman and Schumpeter on banks, central banks, and financial crises. In each case, we contrast Greenspan's financial policies with those ideas, demonstrating the spurious nature of his claims of intellectual links.

While expanding the role of the Federal Reserve in the financial markets, Greenspan's financial policies were based on the declaration that deregulation and financial innovations were providing flexibility and stability for the entire financial system. In his financial policies, Greenspan rejected Friedman's recommendations for changes in the powers and functioning of the Federal Reserve that featured a monetary policy rule and the 100 percent reserve requirement for deposits that would involve the separation of depository banking from loans and investments. From a Schumpeterian perspective, Greenspan's policies encouraged and facilitated the massive “reckless” finance that was responsible for the financial crisis of 2007‐2009.

Greenspan's legacy as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is one of policies that first contributed to recurring financial crises of increasing severity and were then followed by an extraordinary policy expansion of the Federal Reserve in attempts to cope with the crises. On that basis, it is important to have a clear understanding of the lack of intellectual support for those policies from the influential economists with whom he claimed intellectual links.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive historical review of the role of the Federal Reserve in retail payments in the USA.

It reviews the literature on the role of the Federal Reserve and assessments of its involvement.

In addition to its oversight and operational role, the Federal Reserve has conducted R&D and facilitated technology adoption. It has provided effective competition to the private sector without subsidies.

The Federal Reserve has served the public interest and private networks have benefited from the “visible hand” of government.

Migration to electronic payments will likely change its role from an operator to setting standards for safety and security.

The historical review provides context against which the future strategy of the Federal Reserve may be assessed.

During the Greenspan‐Bernanke era, the responses of Federal Reserve officials to financial crises resulted in an extraordinary involvement of the US central bank in the non‐banking financial sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine the informal and evolving conceptual framework that allows Federal Reserve officials to pursue a strategy of “constrained discretion” in responding to financial disturbances.

Behavioural economics relies on designed psychological and economic experiments to predict behavioural biases at the group level. As an analogue applicable to understanding biases in the intuitive judgments of individual policymakers, a naïve behavioural economics approach relies on intuitive or naive psychology and the interpretation of historical events as natural experiments to explain why intuitive judgments of Federal Reserve officials will contain biases.

Under the Greenspan‐Bernanke conceptual framework, Federal Reserve officials exercise “constrained discretion” in responding to disturbances arising from macro structural changes in the financial sector. The two key concepts are the Greenspan‐Bernanke doctrine on how the Federal Reserve officials respond to financial asset price bubbles and their collapses, and Bernanke's financial accelerator. Several examples are cited in which policy errors made by Alan Greenspan were attributable to identifiable biases in his intuitive judgment. In addition, Bernanke's response to the financial crisis of 2007‐2009 was based on his interpretation of the Great Depression as a natural experiment. But that interpretation was heavily biased by the influence of Milton Friedman on Bernanke's intuitive judgment. While Federal Reserve officials will need to exercise discretionary judgment in responding to financial crises, the potential for errors due to biases in that judgment can be reduced through regulatory reforms that lessen the potential for financial crises to occur.

While quantitative analyses of the effects of the Federal Reserve's actions on non‐bank financial institutions and the financial markets are ongoing, little attention has been given to the psychological aspects of the intuitive judgment that influences the discretionary decisions of the policymakers.

Consistent and reliable data on farmland values is critical to assessing the overall financial health of agricultural producers. However, little is known about the idiosyncrasies and similarities of standard land value data sources – US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Federal Reserve Bank land value surveys, and transaction prices. The purpose of this paper is to determine the differences and similarities of land value movements from three land value data sources.

In addition to Oklahoma transaction prices, two survey sources are considered: the USDA annual report and the quarterly Tenth District Survey of Agricultural Credit Conditions administered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The paper describes each data set and identifies differences in data sampling, collection, and reporting. Average values of Oklahoma farmland across data sources are examined. USDA estimates are regressed against quarterly Federal Reserve values across multiple states to determine the point in time represented by USDA estimates. Granger causality tests determine if Federal Reserve land value estimates anticipate movements in USDA land value estimates.

It is found that all three data sources are highly correlated, but transaction prices tend to be higher, especially for irrigated cropland and ranchland. USDA land values are reported as representing land values on January first, but instead they more closely represent first and second quarter land values according to a multi‐state comparison to changes in quarterly Federal Reserve land values. Given the finding that first quarter Federal Reserve Bank land values lead USDA land values and that they are published before the USDA release, Federal Reserve land values are a timely indicator of agricultural producers' financial position.

No previous research has addressed the topic of how various sources of agricultural land values compare.