HOW DID THE FOMC VIEW THE GREAT RECESSION AS IT WAS HAPPENING?: EVALUATING THE MINUTES FROM FOMC MEETINGS, 2006-2010

Herman Stekler and Hilary Symington
Additional contact information
Hilary Symington: Barnard College

No 2014-005, Working Papers from The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting

Abstract: In setting monetary policy, the Federal Open Market Committee uses forecasts and other information to assess the current and future states of the US economy. Numerous studies have evaluated the Greenbook forecasts but did not determine why a forecast was made, what factors were considered or the uncertainty that was involved. The minutes of the FOMC provide such information. While the minutes are qualitative, using a quantitative index, we show that the FOMC saw the possibility of a recession but did not predict it. Using textual analysis, we determined which variables informed the forecasts.

Keywords: FOMC forecasts; forecast evaluation; uncertainty; Great Recession; textual analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/2014-005.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2014-005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by GW Economics Department ().