US Federal Reserve Governor Jerome H. Powell, At The 2016 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, New York, New York, February 26, 2016, Discussion Of The Paper "Language After Liftoff: Fed Communication Away From The Zero Lower Bound"

This paper reviews Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) communications from the time the Committee began issuing regular postmeeting statements in 1999 to the present.¹ The authors provide an extended and insightful discussion of the theory and practice of providing forward guidance about monetary policy. They offer one central lesson: Data-based forward guidance is mostly good, while time-based forward guidance is mostly bad.