Eoin Treacy's view

Fed: “Why Aren’t More Renters Becoming Homeowners?” 
  
Taken together, these findings suggest that with a stronger economy and eased credit standards, flows into homeownership would pick up. 
    
Fed: “QE: When and How Should the Fed Exit?” 
  
This paper shows that three aspects of the Federal Reserve’s exit strategy matter for achieving (or maintaining) maximum gains in aggregate output and employment under QE (if any): (i) the timing of exit, (ii) the pace of exit, and (iii) the private sector’s expectations of when and how the Fed will exit. 
  
HOW EFFECTIVE IS CENTRAL BANK FORWARD GUIDANCE? 

This paper investigates the effectiveness of forward guidance for the central banks of four countries: New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. We test whether forward guidance improved market participants’ ability to forecast future short-term and long-term rates. We find some evidence that forward guidance improved market participants’ ability to forecast short-term rates over relatively short forecast horizons in New Zealand, Norway and Sweden, but not so for the United States. Most effects are small, often insignificant, and vary across benchmarks. In addition, forward guidance induces convergence of survey forecasts for New Zealand, but less so for the other countries, in particular the United States. 
  
Fed: “Unemployment Claims Hit 8½-Year Low”: Interpret with Caution 

New UI claims are problematic indicators of the state of the labor market for several reasons. 
First, there are long-term trends that affect the rate of new claims and the coverage of UI in general. 

Second, job separations themselves are poor predictors of changes in the unemployment rate. 
Finally, during the Great Recession, the rate of separations fell along with the rate of hires, meaning there were fewer people to initiate UI claims. 
  
Fed: “Assessing Expectations of Monetary Policy” 
  
An ongoing concern has been that the public might misconstrue the Fed’s forward guidance about future monetary policy and underappreciate the extent to which short-term interest rates may vary with future news about the economy. Evidence based on surveys, market expectations, and model estimates show that the public seems to expect a more accommodative policy than Federal Open Market Committee participants. The public also may be less uncertain about these forecasts than policymakers.