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John Taylor devised a simple monetary policy rule that links the Federal Reserve's policy interest rate with inflation and output targets. This paper compares actual policy rates with the rates that would have been recommended by the basic Taylor Rule for three long periods in U.S. economic history: 1875–1913 (“Pre Fed”), 1914–1951 (“Early Fed”), and 1952–1998 (“Modern Fed”). In addition, the authors develop a more complex version of the Rule to facilitate a comparison of the way in which each monetary authority would have reacted to the economic challenges presented outside its own time period. The empirical evidence suggests that Modern Fed would have reacted more promptly and appropriately to inflation and output problems outside its time period than either Early Fed or Pre Fed, and that the movement of interest rates in the Pre Fed period came closer to the corrective policies of Modern Fed than did those of Early Fed.

We would like to thank C. Y. Chen, Wenchih Lee, two anonymous referees and the seminar participants at the 2000 FMA annual meeting for their helpful comments and encouragement. All of the remaining errors are our responsibility.

This paper aims to examine the controversial issue of the extent to which Federal Reserve monetary policy may have contributed to the recent housing crisis and subsequent adverse macroeconomic developments.

The authors develop a small model that facilitates OLS and VAR estimates of the critical period.

The empirical results support the claim of John B. Taylor and others who held that monetary policy was excessively stimulative in terms of the low fed funds rate 2002‐2005, but also support the view of Alan Greenspan and others that the linkages between short‐term rates, long‐term rates, and the housing market deteriorated during that decade.

The model includes the Taylor Rule, a housing equation, and a mechanism linking the two relationships. The empirical results support elements of the camp that blames monetary policy for the recent housing crisis, and elements of the opposing camp which limits policy culpability. Specifically, it suggests excessive monetary ease and a structural change (for which the Fed cannot be blamed) in the monetary policy‐housing market linkage that occurred prior to the crisis. The results also support long‐term, prior crisis, channels of influence that run from the state of the economy to fed funds rates to mortgage interest rates to housing prices. A return to normalcy in the housing market should be accompanied by the re‐establishment of these channels.

This paper examines the thesis that the Federal Reserve adopted a tighter monetary policy in 1994 than economic conditions warranted. The empirical evidence suggests the FOMC did react differently to the basic economic indicators than under economic normalcy, but not differently than it would have under similar, prior tight money economic conditions. E52

The purpose of this paper is to develop a single variable indicative of the state of market speculation; to determine whether the Federal Reserve has attempted to quell speculation when it has been most rampant and whether such attempts were successful.

The paper examine the literature on market “bubbles” and the Federal Reserve's treatment of them; to determine a single variable reflective of market speculation via principle components integration; to examine the Federal Reserve's interaction with market speculation by estimating a vector autoregression version of the Taylor rule.

It is possible to construct a single variable representative of market speculation, termed the index of speculative excess that correlates well with standard views of market excess; the Federal Reserve did attempt to retard market speculation during the three major bull markets of the past century; monetary policy did little to inhibit market speculation.

Highly original in the construction of a single variable reflective of market speculation; joins the ongoing debate as to the extent of Federal Reserve concern with speculative activity and the Fed's poor record of accomplishment in this area.

Busch focuses on what he regards as the three broad causes of immorality in the modern world: scientism, statism, and marketism. He views these three “isms” pejoratively and originating respectively with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith. Each is treated as a “leviathan” spewing immorality from its multiple heads in the form of undue faith in the three different kinds of social order they generate.

The current paper examines the relationships between watching television for various times of day and reading achievement for a subsample of third grade language minority (LM) students compared to third grade students in general.

The analysis uses ECLS-K 1998–99 data to first test for significant differences between the two samples, then further explores these relationships using separate OLS multiple regression models, while controlling for past reading achievements and socioeconomic variation.

Building on more nuanced versions of displacement theory, this paper finds a positive relationship between reading achievement and watching television after dinner on weekdays specifically for LM students. For the general sample, watching TV on weekends or weekdays at any time period has no relationship with reading achievement.

This research suggests the potential for TV or perhaps other media to act as a lingual- or cultural-learning facilitator for LM students, being positively tied to reading achievement. The paper’s unique focus on multimedia use and LM students makes it particularly applicable to educators and public policy officials tasked with confronting the reading skills gap for a growing LM student population.

The classics will circulate wrote a public librarian several years ago. She found that new, attractive, prominently displayed editions of literary classics would indeed find a substantial audience among public library patrons.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed review of radiation dosimetry techniques based on optical fibre dosimeters. It presents a comprehensive bibliography of the current research activities in the area.

A range of published work on optical fibre radiation dosimeters are presented, with the merits and limitations discussed. Each radiation dosimetry technique is discussed in turn, providing examples of dosimeters using such techniques reviewed. The main focus is on gamma radiation although other radiation dosimeters are considered.

This paper provides information on the wide range of research activity into radiation dosimeters. The dose ranges of these dosimeters are presented, along with the advantages and disadvantages of different dosimetry techniques.

A comprehensive review of published research in the area of solid radiation dosimetry is presented in this paper. It provides an individual with a review of the various techniques used and most recent research in that field.

How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the analytic perspective of Strategic Action Fields, this study identifies multiple attributes of transnational organizing through which expatriate communities may go beyond extra-national supporting roles to actually create and direct a national campaign. Reexamining the rise and fall of the Fenian Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, which attempted to organize a transnational revolutionary movement for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain, reveals the strengths and limitations of nationalist organizing through the construction of a Transnational Strategic Action Field (TSAF). Deterritorialized organizing allows challenger organizations to propagate an activist agenda and to dominate the nationalist discourse among co-nationals while raising new challenges concerning coordination, control, and relative position among multiple centers of action across national borders. Within the challenger field, “incumbent challengers” vie for dominance in agenda setting with other “challenger” challengers.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.