The Federal Reserve and the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic Cover Image

Федералният резерв и ефективността на паричната политика при пандемията с COVID-19
The Federal Reserve and the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author(s): Gergana Mihaylova-Borisova
Subject(s): Economy, Supranational / Global Economy, Financial Markets, Socio-Economic Research
Published by: Университет за национално и световно стопанство (УНСС)
Keywords: monetary policy; Federal Reserve; price stability
Summary/Abstract: The health crisis triggered by the spread of COVID-19 around the world, as well as the subsequent economic crisis, poses new challenges for central banks. For more than a decade, they have been dealing with the aftermath of the global financial crisis that emerged in 2008 in the United States by applying a series of unconventional instruments due to the disruption of the monetary policy transmission mechanism of traditional instruments in the crisis processes. These new challenges posed by a new kind of crisis have led banks to adopt a number of new measures and instruments. This is what the Federal Reserve is doing, becoming the first bank to take emergency measures to neutralize the effects of the spread of the virus on the economy. This study presents and analyses the monetary policy undertaken by the Federal Reserve to address the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of the study show that the US central bank was able to cope with the negative effects on the country's economic development due to its timely actions. However, the looming inflation in 2021 raises the question of the normalisation of the central bank's monetary policy.