This Summer Reading List Will Help You Decode Fed Speak

Federal Reserve officials keep up with the economic literature, and it has a way of creeping into their speeches. That’s been especially true lately, as policy makers grapple with fundamental questions about economic growth.

Two of the biggest debates, which are intertwined, center on what’s caused output to expand more slowly in recent years and what’s happened to the neutral policy interest rate (the one that neither stokes nor slows growth). Below you’ll find the major works Fed officials are referencing on those topics. Some are long — the first clocks in at 652 pages — so in case you’d prefer lighter vacation reading, we’ve summarized them.