UPSC Prelims Practice Questions — First goes Fed’s dot plot rate forecast, then guidance, and then a hike?

Q1. How many voting members constitute the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) at any given time?

  • A. 7
  • B. 12
  • C. 17
  • D. 19

Q2. In the context of U.S. monetary policy, the term "dot plot" most precisely refers to:

  • A. A chart of anonymous individual projections by FOMC participants of the appropriate federal funds rate at year-ends and in the longer run.
  • B. A scatter diagram relating inflation to unemployment used by the Fed to derive an internal Phillips curve.
  • C. A network diagram of cross-bank settlement exposures compiled by the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks.
  • D. A daily dispersion plot of effective federal funds rate trades around the target range published in the H.15 release.

Q3. The "dot plot" was introduced as a component of the FOMC's Summary of Economic Projections under whose chairmanship and in which year?

  • A. Alan Greenspan, 2006
  • B. Ben S. Bernanke, 2012
  • C. Janet L. Yellen, 2014
  • D. Jerome H. Powell, 2018