What a difference a year makes. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used the 2012 meeting in Jackson Hole as a platform to make his case for a third round of bond buys. This year, with the Fed chief absent, the tone was starkly different as featured research papers questioned the value and efficacy of the central bank's unconventional stimulus policies. Robert Hall of Stanford University argued that unconventional monetary policies have been largely ineffective because of the constraints posed by official interest rates that are already effectively at zero. He also dismissed the beneficial effects of the central ... (full story)