Rate Outlook
In a sign that Yellen is thinking about an impending rate hike, she has noted that the full effects of monetary policy are felt only after long lags.
"This means that policymakers cannot wait until they have achieved their objectives to begin adjusting policy. I would not consider it prudent to postpone the onset of normalization until we have reached, or are on the verge of reaching, our inflation objective," Yellen said in New York late March.
On the other hand, Yellen has shown she may be willing to keep rates at zero for an extended period, even though the Fed has dropped its pledge to remain "patient" before tightening.
“Just because we removed the word ‘patient’ from the statement doesn’t mean we are going to be impatient,” Yellen said.
Biography
Yellen was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1946.
She received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1971 for a thesis titled Employment, output and capital accumulation in an open economy: a disequilibrium approach under the supervision of distinguished economists James Tobin and Joseph Stiglitz.
She is married to George Akerlof, a Nobel prize-winning economist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Their son, Robert Akerlof, teaches Economics at the University of Warwick.
Yellen was a vocal advocate of the $3 trillion in stimulus funds that were injected into the U.S. economy under the Bernanke Fed.