statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

regional house price dynamics and voting behavior in the fomc i introduction interest rate decisions by the federal open market committee fomc are not always made unanimously different individual views about the appropriate monetary policy stance may lead to the result that members cast dissenting interest rate votes in fomc meetings that is they opt for a higher or lower interest rate than proposed by the chairman of the fomc several studies find that fomc members have different views about the appropriate monetary policy when casting interest rate votes belden 1989 chappell and mcgregor 2000 chappell mcgregor and vermilyea 2005 2008 2012 gildea 1990 1992 havrilesky and gildea 1991 1995 havrilesky and schweitzer 1990 meade and sheets 2005 meade 2010 tootell 1991 1996 an important source of such dissenting votes may be the regional bias of the fomc member which is constituted by its regional affiliation several studies have examined the impact of the regional unemployment rate on the interest rate votes of fomc members while gildea 1992 meade and sheets 2005 and chappell mcgregor and vermilyea 2008 find that a higher regional unemployment rate relative to the national rate increases decreases fomc members preference for monetary easing tightening tootell 1991 finds no significant evidence 1 in this article we analyze whether fomc members align their interest rate voting behavior with house price developments of the federal reserve district they represent in addition to the regional unemployment rate studied so far in this way we can test whether regional house prices and or regional unemployment rates have a significant impact on the voting behavior of fomc members and we examine whether there are systematic differences between regional bank presidents and board members various studies have examined the link between monetary policy and asset price developments according to gilchrist and leahy 2002 there are some good reasons why central banks should align their monetary policies with asset prices first the consumer price index cpi or gross domestic product gdp deflator are incomplete measures since they only signal information on the prices of goods consumed today whereas a more complete measure would also signal future cost of living such as the information contained in asset prices alchian and klein 1973 second asset prices may be useful in forecasting inflation goodhart and hofmann 2000 third asset prices may directly affect real economic activity and inflation since for example wealthier consumers spend more which may affect price developments carroll otsuka and slacalek 2011 whether central banks should react to asset prices is however debated in the literature the traditional view is that central banks should only react to asset prices to the extent that they feed back into the conventional monetary policy goals inflation and output bernanke and gertler 1999 2001 on the contrary cecchetti et al 2000 conclude that it may be reasonable for central banks to react to asset prices in particular house prices in order to avoid the buildup of asset price bubbles as the burst of asset price bubbles may lead to financial crises reinhart and rogoff 2009 leaning against the buildup of extreme asset price changes may therefore be a reasonable choice for central banks as a part of their mission to manage systemic risk allen and carletti 2009 bordo and jeanne 2002 another rationale that central banks should take asset prices particularly house prices into account is that house prices have been shown to be suitable early warning indicators for the outbreak of the recent financial crisis kemme and roy 2012 several empirical papers analyze the impact of asset prices on interest rate setting rigobon and sack 2003 and dupor and conley 2004 find evidence that fomc interest rate decisions are influenced by equity prices on the contrary fuhrer and tootell 2008 find that fomc interest rate decisions are not a direct response to equity price movements and are an indirect response only to the extent that equity prices helped forecast the conventional monetary policy goals

two stage residual inclusion estimation addressing endogeneity in health econometric modeling the paper focuses on two estimation methods that have been widely used to address endogeneity in empirical research in health economics and health services research two stage predictor substitution 2sps and two stage residual inclusion 2sri 2sps is the rote extension to nonlinear models of the popular linear two stage least squares estimator the 2sri estimator is similar except that in the second stage regression the endogenous variables are not replaced by first stage predictors instead first stage residuals are included as additional regressors in a generic parametric framework we show that 2sri is consistent and 2sps is not results from a simulation study and an illustrative example also recommend against 2sps and favor 2sri our findings are important given that there are many prominent examples of the application of inconsistent 2sps in the recent literature this study can be used as a guide by future researchers in health economics who are confronted with endogeneity in their empirical work

do central banks react to house prices we estimate the federal reserve s the bank of england s and the bank of japan s responses to house prices we show that generalized method of moments estimates of a taylor rule augmented with house prices are biased and dispersed we then use full information methods and estimate the policy rule together with a var for the nonpolicy variables these estimates are also biased we propose an alternative approach and estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model embedded with a monetary rule with a direct response to house prices we find that house prices played a separate role in the reaction functions of these central banks

stock market conditions and monetary policy in a dsge model for the u s abstract this paper investigates the interactions between stock market fluctuations and monetary policy within a dsge model for the u s economy first we design a framework in which fluctuations in households financial wealth are allowed but not necessarily required to exert an impact on current consumption this is due to the interaction in the financial markets of long time traders holding wealth accumulated over time with newcomers holding no wealth at all importantly we introduce nominal wage stickiness to induce pro cyclicality in real dividends additional nominal and real frictions are modeled to capture the pervasive macroeconomic persistence of the observables employed to estimate our model we fit our model to post wwii u s data and report three main results first the data strongly support a significant role of stock prices in affecting real activity and the business cycle second our estimates also identify a significant and counteractive response of the fed to stock price fluctuations third we derive from our model a microfounded measure of financial slack the stock price gap which we then contrast to alternative ones currently used in empirical studies to assess the properties of the latter to capture the dynamic and cyclical implications of our dsge model the behavior of our stock price gap is consistent with the episodes of stock market booms and busts occurred in the post wwii as reported by independent analyses and closely correlates with the current financial meltdown typically employed proxies of financial slack such as detrended log indexes or growth rates show limited capabilities of capturing the implications of our model consistent index of financial stress cyclical properties of the model as well as counterfactuals regarding shocks to our measure of financial slackness and monetary policy shocks are also proposed

a model of the demand for longevity and the value of life extension we specify a demand function for longevity or quantity of life along with corresponding demand functions for indicators of quality of life and a value of health and life extension function we show that the demand for health must be derived in conjunction with that for longevity and the related consumption plan and that all choices depend on initial individual endowments and terminal conditions our comparative dynamics predictions indicate that optimal health and longevity are increasing functions of endowed wealth rather than necessarily current income that improvements in opportunities to produce health can accentuate the differences between endowed health and attained longevity levels and that the value individuals ascribe to their health may be increasing over a good portion of their life cycle we use this model to analyze observed empirical variations in levels and trends of life expectancy and in exposure to health risks across different population groups

monetary policy rules based on real time data this paper examines the magnitude of informational problems associated with the implementation and interpretation of simple monetary policy rules using taylor s rule as an example i demonstrate that real time policy recommendations differ considerably from those obtained with ex post revised data further estimated policy reaction functions based on ex post revised data provide misleading descriptions of historical policy and obscure the behavior suggested by information available to the federal reserve in real time these results indicate that reliance on the information actually available to policy makers in real time is essential for the analysis of monetary policy rules

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

federal reserve information and the behavior of interest rates this paper tests for the existence of asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public by examining federal reserve and commercial inflation forecasts it demonstrates that the federal reserve has considerable information about inflation beyond what is known to commercial forecasters it also shows that monetary policy actions provide signals of the federal reserve s information and that commercial forecasters modify their forecasts in response to those signals these findings may explain why long term interest rates typically rise in response to shifts to tighter monetary policy jel e52 e43 d82 asymmetric information between the federal reserve and the public is a phenomenon that is often posited but rarely tested numerous models of central bank behavior for example show that the existence of asymmetric information has important implications for the effectiveness of policy and the consequences of dynamic inconsistency yet there

turnover time and the organic composition of capital this article argues that marx s key concepts of the organic and value compositions of capital depend on his concept of the turnover time of variable capital methods are given for measuring these three indicators which are applied to the us national accounts from 1947 onwards the results show unambiguous tendencies for the organic and value compositions of capital to rise and for the turnover time of variable capital to fall this is consistent with marx s predictions in capital and his explanation for the tendency of the rate of profit to fall

optimal experimental design for double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the double bounded dichotomous choice model is becoming popular in the contingent valuation literature this technique considers the responses to two bids the second one being determined according to the response to the first and it has been shown to be statistically more efficient than the standard single bounded model in this paper the issue of the optimal choice of bid values for the double bounded logit model is addressed these designs are derived to satisfy the d optimal c optimal and fiducial method criteria

monetary policy shocks and financial conditions a monte carlo experiment abstract the effects of monetary policy shocks on financial conditions are often estimated by appealing to recursive vector autoregressions vars we assess the ability of this class of vars to recover the true effects of a monetary policy shock via a monte carlo experiment in which the data generating process is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model featuring macro finance interactions and estimated with u s quarterly data our dsge model predicts a negative and significant reaction of financial conditions to an unexpected monetary policy tightening we point out that such reaction is just overlooked by recursive vars moreover we show that cholesky vars may substantially underestimate the welfare costs due to macroeconomic fluctuations

augmenting the taylor rule monetary policy and the bond market i show that augmenting the taylor rule with bond yields observed at the start of the quarter significantly improves the in sample and out of sample fit moreover the augmented rule produces lower forecast errors than those of linear and non linear policy models

monetary policy and asset prices a markov switching dsge approach summary this paper estimates a markov switching dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model by incorporating stock prices in monetary policy rules in order to identify the federal reserve s stance toward them based on the data from 1984 q1 to 2009 q2 i find that historical evidence of the policy reaction toward stock prices is weak except for the stock market bubble of the 1990s a counterfactual exercise shows that the rapid growth in stock prices during that period would have been significantly higher if monetary policy had been independent of the stock market however unconditional macroeconomic volatility increases with the degree of policy responsiveness toward stock prices copyright 2017 john wiley sons ltd

efficient estimation methods for closed ended contingent valuation surveys closed ended contingent valuation surveys can be very useful in the evaluation of nonmarket resources respondents merely state whether they would accept or reject a hypothetical threshold amount either as payment for giving up access to the resource or as a fee for its use the authors develop a maximum likelihood procedure which exploits the variation in the threshold values to allow direct and separate point estimates of regression like slope coefficients and error standard deviations without truncation bias their illustration uses data from a survey of recreational fisherman to examine factors which influence individuals willingness to pay copyright 1987 by mit press

estimating the effect of individual time preferences on the use of disease screening economists have long been interested in evaluating the role that time preferences play in a wide range of economic decisions in the health care arena time preferences may be an especially important determinant of many decisions particularly the use of preventative health care one potential barrier to patient adoption of preventative screening regimens is that they impose current costs on consumers with the hope of lower costs in the future using data from a national survey we jointly estimate latent discount rate and preventative service demand models using a limited information maximum likelihood estimator iterated m estimator the results suggest that discount rates are generally inversely related to the likelihood of most screening tests

eyes on the prize how did the fed respond to the stock market abstract since the stock market boom of the 1990s many have suggested the federal open market committee fomc has adopted an unannounced policy goal of supporting equity values this paper offers a new approach to disentangle the relationship between changes in equity values and monetary policy specifically the paper distinguishes the fomc s reaction to forecasts of traditional goal variables which may depend on equity prices from the fomc s independent reaction to changes in equity prices by using actual forward looking variables examined by the fomc before each action the greenbook forecasts the authors find little evidence to support the proposition that the fomc responds to stock values except as filtered through a forecast of accepted monetary policy goal variables

measuring the reaction of monetary policy to the stock market movements in the stock market can have a significant impact on the macroeconomy and are therefore likely to be an important factor in the determination of monetary policy however little is known about the magnitude of the federal reserve s reaction to the stock market in part because the simultaneous response of equity prices to interest rates makes it difficult to estimate this paper uses an identification technique based on the heteroskedasticity of stock market returns to measure the reaction of monetary policy to the stock market we find a significant policy response with a 5 percent rise fall in the s p 500 index increasing the likelihood of a 25 basis point tightening easing by about a half

estimating individual discount rates in denmark a field experiment we estimate individual discount rates with respect to time streams of money using controlled laboratory experiments these discount rates are elicited by means of field experiments involving real monetary rewards the experiments were carried out across denmark using a representative sample of 268 people between 19 and 75 years of age individual discount rates are estimated for various households differentiated by socio demographic characteristics such as income and age our conclusions are that discount rates are constant over the 12 month to 3 year horizons used in these experiments and that discount rates vary substantially with respect to several socio demographic variables hence we conclude that it would be reasonable to assume constant discount rates for specific household types but not the same rates across all households

the demand for health some new empirical evidence this paper presents some new estimates of the pure investment and pure consumption models of the demand for health in contrast to previous studies the paper presents parameter estimates of both reduced form and structural demand for health care equations the latter which are obtained by treating health capital as a latent variable in a recursive equation system provide a safer way of checking the consistency of the model s predictions with the data the present analysis of the pure consumption model differs from previous analyses in its recognition of the dependency of the shadow price of initial assets on the entire lifetime profiles of the model s exogenous variables the paper also explores the implications in terms of reliability of parameter estimates of the failure on the part of previous studies to recognize this

the cost of business cycles under endogenous growth robert e lucas jr argued that the welfare gains from reducing aggregate consumption volatility are negligible subsequent work that revisited his calculation continued to find small welfare benefits further reinforcing the perception that business cycles do not matter this paper argues instead that fluctuations can affect welfare by affecting the growth rate of consumption i show that fluctuations can reduce growth starting from a given initial consumption which can imply substantial welfare effects as lucas himself observed empirical evidence suggests the welfare effects are likely to be substantial about two orders of magnitude greater than lucas original estimates

the personal discount rate evidence from military downsizing programs the military drawdown program of the early 1990s provides an opportunity to obtain estimates of personal discount rates based on large numbers of people making real choices involving large sums the program offered over 65 000 separatees the choice between an annuity and a lump sum payment despite break even discount rates exceeding 17 percent most of the separatees selected the lump sum saving taxpayers 1 7 billion in separation costs estimates of discount rates range from 0 to over 30 percent and vary with education age race sex number of dependents ability test score and the size of payment