the bond old bond spread abstract i document the profits on a trade that is long the old 30 year treasury bond and short the new 30 year treasury bond and is rolled over every auction cycle from june 1995 to november 1999 despite the systematic convergence of the spread over the auction cycle the average profits are close to zero the difference in repo market financing rates between the two bonds is a significant cost of carry in this trade i show that variation in the bond old bond spread is driven by the treasury supply of 30 year bonds as well as aggregate factors affecting investors preference for liquid assets

integrating market alternatives into the economic theory of optimal deterrence i introduction standard models of the public enforcement of law are tractable and have yielded numerous useful insights into how penalties ought to be set 1 several features of the legal system however have proven difficult to explain within the canonical framework for example it struggles to explain why sanctions increase in one s criminal history in a simple and intuitive way and the literature to date has proposed no explanation of why necessity can be a defense for some crimes in particular a partial defense furthermore welfare analysis in the standard framework is based on an often unstated assumption that penalties are being used to solve a missing markets problem which implies that some amount of crime is efficient even from a first best standpoint this result appears counterintuitive for many crimes in particular the most heinous crimes such as rape and has been the source of much controversy in the literature in this article we reconcile the standard theory with these facts we focus on the extensively employed assumption that potential criminals face a binary choice they can either attempt to obtain some benefit or good by committing a proscribed act or do nothing we show that adding the option of achieving their ends via legitimate means to the choice set of potential criminals extends the explanatory power of the canonical approach with regards to these problematic issues our approach is theoretically attractive as the idea that criminal activity represents a means by which criminals achieve their objectives is inherent to the rational choice approach to crime it is natural then to suppose that in many instances criminals have the option of attaining their objectives via legitimate voluntary channels furthermore while it is clearly the case that legitimate alternatives exist for some property crimes such as theft we argue that this assumption is reasonable for a wide range of criminal activities under the canonical approach to optimal deterrence any increase in the penalty associated with criminal activity reduces the opportunities for engaging in involuntary or criminal transactions this implies a loss of utility on the part of potential offenders consequently optimal penalties in this setting are ones that induce efficient crimes that is ones for which the benefits to the criminals outweigh the social harm specifically at the optimum sanctions are set so that the potential criminal internalizes the costs of his or her actions much as in the literature examining tort law we show that when potential criminals have the option of achieving their ends through voluntary exchange maximization of a utilitarian welfare function is equivalent to minimizing the costs of crime which consist of the harm to victims plus enforcement costs in the presence of an option for voluntary trade increasing the penalties associated with crime does not necessarily create a loss of utility instead an increase in the criminal sanction serves to shift activity away from criminal activity in favor of voluntary transactions this means that the optimal penalties can and should be set so as to minimize the harm caused by crime indeed and in stark contrast to the canonical framework in the absence of costs to imposing a sanction the optimal penalty would be one which deters all crime the presence of a voluntary alternative therefore suggests a role for the legal system different from the standard torts logic to encourage the use of existing markets however formal or informal they may be over criminal activity the idea that criminal sanctions should be set so as to encourage voluntary trade was first proposed by posner 1985 2 who associates this function with the criminal justice system but the idea has been considered only rarely in the subsequent literature cooter and ulen 2008 also take this view arguing that society is in general better off when goods are acquired through voluntary exchange p

monetary policy and macroprudential policy different and separate the paper discusses how monetary and macroprudential policies can be distinguished how appropriate goals for the two policies can be determined whether the policies are best conducted separately or coordinately and by the same or different authorities and how they can be coordinated when desired the institutional frameworks in canada sweden and the uk are briefly compared the swedish example of monetary policy strongly leaning against the wind and the subsequent policy turnaround is summarized as well as what estimates have been found of the costs and benefits of leaning against the wind politique monetaire et politique macro prudentielle differente et separee ce memoire se demande comment on peut distinguer les politiques monetaire et macro prudentielle comment on peut determiner les objectifs de ces deux politiques si ces deux politiques ont un meilleur impact separement ou coordonnees et mises en uvre par la meme ou differentes autorites et comment on peut les coordonner quand on le desire on compare succinctement les cadres institutionnels du canada de la suede et du royaume uni la politique monetaire suedoise va fortement a contre courant et le virage subsequent de la politique est resume ainsi que les couts et avantages de cette strategie

the future of macroeconomics macro theory and models at the bank of england abstract the adoption as policy models by central banks of representative agent new keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models has been widely criticised including for their simplistic micro foundations at the bank of england the previous generation of policy models is seen in its 1999 medium term macro model mtmm instead of improving that model to correct its considerable flaws many shared by other non dsge policy models such as the federal reserve s frb us it was replaced in 2004 by the dsge based beqm though this clearly failed during and after the global financial crisis it was replaced in 2011 by the dsge compass complemented by a suite of models we provide a general critique of dsge models for explaining forecasting and policy analyses at central banks and suggest new directions for improving current empirical macroeconomic models based on empirical modelling broadly consistent with better theory rather than seeking to impose simplistic and unrealistic theory

asymmetric price adjustment and economic fluctuations this paper considers a possible explanation for asymmetric adjustment of nominal prices the authors present a menu cost model in which positive trend inflation causes firms relative prices to decline automatically between price adjustments in this environment shocks that raise firms desired prices trigger larger price responses than shocks that lower desired prices the authors use this model of asymmetric adjustment to address three issues in macroeconomics the effects of aggregate demand the effects of sectoral shocks and the optimal rate of inflation copyright 1994 by royal economic society

on the effective use of stigma as a crime deterrent abstract stigma affects convicted offenders if employers reduce their wage current research considers this kind of informal sanctioning as an effective means for reducing crime and proposes its fostering by the government in this article i first show that increasing stigma may even enhance crime while stigma enhances deterrence of an unconvicted offender it may drive a stigmatized ex convict towards recidivism secondly i provide a solution for guaranteeing stigma s effectiveness notably a harsh er punishment for repeat offenders is required finally with the theoretical analysis as a background stigmatization policies pursued in the states switzerland and spain are compared

asymmetric monetary policy empirical evidence for italy a growing body of empirical work has examined the potential asymmetry in the effects of monetary policy on united states real activity this study looks for such an empirical evidence for italy in the period 1982 1998 monetary shocks are obtained as residuals from a central bank reaction function where the three months interbank rate is taken as the indicator of the monetary policy stance the effects of these positive and negative shocks on output are statistically different from zero and the null of symmetry between the two is rejected in favour of negative shocks having a greater impact on real output growth thus confirming an asymmetric effect of monetary policy even for italy

the impact of house prices on consumption in the uk a new perspective this paper proposes an alternative approach to the question of how house prices influence household consumption by focusing on their impact on mortgage equity withdrawal and household saving household level data are used to derive a measure of expected and unexpected changes in house prices these are then incorporated into a recursive bivariate probit model of the decision to withdraw housing equity and save the results suggest that households respond to changes in their housing wealth primarily by increasing their mortgage borrowing rather than by decreasing their savings although this is mainly for younger households however while changes in housing wealth do not have a direct impact on household saving they do have an important indirect impact since they increase the likelihood that the household will withdraw equity which in turn has a negative impact on household saving

assessing monetary policies in the eurozone u s u k and japan new evidence from the post crisis period abstractthe global financial crisis of 2007 changed the way central banks implement monetary policies this article examines the transmission of both conventional and unconventional monetary polici

anticipated versus surprise inflation in household consumption behaviour abstract the purpose of this paper is to look at the question of whether it is the anticipated or surprise inflation or both that matter for household consumption and saving behaviour we use a large data sample from 23 countries covering mostly the period 1960 1979 evidence is overwhelming against the hypothesis that only the surprise part of inflation matters for household consumption and saving behaviour but is a bit mixed on the question of whether the anticipated and surprise parts of inflation affect with equal force which would justify the observed inflation as the appropriate inflation variable in household consumption and saving functions

regime switching in the relationship between equity returns and short term interest rates in the uk abstract this paper examines the relationship between uk equity returns and short term interest rates using a two regime markov switching egarch model the results suggest one high return low variance regime within which the conditional variance of equity returns responds persistently but symmetrically to equity return innovations in the other low mean high variance regime equity volatility responds asymmetrically and without persistence to shocks to equity returns there is evidence of a regime dependent relationship between shorter maturity interest rate differentials and equity return volatility furthermore there is evidence that events in the money markets influence the probability of transition across regimes

finance and business cycles the credit driven household demand channel what is the role of the financial sector in explaining business cycles this question is as old as the field of macroeconomics and an extensive body of research conducted since the global financial crisis of 2008 has offered new answers the specific idea put forward in this article is that expansions in credit supply operating primarily through household demand have been an important driver of business cycles we call this the credit driven household demand channel while this channel helps explain the recent global recession it also describes economic cycles in many countries over the past 40 years

explaining escalating prices and fines a unified approach abstract this paper provides an explanation for escalating prices and fines based on a unified analytical framework that nests monopoly pricing and optimal law enforcement we show that escalation emerges as an optimal outcome if the principal i lacks commitment ability and ii gives less than full weight to agent benefits escalation is driven by decreasing transfers for non active agents rather than increasing transfers for active agents some forward looking agents then strategically delay their activity which drives a wedge between the optimal static transfer and the benefit of an indifferent agent this wedge is the source of escalation

housing really is the business cycle what survives the lessons of 2008 09 the downturn of 2008 09 has confirmed that i housing is the single most critical part of the u s business cycle ii the proper conduct of monetary policy needs to be cognizant that choices made at one point in time affect the options later and iii the best time to intervene in the housing cycle is when the volume of building is above normal and growing more so what was different this time was the rapid and substantial decline in home prices

booms and busts in the uk housing market the often volatile behaviour of uk house prices between 1957 and 1994 is analysed in an annual econometric model theory suggests that financial liberalisation of mortgage markets in the 1980s should have led to notable shifts in house price behaviour the evidence supports the predictions of theory suggesting shifts took place in wealth effects as in the consumption function and that real interest rates and income expectations became more important the presence of transactions costs suggests important nonlinearities in house price dynamics the paper also contains an explicit econometric treatment of expectations demography supply spillovers from the rented sector and of composition biases in the official house price index

the impact of fine size and uncertainty on punishment and deterrence theory and evidence from the laboratory abstract increasing punishment is typically considered first choice to boost deterrence of unwarranted behavior such as false financial statements asset misappropriation stealing or corruption however if there is uncertainty on a potential violator s guilt judges and juries willingness to impose punishment may decrease in its magnitude thus increasing the magnitude of punishment may backfire when the reduced punishment probability is anticipated by potential violators based on a theoretical model our paper is the first to analyze the interdependency of violation and punishment behavior in a laboratory experiment and to contrast it to the standard partial equilibrium perspective on deterrence that considers the punishment probability to be independent of the fine size varying both the magnitude of fines and the degree of uncertainty shows that in case of legal uncertainty the deterrent effect of higher fines is far less pronounced than if the punishment probability was exogenous

penalty structures and deterrence in a two stage model experimental evidence multiperiod models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of becker 1968 generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat or declining we present the first experimental test of a two stage theoretical model that predicts decreasing penalty structures will yield greater deterrence than increasing penalty structures this prediction is based on the belief that if the penalty for the first offenses is sufficiently low the agent should commit the offense and continue to offend if undetected our results are consistent with the theoretical prediction that decreasing fine structures are more effective at reducing risky behavior jel c91 k42 k10

household wealth and macroeconomic activity 2008 2013 this paper provides estimates of the effects of the fall in financial and housing wealth in 2008 09 on overall macroeconomic activity when the wealth losses are run through a structural macroeconometric model it is estimated that the fall in wealth contributed about 2 1 percentage points to the rise in the unemployment rate in 2009 and about 3 3 points in 2010 the contribution to the fall in real gdp was 4 5 and 5 4 in the 2 years these estimates account for most but not all of the recessionary increase in unemployment the remaining increase in unemployment may have resulted more directly from financial stresses but little evidence is found for this in this study

microeconomic heterogeneity and macroeconomic shocks in this essay we discuss the emerging literature in macroeconomics that combines heterogeneous agent models nominal rigidities and aggregate shocks this literature opens the door to the analysis of distributional issues economic fluctuations and stabilization policies all within the same framework in response to the limitations of the representative agent approach to economic fluctuations a new framework has emerged that combines key features of heterogeneous agents ha and new keynesian nk economies these hank models offer a much more accurate representation of household consumption behavior and can generate realistic distributions of income wealth and albeit to a lesser degree household balance sheets at the same time they can accommodate many sources of macroeconomic fluctuations including those driven by aggregate demand in sum they provide a rich theoretical framework for quantitative analysis of the interaction between cross sectional distributions and aggregate dynamics in this article we outline a state of the art version of hank together with its representative agent counterpart and convey two broad messages about the role of household heterogeneity for the response of the macroeconomy to aggregate shocks 1 the similarity between the representative agent new keynesian rank and hank frameworks depends crucially on the shock being analyzed and 2 certain important macroeconomic questions concerning economic fluctuations can only be addressed within heterogeneous agent models

what happened financial factors in the great recession abstract at the onset of the recent global financial crisis the workhorse macroeconomic models assumed frictionless financial markets these frameworks were thus not able to anticipate the crisis nor to analyze how the disruption of credit markets changed what initially appeared like a mild downturn into the great recession since that time an explosion of both theoretical and empirical research has investigated how the financial crisis emerged and how it was transmitted to the real sector the goal of this paper is to describe what we have learned from this new research and how it can be used to understand what happened during the great recession in the process we also present some new empirical work we argue that a complete description of the great recession must take account of the financial distress facing both households and banks and as the crisis unfolded nonfinancial firms as well exploiting both panel data and time series methods we analyze the contribution of the house price decline v

liquidity maturity and the yields on u s treasury securities the efrect8 of aaaet liquidity on expected retuma for ts with infinite maturities toc ka are eumined for bonda treuury notes and bills with matched maturities of lellll than 6 months the yield to maturity ill higher on notes which have lower liquidity the yield di1ferential between notes and billa is a decreuing and convex function of the time to maturity the results provide a robult confirmation of the liquidity effect in auet pricing this paper studies empirically the effects of the liquidity of capital assets on their prices amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 proposed that liquidity affects asset prices because investors require a compensation for bearing transaction costs transaction costs paid whenever the asset is traded form a sequence of cash outflows the discounted value of this cost stream proxies for the value 1088 due to illiquidity which lowers the asset s value for any given cash flow that the asset generates 1 as a result the return on assets should be an increasing function of their illiquidity other things equal for stocks the illiquidity effect is expected to be strong because their transaction cost sequence is infinite amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 demonstrated that common stocks with lower liquidity yielded significantly higher average returns after controlling for risk and for other factors these results on the importance of liquidity in the pricing of stocks raise additional questions i does the liquidity effect depend on the specific controls used by amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 1 ii does illiquidity have a similarly strong effect on the pricing of bonds whose maturities are finite and iii if liquidity affects bond yields how is this effect related to the bond s time to maturity

mortgage debt consumption and illiquid housing markets in the great recession using a model with housing search endogenous credit constraints and mortgage default this paper accounts for the housing crash from 2006 to 2011 and its implications for aggregate and cross sectional consumption during the great recession left tail shocks to labor market uncertainty and tighter down payment requirements emerge as the key drivers an endogenous decline in housing liquidity amplifies the recession by increasing foreclosures contracting credit and depressing consumption balance sheets act as a transmission mechanism from housing to consumption that depends on gross portfolio positions and the leverage distribution low interest rate policies accelerate the recovery in housing and consumption

asset market linkages evidence from financial commodity and real estate assets abstract we use a general markov switching model to examine the relationships between returns over three different asset classes financial assets us stocks and treasury bonds commodities oil and gold and real estate assets us case shiller index we confirm the existence of two distinct regimes a tranquil regime with periods of economic expansion and a crisis regime with periods of economic decline the tranquil regime is characterized by lower volatility and significantly positive stock returns during these periods there is also evidence of a flight from quality from gold to stocks by contrast the crisis regime is characterized by higher volatility and sharply negative stock returns along with evidence of contagion between stocks oil and real estate furthermore during these periods there is strong evidence of a flight to quality from stocks to treasury bonds

house prices and credit constraints making sense of the us experience most us house price models break down in the mid 2000s due to the omission of exogenous changes in mortgage credit supply associated with the sub prime mortgage boom from house price to rent ratio and inverted housing demand models previous models lack data on credit constraints facing first time home buyers incorporating a measure of credit conditions the cyclically adjusted loan to value ratio for first time buyers into house price to rent ratio models yields stable long run relationships more precisely estimated effects reasonable speeds of adjustment and improved model fits

a model of optimal fines for repeat offenders abstract this paper analyzes optimal fines in a model in which individuals can commit up to two offenses the fine for the second offense is allowed to differ from the fine for the first offense there are four natural cases in the model defined by assumptions about the gains to individuals from committing the offense in the case fully analyzed it may be optimal to punish repeat offenders more severely than first time offenders in another case it may be optimal to impose less severe penalties on repeat offenders and in the two remaining cases the optimal penalty does not change

moving costs and housing demand abstract several recent housing demand studies use samples of recent movers based on the presumption that only such households are on their demand curves we find contrary to this presumption that the absolute values of the residuals from a standard housing demand equation fall with duration in the present dwelling this shows that the correlation pattern between housing and the explanatory variables at the moving date does not correspond to the average pattern over a typical housing spell we interpret this as evidence of forward looking behavior and show how it may be handled in econometric work with cross section samples

the asymmetric effects of monetary policy a nonlinear vector autoregression approach this paper tests for nonlinearity in a standard vector autoregression including output prices and money supply using an estimation strategy that is consistent with a wide range of structural macroeconomic models shocks to the money supply are found to have stronger output effects and weaker price effects when output growth is initially low positive and negative monetary shocks are found to have nearly symmetric effects in addition there is some evidence that shocks of different magnitudes have asymmetric effects these results are consistent with the view that the aggregate supply curve is convex

on the asymmetric effects of money supply shocks international evidence from a panel of oecd countries we examine whether the asymmetric effect of money on output is an international phenomenon and investigate the reasons for this asymmetry quarterly data from the 1963 93 period for a panel of twelve oecd countries strongly support asymmetry internationally negative money supply shocks are shown to have a stronger effect on output than positive shocks our methodology also enables us to distinguish between two sets of theories consistent with the output asymmetries a convex aggregate supply and a credit view we find that the effects of money on prices are generally symmetric which may be consistent with both sets of theories being operative at once

is the uk balance of payments sustainable the uk current account deficit john muellbauer and anthony murphy the uk has a large and persistent current account deficit policy makers argue that the deficit is easily financed temporary and therefore not a sign of structural weakness we examine the conditions in which it is appropriate for a country to overspend its current income with the intention of repaying loans out of future income these include an increase in international capital mobility larger net holdings of foreign assets and expectations of faster productivity growth all three apply to the uk so official reasoning is in part correct even so for several decades there has been a trend deterioration of uk trade performance most markedly in manufacturing and we detect no underlying improvement in the 1980s we highlight structural deficiencies in both demand and supply on the demand side we show the importance of rising house prices and easier consumer credit in fuelling the consumer boom to an unwarranted extent this we trace to unjustifiable subsidies to house ownership on the supply side we stress vastly inadequate investment in skill formation education and physical capital these structural deficiencies lead us to a less optimistic view than official policy we draw the policy lessons for the uk and consider whether continental europe will face similar problems as financial markets are liberalized

the asymmetric effects of demand shocks international evidence on determinants and implications the analysis focuses on the asymmetric effects of demand shocks the evidence across a sample of 19 industrial countries differentiates the effects of expansionary and contractionary aggregate demand shocks on real output growth and nominal wage and price inflation the difference appears consistent with a kinked supply curve that is dependent on the asymmetric flexibility of wages and or prices across countries furthermore the evidence does not support the endogeneity of asymmetric nominal flexibility with respect to demand variability or trend price inflation across countries on average across countries demand variability increases nominal wage and price inflation relative to deflation while exacerbating output contraction relative to expansion the apparent trade off between changes in real and nominal trends provides further support to the supply side explanation of asymmetry

why is consumption so smooth for thirty years it has been accepted that consumption is smooth because permanent income is smoother than measured income this paper considers the evidence for the contrary position that permanent income is in fact less smooth than measured income so that the smoothness of consumption cannot be straightforwardly explained by permanent income theory the paper argues that in postwar u s quarterly data consumption is smooth because it responds with a lag to changes in income

the theory of optimal law enforcement the economic literature on optimal law enforcement is very recent becker s seminal paper on crime and law enforcement dates from 1968 and most papers which are the focus of this survey have been published in the last ten years the core result presented by becker is the following the probability and the severity of punishment deter crime therefore the fine should be maximal since it is a costless transfer whereas the probability of detection and conviction is costly much of the recent work has attempted to show why becker s result may not hold

the asymmetric effects of monetary shocks the case of turkey this paper examines whether there is an asymmetry in the effects of positive versus negative and small versus big money supply shocks and whether the effects of the shocks on output and prices vary over the business cycles in the case of turkey negative shocks to money are found to have greater output and smaller price effects compared to the effects of positive shocks irrespective of the initial state of the economy it is also found that monetary shocks of different size affect output growth and inflation rates proportionately these findings can be interpreted as evidence for the view that the short run aggragate supply curve is convex in such a country like turkey

asymmetric effects of money supply shocks and trend inflation in recent years a number of empirical studies have presented evidence that money supply shocks have asymmetric effects that is unexpected negative changes in the money supply slow the economy more than unexpected positive changes accelerate the economy evidence of asymmetry was documented by cover 1992 for the postwar u s economy and his finding was confirmed by de long and summers 1988 morgan 1993 rhee and rich 1995 and karras 1996a b stimulated by these empirical works several attempts have been made to provide microeconomic foundations for the asymmetric effects of money supply shocks 1 among those theories this paper examines the one that focuses on asymmetric price adjustment and let us call it a sticky price theory money supply shocks will have asymmetric effects on real output if prices are less flexible downward than upward this sticky price theory was proposed by tsiddon 1993 ball and mankiw 1994 and caballero and engel 1992 by employing a menu cost model the above researchers show that positive trend inflation can produce the asymmetric effects of money supply shocks the logic of their theory is the following along with price adjustment costs positive trend infla

the mis behaviour of the aggregate price level this paper investigates the response of the price level to random monetary shocks through a model of the fixed cost of changing a nominal price it shows that in an inflationary environment an expansionary monetary shock is accommodated faster than a contractionary monetary shock furthermore when the average rate of monetary expansion increases the lag in response to a positive shock decreases the study also proves that the relationship between the expected rate of inflation and the variance of real prices is positive only above a critical level of expected inflation the most striking result in this area appears in the work of caplin and spulber 1987 they show that in the aggregate when inflation is monotone stickiness disappears even when all firms follow a strict s s rule in their model since firms are uniformly distributed discontinuous price adjustment at the firm level does not create stickiness at the aggregate level caballero and engel 1992 extend this analysis to incorporate idiosyncratic shocks they show that in the presence of monotone idiosyncratic shocks the long run stationary distribution of prices is the uniform distribution but in the short run when the distribution of prices is arbitrary aggregate stickiness can result from firms discontinuous price adjustments in the present work the focus shifts i use a model where aggregate stickiness emerges naturally from firms discontinuous price setting to investigate the effects of the rate of inflation on aggregate stickiness this work shows that aggregate stickiness is negatively correlated with the rate of inflation the higher the rate of inflation the less sticky the response of the aggregate price level with respect to positive nominal shocks and the closer the economy approaches the caplin and spulber model therefore when modeling a dynamic inflation tax one must account not only for the decrease in the monetary base but also for the increase in the speed at which the aggregate price level 889

household debt and spending during the financial crisis evidence from danish micro data abstract we use data for nearly 500 000 danish households to study the relationship between household leverage prior to the financial crisis of 2007 2009 and the development in spending over the course of the crisis we find a strong negative correlation between pre crisis leverage and the change in spending during the crisis this reflects that highly levered households spent a larger share of their income than their less levered peers prior to the crisis resulting in larger increases in debt in these years once we condition on the size of the pre crisis change in debt a high level of debt is no longer associated with a larger spending decline our results suggest that the larger decline in spending among high leverage households is the result of a spending normalization pattern that is also found in other years rather than a causal effect of high debt levels suppressing household spending during the crisis

modelling and forecasting mortgage delinquency and foreclosure in the uk in the absence of micro data in the public domain new aggregate models for the uk s mortgage repossessions and arrears are estimated using quarterly data over 1983 2014 motivated by a conceptual double trigger frame framework for foreclosures and payment delinquencies an innovation to improve on the flawed but widespread use of loan to value measures is to estimate difficult to observe variations in loan quality and access to refinancing and shifts in lenders forbearance policy by common latent variables in a system of equations for arrears and repossessions we introduce for the first time in the literature a theory justified estimate of the proportion of mortgages in negative equity as a key driver of aggregate repossessions and arrears this is based on an average debt equity ratio corrected for regional deviations and uses a functional form for the distribution of the debt equity ratio checked on irish micro data from the bank of ireland and bank of england snapshots of negative equity we systematically address serious measurement bias in the months in arrears measures neglected in previous uk studies highly significant effects on aggregate rates of repossessions and arrears are found for the aggregate debt service ratio the proportion of mortgages in negative equity and the unemployment rate economic forecast scenarios to 2020 highlight risks faced by the uk and its mortgage lenders illustrating the usefulness of the approach for bank stress testing for macroeconomics our model traces an important part of the financial accelerator the feedback from the housing market to bad loans and hence banks ability to extend credit

the assessment consumer expenditure this article aims to illuminate two sets of consumption puzzles the first concerns the behavior of aggregate saving rates in the 1980s and early 1990s collapse and rebound in scandinavia and the u k and apparently a more secular decline in the u s the second set of puzzles concerns various apparent contradictions of the rational expectations permanent income hypothesis e g in time series the excess sensitivity of consumption changes to anticipated income changes and in cross sections the tendency of consumption and income age profiles to follow each other more than standard life cycle theory implies the article discusses in relatively non technical terms the implications both for euler equations and solved out consumption functions of introducing uncertainty credit constraint consumption leisure interactions habits and durability alternative to rational expectations the illiquidity of some assets and financial deregulation it also compares the merits of euler and solved out models of aggregate consumption

housing wealth effects evidence from an australian panel we explore the positive relationship between house prices and household spending by following a panel of australian households no evidence for traditional housing wealth effects is found with young homeowners exhibiting the largest wealth effects young renters also exhibit a positive consumption response to house prices although less so than young homeowners this suggests that increasing house prices raise spending via easing credit constraints and a common association between house prices and a third factor results from a cohort level panel are similar to those using household level data suggesting that pseudo panels may be used as a partial substitute for actual panels

individual perceptions of the criminal justice system this paper empirically examines belief updating of the perceived probability of arrest and its criminal deterrence effects using two longitudinal data sources while beliefs about the probability of arrest are positively correlated with local official arrest rates they are unresponsive to information acquired from random individuals and local neighborhood conditions importantly perceptions respond to changes in an individual s criminal and arrest history young males who engage in crime without getting arrested revise their perceived probability of arrest downward while those who are arrested revise their probability upward estimates suggest that beliefs about the probability of arrest significantly deter crime jel k42

are the effects of monetary policy asymmetric huntley schaller by building on the hamilton 1989 markov switching model we examine questions like does monetary policy have the same effect in expansions and recessions given that the economy is currently in a recession does a fall in interest rates increase the probability of an expansion does monetary policy have an incremental effect on the growth rate within a given state or does it only affect the economy if it is sufficiently strong to induce a state change e g from recession to expansion as suggested by models with sticky prices or finance constraints interest rate changes have larger effects during recessions jel e52 e32 much of the recent work in macroeconomics has proceeded under the assumption that variables follow linear stochastic processes with constant coefficients as a result some of the richness of the burns mitchell analysis such as its focus on asymmetries between recessions and expansions may well have been lost blanchard and fischer 1989 7 i introduction for decades macroeconomists have debated whether monetary policy has the same effect on real output in expansions and recessions as far back as the 1930s keynes and pigou debated whether monetary policy would have less effect on output during a severe economic downturn in the 1960s there were active debates on a very different proposition namely whether the rightward portion of the aggregate supply curve was vertical so that monetary policy would have less effect on real output during expansions in this article we provide a new type of evidence on whether monetary policy has different effects depending on whether the economy is in an expansion or recession empirical evidence on this issue is particularly relevant in light of new theoretical work in macroeconomics that predicts asymmetric effects of demand shocks conditional on the state of the economy two examples of this work are s s type models of price adjustment and models in which there are agency costs of financial intermediation 1 the intuition for the latter class of models is simple 2 when there is information asymmetry in financial markets agents may behave as if they were constrained for a variety of reasons these finance constraints are more likely to bind during recessions when the net worth of agents is low an increase in interest rates will then have two effects on investment the standard effect of increasing the cost of capital and therefore reducing investment demand and an additional effect of reducing liquidity e g by increasing debt service obligations and thus reducing investment demand for constrained agents as a result monetary policy actions that change interest rates will have greater effects during a recession 3 the s s type price adjustment models of ball and mankiw 1994 caballero and engel 1992 and tsiddon 1993 lead to a convex aggregate supply curve and therefore also imply that monetary policy will have stronger effects during recessions one of the more frequently cited empirical papers on the potentially asymmetric effects of monetary policy is cover 1992 which finds evidence that positive monetary shocks have different effects from negative monetary shocks we are looking at a different type of asymmetry namely between booms and recessions we study asymmetries using an extension of the markov switching model developed by hamilton 1989 estimated over the period 1955 93 in hamilton s econometric specification the growth rate of output depends on a state variable that corresponds to an expansion or recession this approach has several advantages first unlike linear projections it allows for nonlinearities and asymmetries second in estimating the recession coefficients it gives greater relative weight to observations that most clearly correspond to recessions and similarly for the expansion coefficients

measuring the stance of fiscal policy since the balance of public revenue and expenditure varies automatically with the state of capacity utilisation it has been argued for some time that the fiscal surplus or deficit should be cyclically corrected to produce a structural balance for assessing the stance of fiscal policy it is by no means implied by most practitioners that these cyclical fluctu ations have no effect on demand quite the contrary it is simply that the structural bal ance is seen as a more accurate measure of discretionary fiscal policy

special repo rates an empirical analysis duffie 1996 examines the theoretical impact of repo specials on the prices of treasury securities and concludes that all else the same an issue on special will carry a higher price than an otherwise identical issue we examine this hypothesis and find strong evidence in support of it we also examine whether the liquidity premium associated with on the run issues is due to repo specialness and find evidence of a distinct effect finally we investigate whether auction tightness and percentage awarded to dealers are related to subsequent specialness and find that both variables are generally significant underlying the cash market for u s treasury securities is the financing or repo market at any given time the repo rate for most treasury issues the general collateral rate is the same but a few issues are typically on special an issue on special has associated with it a repo rate that is less than the prevailing general collateral rate as a result the owner of a security that is on special is able to obtain below market financing rates via a repurchase agreement duffie 1996 examines the theoretical causes of repo specials and their impact on the prices of treasury securities in the context of a general equilibrium model his primary conclusion is that specialness will be priced in the cash market meaning that all else the same an issue on special or likely to go on special will carry a higher price than an otherwise identical issue we investigate this hypothesis using data on repo specials and find clear evidence in support of it we conclude that specialness is priced and that the magnitude of the cash market premium reflects both the future duration and magnitude of repo specialness we also examine whether the liquidity premium associated with on therun issues is due to repo specialness and find evidence of a distinct effect finally as a test of duffie s model we investigate whether auction tightness and percentage awarded to nonbank primary dealers are related to subsequent specialness the evidence is consistent with predictions with both variables generally significant

inflation and the euler equation approach to consumption behaviour some empirical evidence abstract by using u s quarterly data on non durable consumption over the period 1951 i 1986 ii this note presents various pieces of evidence for the view that inflation variables in the anticipated surprise and uncertainty forms matter in the euler type consumption autoregression inflation variables are not only significantly negative and make the overall performance of the euler type specifications better but they also induce the wrong sign for the real rate of interest these results are puzzling and suggest that the question of why in contrast with a fisherian intertemporal optimization inflation matters in the consumption autoregression should be an important area for research

imperfect capital markets and the monetarist black box liquidity constraints inflation and the asymmetric effects of interest rate policy in this paper we examine the effects of unanticipated changes in interest rates on consumers expenditure in a model in which capital markets are imperfect we show that where constraints exist on the amounts individuals can borrow individuals may rationally choose to borrow up to the limits of such constraints over part of their lifetimes such liquidity constrained individuals in general have a higher marginal propensity to consume out of changes in current income than is the case with liquidity unconstrained individuals changes in interest rates which have the effect of redistributing income between liquidity constrained monetary debtors and liquidity unconstrained creditors will thus have a net effect on aggregate consumption we further show that this effect operates asymmetrically in the sense that an increase in interest rates will have a larger net impact than a fall formally we examine the impact of a change in the interest rate which we assume exogenous on the behaviour of an individual consumer the analysis is thus independent of the source of the interest rate shock 2 but we believe an important application of the model concerns the transmission mechanism through which monetary policy operates in this paper we do not consider the relationship between the supply of money and interest rates but simnply follow standard economic theory in assuming that monetary policy operates through the impact of interest rates on expenditure it is the mechanism linking interest rate changes to expenditure that has proved hard to identify and it is in this respect that our analysis may be relevant in suggesting a process through which interest rates can affect expenditure which appears to have been neglected hitherto the model provides a possible channel of transmission of monetary policy different from those usually considered 3 in so doing the model may offer some insight into the transmission processes within the monetarist black box and indeed suggests that the efficacy of monetary policy may in part depend on the existence of capital market imperfections

house prices and consumer spending recent empirical work shows large consumption responses to house price movements this is at odds with a prominent theoretical view which using the logic of the permanent income hypothesis argues that consumption responses should be small we show that in contrast to this view workhorse models of consumption with incomplete markets calibrated to rich cross sectional micro facts actually predict large consumption responses in line with the data to explain this result we show that consumption responses to permanent house price shocks can be approximated by a simple and robust rule of thumb formula the marginal propensity to consume out of temporary income times the value of housing in our model consumption responses depend on a number of factors such as the level and distribution of debt the size and history of house price shocks and the level of credit supply each of these effects is naturally explained with our simple formula

how mortgage finance reform could affect housing abstract although major changes in mortgage finance have occurred since the subprime bust several issues remain unresolved centering on the roles of fannie mae freddie mac and the fha we analy

innocent bystanders monetary policy and inequality abstract we study the effects of monetary policy shocks on and their historical contribution to consumption and income inequality in the united states since 1980 as measured by the consumer expenditure survey contractionary monetary policy systematically increases inequality in labor earnings total income consumption and total expenditures furthermore monetary policy shocks account for a non trivial component of the historical cyclical variation in income and consumption inequality using detailed micro level data on income and consumption we document some of the different channels via which monetary policy shocks affect inequality as well as how these channels depend on the nature of the change in monetary policy

housing wealth and consumption a micro panel study there is strong evidence that house prices and consumption are synchronised there is however disagreement over the causes of this link this study examines if there is a wealth effect of house prices on consumption using a household level panel data set with information about house ownership income wealth and demographics for a large sample of the danish population in the period 1987 96 we model the dependence of the growth rate of total household expenditure with unanticipated innovations to house prices controlling for factors related to competing explanations we find little evidence of a housing wealth effect

incentive generating state dependent penalty system the case of income tax evasion abstract penalty systems can very often be looked upon as corrective measures established in order to eliminate or reduce costly externalities generated by optimizing economic agents hence penalties can be viewed as regulatory measures and their efficient structure should be of interest to economists we propose a dynamic incentive generating penalty system which if instituted may reduce at a given cost the generation of undesirable externalities the special case to which we refer is income tax evasion although our scheme should be applicable to any kind of externalities such as pollution of the environment violation of antirust laws and others which are created by repititive actions of economic agents

interest rate pass through mortgage rates household consumption and voluntary deleveraging abstract exploiting variation in the timing of resets of adjustable rate mortgages arms we find that a sizable decline in mortgage payments up to 50 percent induces a significant increase in c

asymmetry in the effects of monetary and government spending shocks contrasting evidence and implications magda kandil 1 introduction recent research on business cycles has produced evidence that demonstrates the asymmetric effects of monetary shocks on economic variables 1 specifically the effect of expansionary monetary shocks on economic variables may be different from that of contractionary shocks the empirical evidence has stimulated efforts to provide an adequate theoretical explanation to the observed asymmetry sources of asymmetry have varied sharply in the theoretical literature primary explanations may be classified into supply side and demand side sources of asymmetry a strand of the theoretical literature has viewed asymmetry of economic fluctuations to be a supply side phenomenon demand shifts along a kinked supply curve are likely to produce varying effects on the economy as to the explanation of the kinked shape of the supply curve competing models offer explanations in one direction some have explained the asymmetric shape of the supply curve by conditions in the labor market this possibility arises in the context of models that advocate the contractual nominal wage rigidity explanation of business cycles the stipulation of wage contracts may allow for asymmetric wage indexation for example if wages are more responsive to expansionary demand shocks compared to contractionary shocks asymmetric wage indexation is consistent with a kinked supply curve in labor and output markets consequently expansionary demand shocks are likely to move the economy along a steeper supply curve 2 alternatively supply side asymmetry may be attributed to conditions in the p roduct market that differentiate price adjustment in the upward and downward directions faced with menu costs firms may be inclined for more frequent and larger adjustments of prices in the upward compared to the downward direction this possibility also is consistent with a steeper supply curve in the face of positive demand shocks compared to negative shocks 3 another line of the theoretical explanations of asymmetric economic fluctuations has emphasized possible asymmetry on the demand side of the economy conditions in the money and or goods markets may differentiate the response of aggregate demand to positive and negative shocks 4 this possibility differentiates the size of aggregate demand shifts in the face of expansionary and contractionary shocks in the absence of supply side asymmetry demand side asymmetry differentiates the severity of economic fluctuations in the face of positive and negative shocks the primary difference between demand side and supply side explanations concerns the output and inflationary effects in response to asymmetry supply side asymmetry produces a trade off between the asymmetric effects of demand shocks on output and their inflationary effects on wages and or prices the response of output growth is larger in the face of demand contraction compared to expansion concurrently the inflationary effect of demand shifts exceeds the deflationary effect on nominal wage and or price in contrast demand side asymmetry produces a positive correlation between the asymmetric effects of demand shocks on real output growth and nominal wage and price inflation that is larger output contraction relative to expansion correlates with smaller inflation relative to deflation of the nominal wage and price in the face of demand shocks the purpose of this investigation is to contrast asymmetry on the demand and supply sides in the face of two specific demand shocks monetary and government spending shocks demand and or supply conditions may differentiate the expansionary and contractionary effects of monetary and fiscal policies the article s analysis will highlight the specifics of this asymmetry the empirical evidence sheds some light on potential explanations of this asymmetry as follows conditions in the credit market and the behavior of ricardian consumers may differentiate the effects of expansionary and contractionary government spending shocks on aggregate demand

subgame perfect punishment for repeat offenders i introduction the literature on optimal law enforcement typically assumes that the government can commit to sanction schemes 1 this means the government can use any set of threats to penalize wrongdoers in particular if a crime occurs the government actually sanctions the wrongdoers even though ex post it may have no incentive to do so potential wrongdoers believe that the government will carry out the threat at any cost and therefore do not engage in the act in the first place in this article i give up the assumption that the government can commit to whatever sanction scheme i consider the analysis of optimal sanctions without the possibility to commit important because judges often have a lot of discretion as to the size of the penalty they may for example adjust sanctions to the financial possibilities age education and so on of the wrongdoer accordingly i allow only for sanctions that the government actually wishes to implement should a crime have occurred ruling out full commitment changes the optimal enforcement schemes suppose for example the government does not care about the sanction as is typically assumed in the literature then it will not enforce the penalty if a crime has happened given that there is say a small cost of doing so the rational criminal will anticipate the ex post enforcement behavior of the government therefore she will commit the crime because the threat of being sanctioned is not credible once one drops the commitment assumption the typical deterrence equilibria of the law enforcement literature between potential wrongdoers and the government are based on empty threats in the language of game theory the equilibria are not subgame perfect or time consistent i study the problem of subgame perfect sanctions using the framework of emons 2003 agents may commit a crime twice the act is inefficient the agents are thus to be deterred the agents are wealth constrained so that increasing the fine for the first offense means a reduction in the possible sanction for the second offense and vice versa the agents may follow history dependent strategies that is commit the crime a second time if and only if they were were not apprehended the first time the government seeks to minimize the probability of apprehension ignoring the government s commitment problem it is optimal to set the sanction for the first offense equal to the entire wealth of the agents while the sanction for the second offense equals zero the intuition is as follows a money penalty imposed for the second offense reduces the amount a person can pay for the first offense because the wealth available to pay penalties is assumed to be fixed over the two periods for that reason a higher probability event namely a first offense that is detected will be more effective use of the scarce money penalty resource than a lower probability event namely a second detected offense why is the probability of detection lower for the second rather than for the first crime simply because an agent faces the possibility of being sanctioned for the second crime if and only if he or she has already been sanctioned the first time for further results it is important to note that the optimal probability of apprehension increases with the benefit from the crimes this decreasing sanction scheme raises of course the issue of time consistency will the government really charge the agent the entire wealth when she was apprehended for the first crime knowing that then she will commit the second act for sure isn t it better for the government to renege and charge little for the first act so that the agent still has sufficient wealth to pay a sanction that deters the second crime given that the first act has been committed anyway that way the government can at least deter the second act to study this problem i consider a rent seeking government

on criminals risk attitudes abstract if criminals are expected utility maximizers and more sensitive to changes in the certainty than the severity of punishment they must be risk preferrers we show that risk aversion is not ruled out if the expected utility hypothesis is weakened 1997 elsevier science s a

homeownership and the american dream for decades it was taken as a given that an increased homeownership rate was a desirable goal but after the financial crises and great recession in which roughly eight million homes were foreclosed on and about 7 trillion in home equity was erased economists and policymakers are re evaluating the role of homeownership in the american dream many question whether the american dream should really include homeownership or instead focus more on other aspects of upward mobility and most acknowledge that homeownership is not for everyone we take a detailed look at us homeownership from three different perspectives 1 an international perspective comparing us homeownership rates with those of other nations 2 a demographic perspective examining the correlation between changes in the us homeownership rate between 1985 and 2015 and factors like age race ethnicity education family status and income 3 and a financial benefits perspective using national data since 2002 to calculate the internal rate of return to homeownership compared to alternative investments our overall conclusion homeownership is a valuable institution while two decades of policies in the 1990s and early 2000s may have put too much faith in the benefits of homeownership the pendulum seems to have swung too far the other way and many now may have too little faith in homeownership as part of the american dream

the impact of unconventional monetary policy on the market for collateral the case of the french bond market we consider the channel consisting in transferring the credit risk associated with refinancing operations between financial institutions to market participants in particular we analyze liquidity and volatility premia on the french government debt securities market since these assets are used as collateral both in the open market operations of the ecb and on the interbank market in our time varying transition probability markov switching tvtp ms model we highlight the existence of two regimes in one of them which we refer to as the conventional regime monetary policy neutrality is verified in the other which we dub the unconventional regime monetary policy operations lead to volatility and liquidity premia on the collateral market the existence of these conventional and unconventional regimes highlights some asymmetries in the conduct of monetary policy

imperfect capital markets in empirical life cycle models abstract in the context of frisch demand functions that have prices and the marginal utility of income as independent variables we show how to incorporate imperfect capital markets into empirical models the analysis is for rational agents in an uncertain world

spanish treasury bond market liquidity and volatility pre and post european monetary union abstract spain enacted a number of important debt management initiatives in 1997 to prepare its treasury bond market for european monetary union we interpret the impacts of these changes through shifts in a bond liquidity life cycle function furthermore we highlight the importance of expected average future liquidity in explaining spanish bond liquidity premiums we also uncover pricing biases that support the spanish treasury s tactical decision to target high coupon premium bonds in its pre emu debt exchanges finally we show that emu has been associated with both a decrease in bond yield volatility and an increase in pricing efficiency

home is where the equity is mortgage refinancing and household consumption applying a permanent income model with exogenous liquidity constraints and mortgage behavior household refinancing when mortgage interest rates are historically high and rising a persistent empirical puzzle is explained using data from the panel study of income dynamics households experiencing an unemployment shock and having limited initial liquid assets to draw upon are shown to have been 25 more likely to refinance 1991 94 on average such liquidity constrained households converted over two thirds of every dollar of equity they removed into current consumption as mortgage rates plummeted 1991 94 producing an estimated expenditure stimulus of at least 28 billion

asymmetric effects of positive and negative money supply shocks this paper examines whether positive and negative money supply shocks have symmetric effects on output the results are consistent with the hypothesis that positive money supply shocks do not have an effect on output while negative money supply shocks do have an effect on output this finding is independent of whether or not expected money is assumed to affect output the results reported in this paper imply that the fed could increase the growth rate of real output by reducing the standard deviation of unexpected changes in the money supply