wages and productivity growth in a dynamic monopoly abstract this paper studies the intertemporal problem of a monopolistic firm that engages in productivity enhancing innovations to reduce labor costs the optimal innovation policy is not monotone and the rate of productivity growth is the highest when the firm s size is in some intermediate range as long as its initial productivity is not too low the firm eventually reaches a steady state where the rate of productivity growth is identical to the rate of wage growth productivity dependent wage differentials do not affect productivity growth in the steady state they increase however the firm s long run equilibrium cost level

where there is a will there is a way assessing the impact of obstacles to innovation the aim of this article is to assess the impact of obstacles to innovation on firms propensity to innovate we show that distinguishing between firms that do not innovate because they do not intend to and firms that try but fail or give up because of insurmountable obstacles is key for properly measuring the impact of the barriers to innovation estimating an innovation production function on appropriately defined subsamples allows obtaining consistent results i e a significant and negative impact of the obstacles to innovation on firms propensity to innovate these results are robust to the definition of these subsamples to the way obstacles to innovation are defined as well as to the distinction between financial and nonfinancial obstacles

cost reduction competition and industry performance in many markets firms compete over time by expending resources with the purpose of reducing their costs sometimes the cost reducing investments operate directly on costs in many instances they take the form of developing new products that deliver what customers need more cheaply therefore product development can have the same ultimate effect as direct cost reduction in fact if one thinks of the product as the services it delivers to the customer in the way that lancaster pioneered then product development often is just cost reduction

contagion as a wealth effect financial contagion is described as a wealth effect in a continuous time model with two risky assets and three types of traders noise traders trade randomly in one market long term investors provide liquidity using a linear rule based on fundamentals convergence traders with logarithmic utility trade optimally in both markets asset price dynamics are endogenously determined numerically as functions of endogenous wealth and exogenous noise when convergence traders lose money they liquidate positions in both markets this creates contagion in that returns become more volatile and more correlated contagion reduces benefits from portfolio diversification and raises issues for risk management during the f inancial panic associated with the default of the russian government in august 1998 and the subsequent collapse of the hedge fund long term capital management numerous hedge funds banks and securities firms tried simultaneously to reduce exposures to a variety of financial instruments such as russian bonds brazilian stocks u s mortgages spreads between on therun and off the run government securities and spreads between swaps and u s treasuries although the fundamental values of these positions would appear to have little correlation during this financial crisis the asset prices in these markets exhibited the following common empirical pattern 1 financial intermediaries suffered losses as prices moved against their positions 2 market depth and liquidity decreased simultaneously in several markets 3 the volatility of prices increased simultaneously in several markets and

the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

investor flows and the 2008 boom bust in oil prices this paper explores the impact of investor flows and financial market conditions on returns in crude oil futures markets i argue that informational frictions and the associated speculative activity may induce prices to drift away from fundamental values and may result in price booms and busts particular attention is given to the interplay between imperfect information about real economic activity including supply demand and inventory accumulation and speculative activity in oil markets furthermore i present new evidence that there were economically and statistically significant effects of investor flows on futures prices after controlling for returns in the united states and emerging economy stock markets a measure of the balance sheet flexibility of large financial institutions open interest the futures spot basis and lagged returns on oil futures the largest impacts on futures prices were from intermediate term growth rates of index positions and managed money spread positions moreover my findings suggest that these effects were through risk or informational channels distinct from changes in convenience yield finally the evidence suggests that hedge fund trading in spread positions in futures impacted the shape of term structure of oil futures prices this paper was accepted by wei xiong finance

raise rates to raise inflation neo fisherianism in the new keynesian model increasing the inflation target in a new keynesian nk model may require increasing rather than decreasing the nominal interest rate in the short run we refer to this positive short run comovement between the nominal rates and inflation conditional on a nominal shock as neo fisherianism we show that the nk model is more likely to be neo fisherian the more persistent is the change in the inflation target and the more flexible are prices neo fisherianism is driven by the forward looking nature of the model modifications that make the framework less forward looking make it less likely for the model to exhibit neo fisherianism

index investment and financialization of commodities the authors found that concurrent with the rapidly growing index investment in commodity markets since the early 2000s prices of non energy commodity futures in the united states have become incr

the legacy of steven klepper industry evolution entrepreneurship and geography this introductory essay of the special issue honoring steven klepper provides a synthesis of his work and places the articles of the special issue within the context of his scholarship steven klepper s pioneering work linked life cycle patterns in industry evolution to underlying micro level firm innovation dynamics and employee entrepreneurship and to the macro level implications regarding geographical agglomeration and the growth of economies taken together the lifetime of klepper s research provides an integrated account of the key industrial mechanisms at work and also sets the stage for future research as is elaborated in individual contributions to the special issue

the identification of monetary policy disturbances explaining the liquidity puzzle abstract this paper examines recent work on the identification of monetary policy disturbances its main finding is that the empirical anomalies found in the literature reflect a failure to properly address the federal reserve s policy of accommodating reserve demand shocks a new method of identifying monetary policy using nonborrowed reserves is proposed using this specification policy has a strong persistent liquidity effect regardless of subsample policy granger causes output even in the presence of interest rates explaining approximately 49 of the variance in output at a two year horizon and the residual explanatory power of interest rates for output is negligible

the changing technology of technological change general and abstract knowledge and the division of innovative labour abstract in the past most innovations have resulted from empiricist procedures the outcome of each trial yielding knowledge that could not be readily extended to other contexts while trial and error may remain the primary engine of innovation developments in many scientific disciplines along with progress in computational capabilities and instrumentation are encouraging a new approach to industrial research instead of relying purely on trial and error the attempt is also to understand the principles governing the behaviour of objects and structures the result is that relevant information whatever its source can now be cast in frameworks and categories that are more universal the greater universality makes it possible for the innovation process to be organised in new ways firms can specialise and focus upon producing new knowledge and the locus of innovation may be spread across both users and producers more generally the use of general and abstract knowledge in innovation opens up the possibility for a division of labour in inventive activity the division of innovative labour the implications for public policy especially that on intellectual property rights are discussed

factor models and time varying parameter framework for forecasting exchange rates and inflation a survey a survey of models used for forecasting exchange rates and inflation reveals that the factor based and time varying parameter or state space models generate superior forecasts relative to all other models this survey also finds that models based on taylor rule and portfolio balance theory have moderate predictive power for forecasting exchange rates the evidence on the use of bayesian model averaging approach in forecasting exchange rates reveals limited predictive power but strong support for forecasting inflation overall the evidence overwhelmingly points to the context of the forecasts relevance of the historical data data transformation choice of the benchmark selected time horizons sample period and forecast evaluation methods as the crucial elements in selecting forecasting models for exchange rate and inflation

firm size and the nature of innovation within industries the case of process and product r d the effect of firm size on the allocation of r d effort between process and product innovation is examined it is hypothesized that relative to product innovations process innovations are less saleable in disembodied form and spawn less growth this implies that the returns to process r d will depend more on the firm s output at the time it conducts its r d than the returns to product r d incorporating this distinction in a simple model the authors derive and test predictions about how the fraction of r d devoted to process innovation varies with firm size within industries

on the links between stock and commodity markets volatility this paper investigates the links between price returns for 25 commodities and stocks over the period from january 2001 to november 2011 by paying a particular attention to energy raw materials relying on the dynamic conditional correlation dcc garch methodology we show that the correlations between commodity and stock markets evolve through time and are highly volatile particularly since the 2007 2008 financial crisis the latter has played a key role emphasizing the links between commodity and stock markets and underlining the financialization of commodity markets at the idiosyncratic level a speculation phenomenon is highlighted for oil coffee and cocoa while the safe haven role of gold is evidenced

innovations and r d in northern ireland manufacturing a schumpeterian approach harris r and trainor m 1995 innovations and r d in northern ireland manufacturing a schumpeterian approach reg studies 29 593 604 given the importance of r d and innovative outputs and the change in regional policy in the 1980s to encourage an enterprise culture based inter alia on a high rate of innovations this paper attempts to explain the determinants of inventive activities in one of the most disadvantaged regions of the united kingdom a model incorporating the impact of market structure is estimated and it is found that in northern ireland higher r d spending leads to a higher probability of innovating while r d itself is positively affected by higher post innovation price cost margins thus r d spending and innovation outputs are beneficial to profitability and thus presumably the long term growth of firms however while market structure is important the direct effects of monopoly power are if anything negative thus the results presented by geroski 1990 are support

firm size and r d intensity a re examination using data from the federal trade commission s line of business program and survey measures of technological opportunity and appropriability conditions this paper finds that overall firm size has a very small statistically insignificant effect on business unit r d intensity when either fixed industry effects or measured industry characteristics are taken into account business unit size has no effect on the r d intensity of business units that perform r d but it affects the probability of conducting r d business unit and firm size jointly explain less than one per cent of the variance in r d industry effects explain nearly half the variance two sets of well known hypotheses are associated with the later work of joseph schumpeter the first concerns the effects of market concentration on research and development investment and on innovative performance the second bears on the effects of firm size on r d and innovation in a recent paper levin cohen and mowery 1985 we re examined the first set of hypotheses simple regressions at the line of business level replicated the established findings that both r d intensity and innovative performance first increase and then decrease as industrial concentration rises the effect of concentration however was sharply attenuated when we controlled for interindustry differences in technological opportunity and in the appropriability of returns from new technology our results suggested that it is probably unwarranted to conclude that market concentration favors r d investment and innovation in this paper we investigate the schumpeterian hypothesis that large size is conducive to r d investment this relationship has been studied at least as intensively as the link between concentration and r d but our approach is novel in two respects first using data collected by the federal trade

index investment and the financialization of commodities the authors found that concurrent with the rapidly growing index investment in commodity markets since the early 2000s prices of non energy commodity futures in the united states have become increasingly correlated with oil prices this trend has been significantly more pronounced for commodities in two popular commodity indices this finding reflects the financialization of the commodity markets and helps explain the large increase in the price volatility of non energy commodities around 2008

interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts the effects of monetary policy existing theory and evidence on the effects of monetary policy are reviewed substantial room for disagreement among economists remains new evidence based on multivariate time series studies of several countries is presented while certain patterns in the data consistent with effective monetary policy are strikingly similar across countries others particularly the tendency of interest rate increases to predict high inflation are harder to reconcile with effective monetary policy

a new approach to measuring financial contagion this article proposes a new approach to evaluate contagion in financial markets our measure of contagion captures the coincidence of extreme return shocks across countries within a region and across regions we characterize the extent of contagion its economic significance and its determinants using a multinomial logistic regression model applying our approach to daily returns of emerging markets during the 1990s we find that contagion is predictable and depends on regional interest rates exchange rate changes and conditional stock return volatility evidence that contagion is stronger for extreme negative returns than for extreme positive returns is mixed

imperfect information multiple shocks and policy s signaling role abstract in multiple shock models when agents have imperfect information they attempt to infer a shock s type in addition to its size in this environment monetary policy plays an important signaling role this paper highlights this signaling role by showing that conclusions from imperfect information monetary models are sensitive to the number of shocks included with multiple shocks contractionary monetary policy can initially increase inflation and delay the eventual disinflation moreover multiple shocks can result in destabilizing price flexibility while optimal policy s response to one shock will depend on the existence of other shocks contrary to a typical linear quadratic framework

the size distribution of innovating firms in the uk 1945 1983 a survey of 4 378 significant innovations shows that firms with fewer than 1 000 employees commercialized a much larger share than is indicated by their share of r and d expenditures innovations per employee have been consistently above average in firms with more than 10 000 employees and have become so in firms with fewer than 1 000 intersectoral variation in the size distribution of innovating firms can be explained as a function of r and d based technological opportunities and of technological ease of entry by user firms with principal activities outside the sector copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

introducing the bank of canada staff economic projections database we present a new publicly available database of real time data and forecasts from the bank of canada s staff economic projections which will be updated on an annual basis we describe the data construct its variables coverage and frequency we then provide a forecast evaluation for gross domestic product gdp growth consumer price index cpi inflation and the policy rate since 1982 we compare the staff s forecasts with those from commonly used time series models estimated with the real time data and with forecasts from other professional forecasters and provide standard bias tests finally we study changes in predictability of the canadian economy following the announcement of the inflation targeting regime in 1991 our data set is unprecedented outside the usa and our evidence is particularly interesting as it covers over 30 years of staff forecasts two severe recessions and different monetary policy regimes

co movement of major energy agricultural and food commodity price returns a time series assessment abstract using monthly data between 1970 and 2013 we provide a comprehensive analysis of the extent of co movement measured by correlation coefficients among the nominal price returns of 11 major energy agricultural and food commodities we study the degree and the time evolution of unconditional and conditional correlations using a uniform spacings estimation and testing approach multivariate dynamic conditional correlation models and a rolling regression procedure we find that 1 the price returns of energy and agricultural commodities are highly correlated 2 the overall level of co movement among commodities increased in recent years especially between energy and agricultural commodities and in particular in the cases of maize and soybean oil which are important inputs in the production of biofuels and 3 the stock market volatility is positively associated with the co movement of price returns across markets especially after 2007

changes in monetary regimes and the identification of monetary policy shocks narrative evidence from canada abstract using narrative evidence with a novel database of real time data and forecasts from the bank of canada s staff projections 1974 2015 we construct a new measure of monetary policy shocks and estimate the effects of monetary policy in canada we show it is crucial to account for the break in the conduct of monetary policy caused by the announcement of inflation targeting in 1991 a 100 basis point increase in our new shock series leads to a 1 0 percent peak decrease in real gdp and a 0 5 percent fall in the price level while not accounting for the break leads to a persistent decrease in gdp and a price puzzle albeit the change in monetary regime the effects of monetary policy have not changed much before and after it

liquidity commonality in commodities abstract we examine liquidity commonality in commodity futures markets using data from 16 agricultural energy industrial metal precious metal and livestock commodities we show there is a strong systematic liquidity factor in commodities liquidity commonality was present in 1997 2003 when commodity prices were relatively stable and during the recent boom there is some support for both supply side and demand side explanations for this commonality we find no evidence of a consistent link between stock and commodity liquidity in general energy commodities appear to provide a better hedge against equity market liquidity risk than the other commodity families

tail events a new approach to understanding extreme energy commodity prices abstract this paper shows that extreme energy price changes located in the 10 tails of the distribution cluster across energy futures markets during the boom bust cycle of 2006 to 2012 using multinominal logit regressions we find that the coincidence of such tail events cannot be explained solely by common supply and demand fundamentals instead we provide evidence that the transmission of extreme price changes occurs through a financial demand channel specifically changes in the net long position of hedge funds are associated with a significant increase in the probability of coincident large positive and negative returns across energy markets evidence that index investments drive tail events is limited further we identify adverse shocks to speculator funding liquidity as determinant of synchronized price drops across energy markets the likelihood of extreme negative returns in more than one market significantly increases when the ted spread rises

the role of knowledge in r d efficiency past research has recognized that both demand and capability influence the allocation of r d resources scholars have had an easier time getting a grip on demand than on capability while it has been recognized that knowledge is an important part of capability to date formalization of knowledge and its role in r d activity has been unsatisfactory this paper models the role of knowledge in r d various sources of such knowledge are considered the model throws a different light on analyses that employ a knowledge capital stock and also illuminates the dual private and public nature of technological knowledge

time intensive r d and unbalanced trade abstract this paper highlights a novel mechanism that generates global imbalances it develops a general equilibrium trade model with one of two countries having a comparative advantage in a sector whose production is characterized by i rapid anticipated demand growth and ii large up front r d costs international funding of the accruing r d costs generates capital inflows in the r d stage which are balanced by subsequent outflows importantly sector level growth does not generate growth differentials between countries typically regarded as rationales of global imbalances additionally it is shown that a trade surplus can coincide with appreciations of the real exchange rate i argue that switzerland s trade surplus which was driven to record heights during 2010 2014 by pharmaceutical exports exemplifies this mechanism calibrating the model to swiss trade flows underpins this argument

r d appropriability opportunity and market structure new evidence on some schumpeterian hypotheses one of the largest bodies of literature in the field of industrial organization is devoted to the interpretation and testing of several hypotheses advanced by joseph schumpeter 1950 concerning innovation and industrial market structure one set of hypotheses focuses on the role of firm size as a determinant of r d spending and the rate of technological advance another set focuses on the effect of market concentration on r d and technological advance in this paper we reexamine the latter set of hypotheses at the industry level using new data on r d appropriability and technological opportunity collected by levin et al 1984 in a survey of r d executives in 130 industries

patents licensing and market structure in the chemical industry abstract the strategies of rent appropriation and industry structure are inter dependent how firms use patents depends upon industry structure and in turn affects industry structure in the 19th century market leaders in the chemical industry combined patents and secrecy to deter entry within cartels patents were used to stabilize cartels and organize technology licensing the role of patents changed in the less concentrated post world war ii markets in bulk organic chemicals and petrochemicals chemical producers use licensing as an important means of generating revenue from process innovations the increased importance of technology licensing is closely related to the emergence of a class of specialized process design and engineering firms that have played an important role in the development and diffusion of process innovations

the effects of monetary policy using structural factor analysis the traditional vector autoregression var method is widely used to trace out the effects of monetary policy innovations on the economy however this method suffers from the curse of dimensionality so that in practice vars are estimated on a limited number of variables leading to a potential missing information problem in this article we use the method of structural factor analysis to evaluate the effects of monetary policy on key macroeconomic variables in a data rich environment this methodology allows us to extract information on monetary policy and its impact on the economy from a much larger data set than is possible with the traditional var method we propose two structural factor models one is the structural factor augmented vector autoregressive sfavar model and the other is the structural factor vector autoregressive sfvar model compared to the traditional var both models incorporate information from hundreds of data series series that can be and are monitored by the central bank in

discretionary tax changes and the macroeconomy new narrative evidence from the united kingdom abstract this paper provides new estimates of the macroeconomic effects of tax changes using a new narrative dataset for the united kingdom identification is achieved by isolating exogenous tax policy changes using the romer and romer narrative strategy i find that a 1 percent cut in taxes increases gdp by 0 6 percent on impact and 2 5 percent over three years the findings are remarkably similar to romer and romer narrative estimates for the united states reinforcing the view that tax changes have powerful and persistent effects exogenous tax changes are also shown to have contributed to important episodes in the uk business cycle jel e23 e32 e62 h20 h61

persistent heterogeneity of r d intensities within sectors evidence and policy implications abstract do firms in the same sector converge towards the same r d intensities previous research has often assumed this to be true a closer examination using microdata from the eu industrial r d investment scoreboard for the years 2000 2015 shows considerable heterogeneity in r d intensities among firms in the same sector and that this heterogeneity persists over time statistical tests of convergence show that the variation in r d intensities does not decrease over time i e no convergence although firms with an r d intensity below the industry average do seem to catch up with the leaders i e evidence of convergence overall firms in the same industry do not converge to a common r d intensity policy implications are discussed

r d in smes a paradox this paper has three objectives 1 to survey the relevant literature addressing the apparent paradox of research development investments carried out within small and medium enterprises 2 to provide focused summaries of the articles in this special issue 3 to draw some general conclusions in terms of policy implications

narrative and var approaches to monetary policy common identification problems abstract romer and romer romer c d romer d h 1989 does monetary policy matter a new test in the spirit of friedman and schwartz in blanchard o j fischer s eds nber macroeconomics annual 1989 mit press cambridge ma pp 121 170 romer c d romer d h 1994 monetary policy matters journal of monetary economics 34 75 88 adopted a narrative approach to address the identification problems in time series models of monetary policy based on federal reserve documents the romers created a dummy variable equal to one in periods when the federal reserve contracted in response to perceived inflationary pressures this paper shows 1 the dummy variable is predictable from past macroeconomic variables reflecting the endogenous response of policy to the economy 2 unpredictable changes in the dummy do not generate dynamic responses that look like the effects of monetary policy the identification problems that plague time series models also afflict the narrative approach

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

contagion as a domino effect in global stock markets this paper shows that stock market contagion occurs as a domino effect where confined local crashes evolve into more widespread crashes using a novel framework based on ordered logit regressions we model the occurrence of local regional and global crashes as a function of their past occurrences and financial variables we find significant evidence that global crashes do not occur abruptly but are preceded by local and regional crashes besides this form of contagion interdependence shows up by the effect of interest rates bond returns and stock market volatility on crash probabilities when it comes to forecasting global crashes our model outperforms a binomial model for global crashes only

can exchange rates forecast commodity prices we show that commodity currency exchange rates have surprisingly robust power in predicting global commodity prices both in sample and out of sample and against a variety of alternative benchmarks this result is of particular interest to policy makers given the lack of deep forward markets in many individual commodities and broad aggregate commodity indices in particular we also explore the reverse relationship commodity prices forecasting exchange rates but find it to be notably less robust we offer a theoretical resolution based on the fact that exchange rates are strongly forward looking whereas commodity price fluctuations are typically more sensitive to short term demand imbalances

financial stability and interest rate policy a quantitative assessment of costs and benefit should monetary policy use its short term policy rate to stabilize the growth in household credit and housing prices with the aim of promoting financial stability we ask this question for the case of canada we find that to a first approximation the answer is no resume stabilite financiere et politique de taux d interet evaluation quantitative des couts et des avantages afin de favoriser la stabilite financiere la politique monetaire devrait elle utiliser son taux directeur a court terme pour equilibrer la croissance de l endettement des menages et du prix des logements nous posons cette question pour le canada dans une premiere approximation notre reponse est negative

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

liquidity loanable funds and real activity abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of two traditional explanations of the monetary black box linking money and real activity the liquidity effect and the loanable funds effect these effects are modeled with a monetary production economy in which central bank injections of cash are funnelled into the economy through the credit market since only borrowers have direct access to the newly injected cash monetary injections cause nominal interest rates to fall if firms are borrowers then monetary injections also increase current and future real activity

firm heterogeneity imitation and the incentives for cost reducing r d effort i develop and test a model of strategic r d investments where innovating and non innovating firms compete on the basis of their ability to reduce costs and imitate rivals i find that a larger proportion of non innovating rivals stimulates cost reducing investments and attenuates the disincentive effect of imitation by innovators on firm level r d key model properties are verified by estimating the first order condition for the optimal choice of r d using the 1994 carnegie mellon survey of u s industrial r d results also suggest that r d and size are simultaneously determined with r d being proportional to size as predicted by the theoretical model

a model of monetary policy shocks for financial crises and normal conditions in their classic 1999 paper monetary policy shocks what have we learned and to what end christiano eichenbaum and evans cee investigate one of the most widely used methods for identifying monetary policy shocks of its time unfortunately their approach is no longer viable at least not in its original form a major problem stems from the recent behavior of two key variables in their model the fed funds rate and non borrowed reserves we develop a new identification scheme that remedies these diculties but maintains the basic cee framework our empirical specification is motivated by a standard new keynesian dsge model augmented by a simple financial structure the model provides theoretical support for variables we use in place of certain variables that were used in the classic var approach outlined in cee one significant innovation is our use of divisia m4 the broadest monetary aggregate currently available for the united states as the policy indicator variable we obtain four major empirical results that support the use of a properly measured broad monetary aggregate as the policy variable first policy shocks have significant eects on output and on the price level even when an interest rate is included in our model contradicting the new keynesian argument that monetary aggregates are redundant second we develop a model that is not subject to the output price or liquidity puzzles common to this literature contradicting the view that using the interest rate as the policy indicator generally yields more reasonable responses than a monetary aggregate third during normal conditions policy shocks from our divisia based model have similar eects on variables to those found in the fed funds model of monetary policy and where there are dierences our model with divisia m4 obtains results that are more consistent with standard economic theory fourth our preferred specification produces plausible responses to a monetary policy shock in samples that include or exclude the recent financial crisis

measuring r d in small firms how much are we missing the oecd surveys on r d are considerably biased towards underestimating r d in small firms this conclusion is derived from the author s comparison between the official dutch r d survey and the findings of his own survey among 3000 firms although being based on dutch observations only the author s considerations have an impact on other oecd countries since the official dutch r d survey is fully compatible with those in other countries the findings call into question the results from a number of empirical studies bearing on subjects such as market structure and r d firm size and r d or r d and growth

discount window borrowing monetary policy and the post october 6 1979 federal reserve operating procedure abstract a demand schedule for discount window borrowing based on profit maximizing bank behavior is derived a feature of non price rationing at the discount window making longer duration borrowing more costly is shown to make lagged borrowing and expected future spreads between the federal funds rate and the discount rate relevant to the current borrowing decision consequently both the size of the coefficients in the borrowing functions as well as the form of the function itself depend on expected fed policy toward the spread the demand function for discount window borrowing provides the critical link by which non borrowed reserve control affects short term interest rates and ultimately the money supply under post october 6 1979 reserve targeting the analysis suggests some reasons why the fed has experienced difficulty in specifying estimating and utilizing a discount window borrowing function in the non borrowed reserve operating procedure

estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks does lag structure matter this paper examines the implications of lag structure for estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks in a var a symmetric lag structure in which all variables have the same lag length and an asymmetric lag structure in which the lag length differs across variables but is the same for a particular variable in each equation of the model are examined this is important in light of the fact that the true lag structure is generally not known four commonly used identification schemes are employed to identify monetary policy shocks monte carlo simulations strongly indicate that the lag structure of a var model does matter when assessing the quantitative effects of monetary policy shocks given the inherent uncertainty about the true lag structure in practice it is thus important that one compare the impulse response functions from both symmetric lag and asymmetric lag vars in assessing the effects of monetary policy shocks

monetary policy and exchange rate interactions in a small open economy the transmission mechanisms of monetary policy in a small open economy like norway are analysed through structural vars with special emphasis on the interdependence between monetary policy and exchange rate movements by imposing a long run neutrality restriction on the real exchange rate thereby allowing the interest rate and the exchange rate to react simultaneously to news i find considerable interdependence between monetary policy and the exchange rate in particular following a contractionary monetary policy shock the real exchange rate immediately appreciates after which it gradually depreciates back to the baseline the results are found to be consistent with findings from an event study

how to solve the price puzzle a meta analysis the short run increase in prices following an unexpected tightening of monetary policy constitutes a frequently reported puzzle yet the puzzle is surprisingly easy to explain away when all published models are quantitatively reviewed we collect about 1 000 point estimates of impulse responses from 70 articles using vector autoregressive models and present a simple method of research synthesis for graphical results our ndings indicate publication selection in favor of the intuitive response of prices to a tightening the estimates depend systematically on study design when misspecications are

the dynamic responses of crop and livestock prices to money supply shocks a bayesian analysis using long run identifying restrictions the impact of monetary policy on agriculture has been much debated this study examines the dynamic responses of u s agricultural prices to money supply shocks using three innovations first the variables responses are identified by long run money neutrality restrictions instead of the more common contemporaneous ordering second a bayesian approach to model uncertainty is used to add robustness to the estimation process third agricultural prices are disaggregated into crop and livestock components the empirical results find that both agricultural sectors benefit in the short run from positive money supply shocks with agricultural prices increasing relative to the general price level

the persistency and volatility of the firm r d investment revisited from the perspective of technological capability abstract the persistency and volatility of firm rd however previous research has found mixed evidence concerning the persistency and volatility of firm rd positive shocks however technological capability offsets the internal cash flow effect and causes persistency in rd negative shocks these imply that r d investment is not a dichotomous decision between persistency and volatility and is conditional on each firm s technological capability

monetary policy and exchange rate overshooting dornbusch was right after all abstract dornbusch s exchange rate overshooting hypothesis is a central building block in international macroeconomics yet empirical studies of monetary policy have typically found exchange rate effects that are inconsistent with overshooting this puzzling result has been viewed by some researchers as a stylized fact to be reckoned with in policy modelling however many of these studies in particular those using vector autoregressive vars approaches have disregarded the strong contemporaneous interaction between monetary policy and exchange rate movements by placing zero restrictions on them in contrast we achieve identification by imposing a long run neutrality restriction on the real exchange rate thereby allowing for contemporaneous interaction between the interest rate and the exchange rate in a study of four open economies we find that the puzzles disappear in particular a contractionary monetary policy shock has a strong effect on the exchange rate which appreciates on impact the maximum effect occurs within 1 2 quarters and the exchange rate thereafter gradually depreciates to baseline consistent with the dornbusch overshooting hypothesis and with few exceptions consistent with uncovered interest parity uip

what do the vars mean measuring the output effects of monetary policy abstract vars describe the history of output and other variables following monetary shocks to measure the effects of monetary shocks one must add economic identifying assumptions i specify the relative effects of anticipated and unanticipated money and i calculate how var based measures of the effect of money on output change as one varies this assumption the anticipated unanticipated assumption influences measured output effects as much or more than the variable selection and shock orthogonalization assumptions on which the var literature focuses assuming that anticipated monetary policy can have some effect on output results in much shorter smaller and perhaps more believable estimates of the output response to monetary shocks

has monetary policy become more effective we investigate the implications of changes in the structure of the u s economy for monetary policy effectiveness estimating a vector autoregression over the pre and post 1980 periods we provide evidence of a reduced effect of monetary policy shocks in the latter period we estimate a structural model that replicates well the economy s response in both periods and perform counterfactual experiments to determine the source of the change in the monetary transmission mechanism and in the economy s volatility we find that by responding more strongly to inflation expectations monetary policy has stabilized the economy more effectively in the post 1980 period

do tax credits stimulate r d spending the effect of the r d tax credit in its first decade abstract this paper examines the impact of the u s federal r d tax credit between 1981 1991 using confidential irs data from corporate tax returns the empirical analysis makes two key advances on previous work first it implements a new instrumental variables iv strategy based on tax changes that directly addresses the simultaneity of r d spending and marginal credit rates second the analysis makes use of new restricted access irs corporate return data describing r d expenditures estimates imply that a10 reduction in the user cost of r d leads the average firm to increase its research intensity the ratio of r d spending to sales by 19 8 in the short run long run estimates imply that the average firm faces adjustment costs and increases spending over time though small and young firms show evidence of reversing initial increases analysis of the components of qualified research shows that wages and supplies account for the bulk of the increase in research spending elasticities of qualified and total research intensities from a smaller sample suggest firms respond to user cost changes largely by increasing their qualified spending meaning that the type of r d the federal credit deems qualified research is an important margin on which the credit affects firm behavior

trading on mean reversion in energy futures markets abstract we study whether simple technical trading strategies enjoying large popularity among practitioners can be employed profitably in the context of hedge portfolios for crude oil natural gas gasoline and heating oil futures the strategies tested are based on mean reverting calendar spread portfolios established with dynamic hedge ratios entry and exit signals are generated by so called bollinger bands the trading system is applied to twenty two years of historical data from 1992 to 2013 for various specifications taking transaction costs into account the significance of the results is evaluated with a bootstrap test in which randomly generated orders are compared to orders placed by the trading system whereas we find most combinations involving the front month and second month futures to be significantly profitable for all commodities tested the best results for the risk adjusted sharpe ratio are obtained for wti crude oil and natural gas with sharpe ratios in excess of 2 for most combinations and a rather smooth performance for all calendar spreads based on our results there is a serious doubt whether energy futures markets can be considered weakly efficient in the short term

are government spending multipliers greater during periods of slack evidence from 20th century historical data a key question that has arisen during recent debates is whether government spending multipliers are larger during periods of slack some researchers and policymakers have argued that while government spending multipliers are estimated to be modest on average they might become greater during times when resources are underutilized auerbach and gorodnichenko 2012 forthcoming henceforth ag test this hypothesis and find larger multipliers dur

the evolution of new industries and the determinants of market structure several empirical regularities concerning firm growth rates and industry firm size distributions have been developed by studying primarily mature industries the primary purpose of this article is to bring together and extend empirical regularities on the evolution of new industries and to use these regularities to gain further insight into the forces governing industry evolution to explain these regularities a model is constructed which emphasizes how factors governing the early evolution of industries may shape their market structure at maturity it stresses how chance events and exogenous factors that influence the number of potential entrants to the industry the growth rate of incumbents and the ease of imitation of industry leaders will influence the ultimate number and size distribution of firms in the industry

the relationship between firm investments in technological innovation and political action economic theory recognizes the importance of investments in both technological innovation and political activity in firm behavior and extensive research exists which examines independently these expenditures however surprisingly little attention is devoted to analyzing technological innovation and political action expenditures jointly technological innovation and political action are two of the options firms face regarding how to achieve lower costs or market power the characteristics of these choices not only affect the degree to which each is used but also have widely divergent normative and policy implications for society furthermore many forms of technological innovation require regulatory approval so that firms may use the two forms of investment in conjunction with each other in addition to treating them as separate investment alternatives this paper investigates the relationships between firm investments in technological innovation and political activity both forms of investment seek to lower costs and or create market advantage but economists have long recognized the social importance of technological innovation to economic growth while treating most firm political activity as inefficient growing social concerns surrounding declining innovation productivity and growth and increasing firm political activity suggest that these are timely dimensions to explore jointly in the next section i discuss the relationship between firm investments in technological innovation and political action this discussion motivates the subsequent empirical modelling presented in section iii because of the possibility of simultaneity between firm spending in research and development rd these results hold true to various degrees over industries and industry groups section vi offers conclusions and suggestions for further research

the missing link monetary policy and the labor share the textbook new keynesian nk model implies that the labor share is pro cyclical conditional on a monetary policy shock we present evidence that a monetary policy tightening robustly increased the labor share and decreased real wages and labor productivity during the great moderation period in the us the euro area the uk australia and canada we show that this is inconsistent not only with the basic nk model but with a wide variety of nk models commonly used for monetary policy analysis and where the direct link between the labor share and the markup can be broken down

extreme coexceedances in new eu member states stock markets abstract we analyze the financial integration of the new european union eu member states stock markets using the negative positive coexceedance variable that counts the number of large negative large positive returns on a given day across the countries a similar analysis is performed for the old eu countries we use a multinomial logit model to investigate how persistence asset classes and volatility are related to the coexceedance variables we find that the effects differ a between negative and positive coexceedance variables b between old and new eu member states and c before and after the eu enlargement in 2004 suggesting a closer connection of new eu stock markets to those in western europe

market structure and endogenous productivity growth how do r d subsidies affect market structure abstract conclusions about optimal rd 2 distribution of firm sizes and 3 more complex market structures that vary across industries and over time this paper presents the partial equilibrium for a single industry demonstrating how growth promoting r d subsidies alter the endogenously determined market structure subsidies to r d stretch the distribution of market shares with an increased number of firms in the market but a higher variance in the market shares across firms

the impact of money on short term interest rates this study reviews empirical evidence from four research methods related to the impact of money on short term nominal rates the studies consistently fail to find evidence supporting the much hypothesized short term negative relationship between money and nominal rates since at least april 1975 reasons for the absence of a negative relationship include the tendency of financial markets to anticipate corrective action by the fed whenever ml deviates from targeted growth ranges and a rapid adjustment of inflationary expectations to changes in money growth

the effect of monetary policy shocks on macroeconomic variables evidence from the eurozone this paper investigates how european central bank ecb monetary policy shocks impact industrial production output and inflation prices i gather a novel dataset of macroeconomic forecasts and using a narrative approach i construct a new measure of monetary policy shocks industrial production responds to an unpredictable positive monetary policy shock of 100 basis points with a decline of over 0 5 on the contrary inflation responds weakly with a very modest decrease of 0 05

do announcements of wto dispute resolution cases matter evidence from the rare earth elements market abstract rare earth elements rees have gained increasing attention recently for several key reasons 1 they are vital to many strategic industries 2 they are relatively scarce 3 they frequently exhibit high price fluctuations 4 china holds a quasi monopoly on their mining and 5 china s ree policy which was overly restrictive and led to a formal complaint from the u s japan and the eu at the world trade organization wto in 2012 this paper investigates whether the announcement of a wto dispute resolution case has the power to fundamentally change market dynamics we find empirical support for this notion because ree prices exhibit a structural break around the announcement of the wto dispute and show lower variance ratios for all tested rees afterward this indicates a tendency toward efficiency although ree prices still do not follow a random walk similarly we find that stock price informativeness of companies in the ree industry increases after the announcement reflecting more firm specific than marketwide information and less governmental influence finally we show that model uncertainty for option pricing models decreases which we measure by the lower pricing differences among them

steven klepper recipient of the 2011 global award for entrepreneurship research this article reviews the academic contributions of the 2011 receiver of the global award for entrepreneurship research professor steven klepper carnegie mellon university the global award consists of 100 000 euro and a statuette of the internationally renowned swedish sculpture carl milles klepper has made breakthrough analyses in the realm of industrial dynamics emphasizing the regularities in the time paths of entry of new producers exit of incumbent firms spin offs and innovation his work is predominantly empirical but he has also played an essential role in developing more rigorous theoretical models of phenomena such as spin offs of particular importance is how klepper has managed to link traditional neoclassical models with evolutionary theory as well as entrepreneurship research with mainstream economics

asset market linkages in crisis periods we characterize asset return linkages during periods of stress by an extremal dependence measure contrary to correlation analysis this nonparametric measure is not predisposed toward the normal distribution and can allow for nonlinear relationships our estimates for the g 5 countries suggest that simultaneous crashes between stock markets are much more likely than between bond markets however for the assessment of financial system stability the widely disregarded cross asset perspective is particularly important for example our data show that stock bond contagion is approximately as frequent as flight to quality from stocks into bonds extreme cross border linkages are surprisingly similar to national linkages illustrating a potential downside to international financial integration

procyclical multifactor productivity tests of the current theories this paper conducts various tests of four hypotheses to account for procycical multifactor productivity the hypotheses include imperfect competition increasing returns to scale labor hoarding and thick market externalities the test results provide strong evidence for imperfect competition and increasing returns and weak evidence for labor hoarding and thick market externalities however the markup and returns to scale parameter estimates are much smaller than those noted in previous research this difference results from the use here of gross output and intermediate inputs as opposed to the use in previous research of value added and primary inputs

output spillovers from fiscal policy in this paper we estimate the cross country spillover effects of government purchases on output for a large number of oecd countries following the methodology in auerbach and gorodnichenko 2012a b we allow these multipliers to vary smoothly according to the state of the economy and use real time forecast data to purge policy innovations of their predictable components we also consider the responses of other key macroeconomic variables our findings suggest that cross country spillovers have an important impact and also confirm those of our earlier papers that fiscal shocks have a larger impact when the affected country is in recession

the real time properties of the bank of canada s staff output gap estimates we study the revision properties of the bank of canada s staff output gap estimates since the mid 1980s our results suggest that the average staff output gap revision has decreased significantly over the past 15 years in line with recent evidence for the u s

hedgers funds and small speculators in the energy futures markets an analysis of the cftc s commitments of traders reports the commodity futures trading commission cftc s commitments of traders cot data are examined for crude oil unleaded gasoline heating oil and natural gas futures contracts the collection procedures for the cot data are first examined followed by granger causality tests to determine if relationships between trader positions and market prices exist a positive correlation between returns and positions held by noncommercial traders and a negative correlation between commercial positions and market returns are found furthermore positive returns result in an increase in noncommercial net positions in the following week whereas the net long positions held by commercial hedgers decline following price increases however traders net positions do not lead market returns in general

a tale of two tails explaining extreme events in financialized agricultural markets the substantial booms and busts in agricultural prices marked by extreme events across commodities lead to heated debates about the effects of speculative trading on commodity price fluctuations this study proposes a new approach to understanding extreme events and boom bust processes in agricultural markets using weekly futures data for twelve indexed agricultural commodities during 2006 to 2016 we find that extreme price changes located in the 10 tails of the distribution cluster across agricultural markets we then implement a multinomial logit model to investigate which factors are associated with the propagation of extreme events specifically we disentangle three transmission conduits 1 the macroeconomic conduit captures the possibility that the synchronized extreme price events are generated by business cycle driven demand shifts mainly in emerging economies 2 the financial conduit refers to potential links between extreme returns and the increasing flow of money from financial participants into agricultural futures markets 3 finally the energy conduit accounts for possible spillover effects due to oil price shocks our results indicate an important role of managed money positions and oil prices while the real demand channel remains mostly insignificant

the role of sunk costs in the decision to invest in r d we present a dynamic empirical model of a firm s r d decisions that is consistent with the existence of sunk r d costs taking into account that these costs may differ between small and large firms and among different technological regimes we estimate a multivariate dynamic discrete choice model using firm level data of spanish manufacturing for 1990 2000 conditional on firm heterogeneity and serially correlated unobservable factors we find that r d history matters this true state dependence allows inferring the existence of sunk r d costs associated with performing r d sunk r d costs are found to be higher for large high tech firms

cost reducing and demand creating r d with spillovers this article analyzes r d policies when the returns to cost reducing and demand creating r d are imperfectly appropriable and market structure is endogenous we generalize previous characterizations of appropriability to permit the possibility that own and rival r d are imperfect substitutes we also describe how equilibrium expenditures on process and product r d as well as equilibrium market structure depend on technological opportunities and spillovers in contrast to previous work diminished appropriability does not necessarily reduce r d expenditures for example under some conditions an increase in the extent of process product spillovers will lead to an increase in product process r d we estimate several variants of the model by using manufacturing line of business data and data from a survey of r d executives

the anatomy of industry r d intensity distributions using firm data disaggregated by industry we establish a set of regularities in the distribution of firm r d intensities within manufacturing industries we show how a simple probabilistic process in which chance influences a key unobserved determinant of r d and firm size conditions the returns to r d can account for these regularities and other features of the distributions the model provides a unified noncausal explanation of a series of long observed relationships across mean r d intensity market concentration and the coefficient of variation it also offers a novel explanation for the inverse relationship between r d productivity and firm size jel 031