choice modeling at the market stall individual versus collective interest in environmental valuation the market stall or valuation workshop has recently been proposed as a way of addressing some of the limitations of conventional stated preference analysis in this paper we attempt to combine a participatory technique similar to the citizens jury with choice modelling a stated preference technique increasingly being applied in environmental economics our focus is on how changes in the context of decision making between choices made in isolation and those made in a group setting and between choices made on individual well being versus collective criteria produce differences in estimated welfare measures the empirical context used is that of water quality improvements under the water framework directive the most significant reform in water legislation in the european union for many years we find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a valuation workshop and that moving from individual to collective choice produces in this instance a rather interesting change in both values and preferences which depends on the respondent s interests

threshold effects in price transmission the case of brazilian wheat maize and soya prices recent studies into price transmission have recognized the important role played by transport and transaction costs threshold models are one approach to accommodate such costs we develop a generalized threshold error correction model to test for the presence and form of threshold behavior in price transmission that is symmetric around equilibrium we use monthly wheat maize and soya prices from the united states argentina and brazil to demonstrate this model classical estimation of these generalized models can present challenges but bayesian techniques avoid many of these problems evidence for thresholds is found in three of the five commodity price pairs investigated

the fisher hypothesis and the forecastability and persistence of inflation abstract for the period 1860 to 1939 the simple correlation of the u s commercial paper rate with the contemporaneous inflation rate is 0 17 the corresponding correlation for the period 1950 to 1979 is 0 71 this paper attributes this apparent change in the fisher relation to differences in the stochastic process of inflation rather than a change in any structural relationship between interest rates and expected inflation contrary to recent claims in the literature there is little evidence of inflation non neutrality in data from the pre world war i period

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a model of target changes and the term structure of interest rates abstract we investigate the effects of short term rate targeting by the federal reserve on the term structure of interest rates and make contributions at two levels using a new series of interest rate targets made available by the federal reserve bank of new york we develop a family of models that highlight the implications of discrete changes in interest rate targets for the term structure of interest rates we show that spreads between short term rates and the overnight federal reserve funds rate are mainly driven by expectations of changes in the target not by the transitory dynamics of the overnight rate around the target hence the bias in tests of the expectations hypothesis that we document can be mainly attributed to the erroneous anticipation of future changes in monetary policy our modeling assumptions and newly available data make it possible to extract a series of market expectations of the next target change which are compared with a series of realized target changes

improving the process of valuing non market benefits combining citizens juries with choice modelling we attempt a first combination of the participatory technique known as the citizens jury with choice modelling a stated preference technique increasingly favored by environmental economists our application is conducted in the context of water quality improvements under the water framework directive the most significant reform in water legislation in the european union for many years we compare results with those of a conventional choice experiment we find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a jury setting and that moving from an individual to a collective choice setting produces a change in both values and preferences

was there a peso problem in the u s term structure of interest rates 1979 1982 during the period following october 1979 through 1982 the u s federal reserve allowed interest rates to fluctuate widely in contrast to its previous policy of targeting these rates in the 1970s the policy was abandoned in 1982 in favor of an operating procedure that reduced the variation in interest rates this paper implements an estimation method to identify from the term structure of eurodollar returns the market s beliefs that the federal reserve may revert to interest rate targeting the model is not rejected and gives plausible estimates of the probability of a switch in monetary regimes copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

deliberative monetary valuation in search of a democratic and value plural approach to environmental policy the use of deliberative methods to assess environmental values in monetary terms has been motivated by the potential for small group discussion to help with preference formation and the inclusion of non economic values in this review two broad approaches are identified preference economisation and preference moralisation the former is analytical concentrates upon issues of poor respondent cognition and produces a narrow conception of value linked to utilitarianism the latter emphasises political legitimacy appeals to community values and tends to privilege arguments made in the public interest both approaches are shown to embrace forms of value convergence which undermine the prospects for value pluralism as a result exclusion and predefinition of values dominates current practice in order to maintain democratic credentials the importance attributed to monetary value needs to be left as an open question to be addressed as part of a process determining an agreement to pay to this end we identify a discourse based approach as a third way consistent with the democratic and value plural potential of deliberative monetary valuation

creation adoption and diffusion of innovations by subsidiaries of multinational corporations this paper reports some of the findings of a multi phased and multi method study on the organizational attributes that facilitate creation adoption and diffusion of innovations by subsidiaries of multinational companies comparison of results obtained through case research in nine companies multiple respondent questionnaire surveys in three companies and a single respondent survey in 66 north american and european multinationals reveal unambiguous and positive impacts of normative integration through organizational socialization and dense intra and inter unit communication on an mnc subsidiary s ability to contribute to the different innovation tasks the findings are less consistent with regard to the effects of local resources and autonomy and it appears that the influences of these two attributes are strongly mediated by the levels of normative integration and organizational communication

was the deflation during the great depression anticipated evidence from the commodity futures market futures prices were well above spot prices for most commodities during most of the great depression evidently the spectacular declines in agricultural prices caught many people by surprise based on the historical correlations between commodity prices and consumer prices commodity markets anticipated stable consumer prices during the first year of the great depression the dramatic drop in nominal treasury bill yields thus should be read as a drop in ex ante real rates later in the great depression markets anticipated deflation but not as severe as actually occurred copyright 1992 by american economic association

were price changes during the great depression anticipated abstract this paper reassesses whether the large swings in prices during the 1930 s were anticipated we argue that uncertainty about monetary fiscal and exchange rate policies induced systematic differences between the rate of price change expected by economic agents at the time and the time series forecasts of inflation our analysis of nominal interest rates and ex post inflation strongly supports this view in fact our results suggest that the deflation of the early depression years and the inflation that followed were both largely unanticipated

participatory environmental education and willingness to pay for river basin management empirical evidence from nigeria this paper examines the role of participation as a tool for improving individuals perceptions and environmental values using a test retest experiment conducted in south eastern nigeria two identical contingent valuation experiments were interspersed by participatory workshops designed to involve respondents in framing and forming the valuation scenario econometric analyses found that participatory education significantly developed individuals perceptions of pollution problems and increased the magnitude and precision of their wtp for a river basin management scheme the extent of changes in perceptions declined with increasing levels of formal education suggesting that less educated respondents are more likely to hold weakly formed preferences

term premiums in bond returns abstract this paper examines expected returns on u s treasury bills and on u s government bond portfolios expected bill returns are estimated from forward rates and from sample average returns both estimation methods indicate that expected returns on bills tend to peak at eight or nine months and never increase monotonically out to twelve months reliable inferences are limited to treasury bills and thus to maturities up to a year the variability of longer term bond returns preempts precise conclusions about their expected returns

an experimental investigation into cross national mail survey response rates this study investigates the effects of foreign and domestic source manipulations on cross national response rates of business people in two countries the united states and britain the hypothesis that managers from the u s a are more likely to respond than those from britain is also tested results suggest that foreign source effects do not raise response rates for british managers findings suggest that higher compliance results from the domestic source responses from usa managers were no higher than from their british counterparts the implications of these findings for cross national mail surveys are discussed

do stationary risk premia explain it all evidence from the term structure abstract predictable variations in excess returns have often been attributed to the presence of time varying risk premia in this paper we use an insight based upon new techniques from time series analysis to test whether stationary risk premia can alone explain the behavior of excess returns to long bonds relative to rolling over short rates surprisingly we reject this hypothesis using u s t bill returns we then show that either permanent shocks to the risk premia and or rationally anticipated shifts in the interest rate process could produce anomalous results

what do you expect imperfect policy credibility and tests of the expectations hypothesis abstract the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates describes a conventional view of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy where bond rates reflect current and expected movements in the policy controlled rate however empirical rejections of the expectations hypothesis are commonplace and lead many to question this description of policy transmission this paper argues that failure to account for imperfect policy credibility may explain empirical rejections empirical rejections may occur even when changing anticipations of future short rates are the primary source of variation in bond rates and the standard term structure transmission channel remains valid

foreign mail surveys response rates using monetary incentives the cross national researcher is cautioned about the possible consequences of using monetary incentives in foreign mail surveys in this study a us 1 incentive increased the response rate from japanese business people but decreased the response from hong kong

discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy abstract discursive ethics has its origin in the frankfurt school of critical theory as an applied ethic it is also associated with practical philosophy in this paper discursive ethics is discussed as a conceptual and practical framework for ecosystems valuation and environmental policy the discussion focuses on three main strengths of discursive ethics 1 it offers an integrated process for ecosystems valuation 2 it offers a decision making framework for responding to uncertainty and risk and the reality of action in indeterminacy 3 it offers a process for deconstructing common valuation concepts and identifying conditions for their critical reconstruction the theoretical discussion is followed by a case study example which illustrates the usefulness of discursive ethics in identifying valuation biases hidden behind disciplinary assumptions and conceptual norms these include cultural norms of rationality information biases which consider hard facts over soft values and disciplinary valuation biases which distinguish between hard and soft expert contributions as the case study illustrates a successful application of discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy demands sensitivity to such underlying biases beyond its policy relevance discursive ethics may also offer a framework for an extended peer discourse through which new foci in research and education can be identified

valuing the non market benefits of wild goose conservation a comparison of interview and group based approaches wild geese graze on improved pastures and young cereal crops and hence can cause considerable damage to agriculture particularly in areas close to roosting sites this study uses contingent valuation cv to establish whether government compensation payments currently made to farmers represent value for money by estimating the value placed on goose conservation by the general public benefit estimates from a conventional interview approach are compared with a group based approach called the market stall ms this involves two 1 h meetings held 1 week apart and differs from conventional interviews in that participants are given more time to consider their preferences and to discuss their wtp question with other household members we argue that this type of group based approach to environmental valuation offers important advantages over individual interview approaches especially for unfamiliar and or complex environmental goods

conditional time varying interest rate risk premium evidence from the treasury bill futures market existing studies of the term structure of interest rates often use spot treasury rates to represent default free interest rates however part of the premium in treasury rates is compensation for the risk that short sellers may default since treasury bill futures are default free they provide cleaner data to estimate the interest rate risk premium the mean excess return in defaultfree treasury bill futures is zero this suggests that the interest rate risk premium could be economically negligible we find that although the mean unconditional premium is zero futures returns contain economically and statistically significant time varying conditional interest rate risk premiums the conditional premium depends significantly positively on its own conditional variance and its conditional covariance with the equity premium the conditional premium is large in the volatile 1979 82 period but small afterwards

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

price indices and nonlinear mean reversion of real exchange rates author affiliation jyh lin wu institute of economics national sun yat sen university kaohsiung 804 taiwan jlwu2 mail nsysu edu tw and the department of economics national chung cheng university chia yi 106 taiwan ecdjlw ccu edu tw corresponding authorpei fen chen department of international business and trade shu te university kaohsiung taiwan cpf mail stu edu tw acknowledgment we thank two anonymous referees for interesting and constructive comments on an earlier version of the paper any remaining errors are ours 1 introduction are price indices crucial for the existence of a nonlinear mean reversion of real exchange rates do prices or exchange rate adjustments dominate when deviations from purchasing power parity ppp occur is the half life implied by a nonlinear model reasonable the purpose of this article is to address the above three questions for the uk and new zealand over the period of recent float the ppp hypothesis has been one of the most intensive research issues in empirical international finance over the past two decades the rationale behind it is a simple arbitrage hypothesis which results in a linear adjustment of deviations from ppp and the stationarity of real exchange rates empirically existing evidence based on unit root tests provide mixed results for ppp abuaf and jorion 1990 mark 1990 o connell 1998a theoretically there are several reasons for the nonlinear adjustment of deviations from ppp such as the existence of market frictions or transaction costs sercu uppal and van hulle 1995 in addition models of pricing to market and exchange rate pass through give rise to impediments to goods arbitrage krugman 1987 froot and klemperer 1989 the implication is that the speed of adjustment of deviations from ppp depends on the magnitude of the deviations on the other hand the adoption of a price index is crucial in examining ppp several authors have argued that the consumer and producer price indices cpi and ppi respectively do not correspond to their theoretical counterparts and contain measurement errors and aggregation biases cheung and lai 1993 imbs et al 2005 in addition the commodity basket for cpi and ppi includes nontradable goods which impart a nonstationary component to real cpi or ppi exchange rates engel 1999 recently xu 2003 argues that the price index of traded goods tpi is the appropriate one for ppp since it reflects the behavior of arbitrage better than the cpi or ppi the purpose of this article therefore is to examine the nonlinear dynamics of tpi based real exchange rates several authors have applied a smooth transition autoregressive star model to capture the nonlinear dynamics of real exchange rates as it allows for a smooth adjustment between regimes michael nobay and peel 1997 taylor peel and sarno 2001 there are several reasons for us to apply a band threshold autoregressive tar instead of a star type model in our empirical analysis first our empirical evidence fails to reject the unit root hypothesis against the hypothesis of a nonlinear star stationary process based on the test provided by kapetanios shin and snell 2003 1 second the plots of cpi ppi and tpi based real exchange rates in figure 1 show that the tpi based real rate has the largest variation among these three real rates third our empirical evidence rejects the null hypothesis of linearity against tar type nonlinearity and supports the hypothesis that real exchange rates are tar type stationary figure 1 plots of real exchange rates for the uk and new zealand figure omitted see article image several empirical studies have applied a threshold type process to examine the nonlinear mean reversion of real exchange rates obstfeld and taylor 1997 o connell 1998b taylor 2001 sarno taylor and chowdhury 2004

nonlinear mean reversion in the term structure of interest rates abstract the expectations hypothesis implies that the yield curve provides information on the future change in the short term interest rate however transaction costs exist in the financial market which prevent investors from realizing the arbitrage opportunity when the arbitrage does not fully cover the transaction costs the purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of transaction costs on the predictability of the term structure by using the threshold vector error correction model which allows for the nonlinear adjustment to the long run equilibrium relationship a significant amount of threshold effect is found and the adjustment coefficients are regime dependent the empirical result supports the nonlinear mean reversion in the term structure of interest rates

dynamic portfolio adjustment and capital controls a euler equation approach we present a multiasset dynamic portfolio balance model that is based on the maximization of an intertemporal utility function in consumption when investors operate under uncertainty quadratic adjustment costs and capital market regulations we estimate the model s structural parameters on quarterly portfolio data of the german private sector asset demand is insensitive to return changes although the coefficients are significant adjustment costs are low but highly significant giving rise to moderate lags of adjustment still existing capital controls and adjustment costs cannot explain the currently observed home bias in the portfolio overall our results imply a strong rejection of the portfolio model

changing beliefs and systematic rational forecast errors with evidence from foreign exchange this paper addresses a new interpretation to the appearance in the early 1980s of systematic errors in forecasting the dollar exchange rate following a change in the process of a fundamental variable market participants revise their beliefs about the process using bayes rule since the market does not immediately recognize the change forecast errors are on average wrong during a period when the market is rationally learning for conservative parameter values the learning behavior of the dollar exchange rate in the early 1980s appears consistent with about half of the dollar s underprediction implied by the forward market copyright 1989 by american economic association

tree structured multiple regimes in interest rates this article develops a generalized tree structured gts model of the short term interest rate that accommodates regime dependent mean reversion and regime dependent volatility clustering and level effects in the conditional variance the model is constructed using the idea of multivariate tree structured thresholds and nests the popular generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity and square root processes as simple special cases it allows us to estimate the optimal number of regimes endogenously from the data and to exploit possible additional information in the term structure and in other macroeconomic variables we provide empirical evidence of the strong potential of the gts model in forecasting conditional first and second moments also in comparison with alternative models of the short rate

nonlinear adjustments in deviations from the law of one price for wholesale hog prices this article applies the band threshold autoregression band tar model to investigate whether the law of one price loop holds in taiwanese wholesale hog markets during the period from may 1987 through december 2003 we find evidence of a nonlinear mean reversion in deviations from the loop for relative hog prices our empirical study confirms the presence of thresholds and provides strong evidence in support of the view that the regional hog markets have been tightly integrated in taiwan and that the wholesale hog market in taiwan is an efficient market economy furthermore the estimated half lives from the nonlinear generalized impulse response analysis are as short as four months

interpreting the movements in short term interest rates this article uses modern asset pricing theory to examine the behavior of short term nominal interest rates over the past twenty five years the analysis investigates whether variation in the stochastic behavior of consumption growth and inflation can explain movements in the rate of interest the model estimated allows for taste shocks to utility the authors results reveal that much of the month to month movement in nominal interest rates reflects changes in the real rate and the risk premia in addition to inflationary expectations copyright 1992 by university of chicago press

forecasting the depression harvard versus yale was the depression forecastable after the crash how long should it have taken contempo rary forecasters to realize how severe the downturn was going to be these questions are addressed by studying the predictions of the harv ard economic service and yale s irving fisher during 1929 and the ear ly 1930s the data assembled by the harvard and yale forecasters tog ether with modern historical data are subjected to statistical analy sis to learn whether their verbal pronouncements were consistent with the data both the harvard and yale forecasters were systematically too optimistic yet nothing in the data suggests that the optimism w as unwarranted copyright 1988 by american economic association

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

environmental valuation and rationality economic valuation of the envi structuring the empirical model or adding ronment is disputed in part due to the number auxiliary hypotheses the presumption is of anomalies reactions to these anomalies have that consistent preferences are there just included adding new auxiliary hypotheses to the to be uncovered thus errors are mea core model or dismissing the whole undertaking surement this paper takes a third route and uses observa biases to be corrected by retions made in valuation studies to improve choice fined methods mitchell and carson theory the paper covers the information prob 1989 certainly many studies can be critlem the issue of preference formation and under icized for being of low quality still the lines the role of the social sphere in defining what development of concepts like starting becomes individually rational while the findings point bias posit ion bias question ormay not simplify theory they may help us be der bias yea saying protest bids come more realistic and to understand errors pro and part whole bias all seem very ad duced by illegitimate simplifications

short rate nonlinearities and regime switches abstract using non parametric estimation methods various authors have shown distinct non linearities in the drift and volatility function of the us short rate which are inconsistent with standard affine term structure models we document how a regime switching model with state dependent transition probabilities between regimes can replicate the patterns found by the non parametric studies to do so we use data from the uk and germany in addition to us data and include term spreads in some of our models we also examine the drift and volatility function of the term spread

the influence of decision making rules on individual preferences for ecological restoration evidence from an experimental survey abstract we conduct an experimental survey to analyze how rules for collective decision making influence individual preferences regarding nature restoration plans our study compares two decision making rules a consensus rule and a majority rule wherein participants decide on a plan regarding nature restoration in the kushiro wetland japan our main finding is that the difference between the individual preferences and collective decision making is less significant under the consensus rule than the majority rule furthermore there is a larger disparity with regard to the marginal willingness to pay between collective and individual decisions when participants are unsatisfied with the results of collective choice

the behavior of eurocurrency returns across different holding periods and monetary regimes recent empirical studies of the risk premium across foreign exchange and other asset markets such as equity and longer term bonds have found conflicting evidence about the latent variable model restrictions of the consumption based intertemporal capital asset pricing model while studies using data for holding periods of one month or less generally reject the model evidence using three month holding periods indicates that the model cannot be rejected when including the returns on long relative to short deposit rates this paper investigates the sources of differences in results using returns on foreign exchange and eurocurrency deposits at three different maturities

the dynamic relationship between the prices of adrs and their underlying stocks evidence from the threshold vector error correction model this paper sets out to estimate the dynamic relationship that exists between the prices of adrs and their underlying stocks in both the short run and the long run using a number of recent developments of the threshold cointegration framework the empirical results support the notion of nonlinear mean reversion of the prices of adrs and their underlying stocks

the behavior of interest rates implied by the term structure of eurodollar futures this paper considers an equilibrium model of the term structure that is determined by two stochastic factors a short term interest rate and a target level to which the short rate is expected to revert a kalman filter technique that uses a time series cross section of eurodollar futures prices is developed to estimate the parameters of the model the term structures of spot libor and eurodollar futures volatility are compared to that predicted by the model the empirical results indicate that the two factor specification represents a significant improvement over its one factor version copyright 1996 by ohio state university press

a theoretical approach to deliberative valuation aggregation by mutual consent in deliberative valuation a small group of selected persons explores the values that should guide collective decisions through a process of reasoned discourse proponents argue that deliberative techniques enhance the effectiveness and perceived legitimacy of policy making by facilitating public participation this paper outlines an approach to deliberative valuation that is grounded in democratic theory social psychology and cooperative game theory emphasizing applications to the monetary valuation of environmental services the analysis suggests that deliberative groups that employ consent based choice rules may aggregate individual values in a manner that systematically departs from the additive aggregation procedures of standard cost benefit analysis

the values jury to aid natural resource decisions congressional legislation emphasizes that public resource allocation should reflect the values citizens assign to those resources yet information about assigned values and preferences of members of the public including economic measures of value required by decision makers is often incomplete or unavailable existing sources of information about the public s values for use in resource allocation decisions and damage assessment include existing markets public surveys including contingent valuation and public involvement each of these sources has serious limitations

expectations and the treasury bill federal funds rate spread over recent monetary policy regimes this paper shows that the spread between the 3 month treasury bill and the federal funds rate has significant predictive power for the future change in the federal funds rate during the volatile nonborrowed reserves operating regime but it has less and no predictive power during the borrowed reserves regime and the federal funds targeting regime respectively these findings suggest that treasury bill rates forecast future federal funds rates most accurately when the federal reserve follows a well defined rule that does not smooth the impact of shocks on the federal funds rate

national competitive advantage and the roles of economic and political freedom evidence from hong kong the equivocal interrelationships between economic performance and the institu tions of respectively economic and political freedom are examined using data from firms op erating in hong kong an economy where both an erstwhile paramount international business reputation for competitiveness and the institutional basis on which it was predicated have come into question in recent years it is hypothesized that i both economic and political freedom declines will be associated with a proxy for future economic performance competitiveness decline but that ii the correlation of economic freedom declines with competitiveness de cline will be mediated by political freedom declines hierarchical regression analyses tend to support these hypotheses although results vary by firm origin

do expected shifts in inflation affect estimates of the long run fisher relation recent empirical studies suggest that nominal interest rates and expected inflation do not move together one for one in the long run a finding at odds with many theoretical models this article shows that these results can be deceptive when the process followed by inflation shifts infrequently we characterize the shifts in inflation by a markov switching model based upon this model s forecasts we reexamine the long run relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation interestingly we are unable to reject the hypothesis that in the long run nominal interest rates reflect expected inflation one for one

deliberative monetary valuation and the evidence for a new value theory economists concerned with validity are combining stated preference methods with participatory deliberation to address on going criticism deliberative monetary valuation dmv uses formal methods of deliberation to express values for environmental change in monetary terms however the results have begun to define different realms of value reflecting pluralism in public concern over environmental change reviewing empirical dmv studies evidences a range of issues regarded as external to economics and the validity of its methods issues which are typically kept at arms length by most environmental economists namely multiple values incommensurability and lexicographic preferences social justice fairness and non human values

financial panics the seasonality of the nominal interest rate and the founding of the fed after the founding of the fed in 1914 the frequency of financial panics and the size of the seasonal movements in nominal interest ratesboth declined substantially this paper establishes that the fed by carrying out the seasonal open market policy that eliminated the seasonal in nominal interest rates caused the decrease in the frequency of panics since seasonal movements are anticipated and financial panics are probably real events the results show that an anticipated monetary policy had real effects on the economy copyright 1986 by american economic association

prices during the great depression was the deflation of 1930 1932 really unanticipated this paper examines inflationary expectations in order to investigate whether the deflation of 1930 32 could have been anticipated the major conclusion is that beginning in late 1930 and possibly as early as late 1929 deflation could have been anticipated at horizons of three six months this implies in turn that short run ex ante real interest rates were very high during the initial phases of the great depression these results provide further support for the proposition that monetary contraction was the driving force behind the economic decline copyright 1992 by american economic association

the term structure of interest rates and regime shifts some empirical results abstract a test of the expectations theory of the term structure in the framework of a regime switching var model for a change in the short rate and the short long spread with euro us and euro swiss franc rate data points to the importance of uncertainty about the procedures of monetary policy for the rejection of the expectations theory in the us case whereas in the swiss case a time varying term premium also seems to be relevant

incentives and response rates to cross national business surveys a logit model analysis an experiment was designed to assess the effects of an enclosed incentive bookmark a promised incentive offer of free copy of the survey results the target country and the nationality of the parent company on response from a sample of american and japanese owned foreign subsidiaries logit model analysis was used to identify main and interaction effects both the bookmark and nationality of parent company affected response rates while the offer of survey results and target country had no effect no interaction effects were found the implications for cross national mail survey research are discussed

foreign subsidiary and parents roles during strategic investment and divestment decisions empirical research is scarce to answer the concerns of governments unions and public opinion at large concerning how multinationals make decisions to restructure their international strategic portfolio or close plants overseas to ensure long run competitiveness based on three in depth analyses of different types of restructing decisions the author concludes that the foreign subsidiaries seem to carry most of the decisionmaking effort for their own plant closures while for strategic portfolio readjustments during which they change owners they are not consulted

monetary factors in the great depression this paper examines the role of monetary policy in the early stages of the great depression and considers the mechanism whereby this policy may have affected real activity i conclude that the depression was preceded by a dramatic shift towards a highly contractionary monetary policy the economic impact of this policy seems unlikely to have come through the conventional keynesian channels of a shortage of liquidity and high ex ante real interest rates but instead may have operated through unanticipated deflation and after 1930 through the disruption of financial intermediation as a consequence of the banking panics

the case of the negative nominal interest rates new estimates of the term structure of interest rates during the great depression throughout the 1930s and early 1940s u s treasury bonds and notes appeared to have negative nominal yields as they approached maturity but negative nominal interest rates are impossible in a world in which one can always hold cash the resolution to this puzzle is that treasury securities in addition to making coupon payments gave the owner the right to buy a new security on a future date this paper describes the institutional environment that led to the apparent negative nominal interest rates develops a method for valuing the exchange privilege and computes accurate measures of the yield to the coupon bearing component of these composite bond options these corrected bond and not yields are then used to calculate new estimates of the term structure of interest rates from 1929 to 1949