subjective interest rate uncertainty and the macroeconomy a cross country analysis abstract we ask whether uncertainty about interest rates is important for economic activity the effects of interest rate uncertainty on the economy are examined through the lens of a small var where the assumption that uncertainty can affect real activity contemporaneously but not vice versa is indeed in line with the data our measure of uncertainty stems from professional forecasts of short and long term interest rates and accounts for both disagreement among forecasters and the perceived variability of future aggregate shocks studying a panel of countries we find that subjective interest rate uncertainty has large negative and persistent effects on the economy

earnings effects of labor organizations in 1890 analyzing data from extensive surveys of u s nonfarm families in 1889 90 predominantly families from eastern states the authors of this paper show that workers affiliated with labor organizations had earnings that were 22 percent higher than the earnings of other workers an effect comparable in magnitude to estimates for modern unions wage differentials varied considerably across the eight industries studied and across skill levels within each industry

the choice of regulatory instrument when there is uncertainty about compliance with fisheries regulations noncompliance is an important problem for fisheries regulators and a number of studies have considered optimal enforcement issues within fisheries regulation our article extends this literature by studying the implications of noncompliance for the choice between tax and quota regulation we first develop a general stock recruitment model of a search fishery with illegal landings and show that compliance uncertainty where the regulator is uncertain about the extent of noncompliance generates an efficiency advantage for taxes over individual transferable quotas we also provide evidence that uncertainty about compliance is an important source of uncertainty for regulators copyright 2008 oxford university press

monetary policy uncertainty and the response of the yield curve to policy shocks this paper studies the non linear response of the term structure of interest rates to monetary policy shocks and presents a new stylized fact we show that uncertainty about monetary policy changes the way the term structure responds to monetary policy a policy tightening leads to a significantly smaller increase in long term bond yields if policy uncertainty is high at the time of the shock we also look at the decomposition of bond yields into expectations about future policy and the term premium the weaker response of yields is driven by the fall in term premia which fall even more if uncertainty about policy is high these findings are robust to the measurement of monetary policy uncertainty the definition of the monetary policy shock and to changing the model specification conditional on a monetary policy shock higher uncertainty about monetary policy tends to make yields of longer maturities relatively more attractive as a consequence investors demand even lower term premia this intuition is supported by long term monetary pol icy disagreement which leads to opposite effects with term premia increasing even more after a policy shock

fisheries management and operations research abstract fisheries are subject to a deep rooted problem of economic inefficiency often referred to as the fisheries problem the fisheries problem derives fundamentally from inappropriate social institutions controlling the fishing activity the foremost of which is the common property arrangement fisheries management consists of replacing these institutions with more appropriate ones which institutions are most appropriate depends on the social objectives of the fisheries there are strong economic arguments for the view that there should be only a single objective namely to maximize the present value of the flow of benefits from the fisheries in reality different interest groups often push for several often conflicting objectives in that case a multi objective programming approach may be appropriate a set of institutions to manage fisheries is referred to as the fisheries management regime the fisheries management regime consists of a i fisheries management system ii fisheries enforcement system and iii fisheries judicial system each one of these has to be appropriately designed and implemented the efficacy of the overall fisheries management regime cannot be greater than that of its weakest link at the same time it is of the greatest importance to keep an eye on the cost of fisheries management global evidence suggests that the cost of fisheries management often constitutes a substantial fraction of the value of the harvest the problem thus is to strike the right balance between the efficacy of the fisheries management regime and its cost of design implementation and operation the problem of fisheries management is by its nature multidisciplinary it involves marine ecology and biology mathematics economics game theory political science and anthropology to name a few the problem is moreover typically quite complex requiring powerful modelling and calculation techniques in many respects this is the kind of problem operations research techniques are designed to deal with

the economics of enforcing pollution taxation abstract the efficient structure of pollution tax policy is examined when it is recognized that enforcing compliance will be costly there are two components of this cost 1 the direct cost of enforcement and 2 the cost polluters incur avoiding enforcement considering only the first cost the efficient pollution policy calls for a tax in excess of that conventionally recommended as efficient t but with little enforcement once avoidance cost is recognized the efficient policy can be substantially altered requiring a tax lower than t but with greater enforcement even when direct enforcement cost is zero it is shown that there is no unique advantage to t in the absence of avoidance cost

quota enforcement in resource industries self reporting and differentiated inspections quotas are frequently used in the management of renewable resources and emissions however in many industries there is concern about their basic effectiveness due to non compliance we develop an enforcement model of a quota regulated resource and focus on a situation with significant non compliance and exogenous constraints on fines and enforcement budget we propose a new enforcement system based on self reporting of excess extraction and explicit differentiation of inspection rates depending on compliance history we use differentiated inspections to induce firms to self report excess extraction this system increases the effectiveness of the quota by allowing the regulator to implement a wider range of aggregate extraction targets than under traditional enforcement while ensuring an efficient allocation of extraction in addition inspection costs can be reduced without reductions in welfare

measuring forecast uncertainty by disagreement the missing link using a standard decomposition of forecast errors into common and idiosyncratic shocks we show that aggregate forecast uncertainty can be expressed as the disagreement among the forecasters plus the perceived variability of future aggregate shocks thus the reliability of disagreement as a proxy for uncertainty will be determined by the stability of the forecasting environment and the length of the forecast horizon using density forecasts from the survey of professional forecasters we find direct evidence in support of our hypothesis our results support the use of garch type models rather than the ex post squared errors in consensus forecasts to estimate the ex ante variability of aggregate shocks as a component of aggregate uncertainty copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

measuring uncertainty based on rounding new method and application to inflation expectations abstract the literature on cognition and communication documents that people use round numbers to convey uncertainty this paper introduces a method of quantifying the uncertainty associated with round responses in pre existing survey data i construct micro level and time series measures of inflation uncertainty since 1978 inflation uncertainty is countercyclical and correlated with inflation disagreement volatility and the economic policy uncertainty index inflation uncertainty is lowest among high income consumers college graduates males and stock market investors more uncertain consumers are more reluctant to spend on durables cars and homes round responses are common on many surveys suggesting numerous applications of this method

term premia and inflation uncertainty empirical evidence from an international panel dataset this paper provides cross country empirical evidence on bond risk premia i construct a panel of zero coupon nominal government bond yields spanning ten industrialized countries and nearly two decades i hence compute forward rates and then use two different methods to decompose these forward rates into expected future short term interest rates and term premiums the first method uses an affine term structure model with macroeconomic variables as unspanned risk factors the second method uses surveys i find that term premium estimates declined across countries over the sample period especially in countries that appear to have reduced inflation uncertainty by making substantial changes in the monetary policy frameworks of their central banks during the recent financial crisis term premiums have remained flat and even declined further in some countries perhaps reflecting the effects of quantitative easing actions by many central banks

quantitative easing and the post crisis surge in financial flows to developing countries abstract this paper examines gross financial inflows to developing countries between 2000 and 2013 with a focus on the potential effects of quantitative easing qe policies in the united states and other high income countries we find evidence for potential transmission of qe along observable liquidity portfolio balancing and confidence channels moreover we find that qe had an additional latent effect over and above these observable channels one that survives an array of robustness tests retains its significance across different types of financial flows and which cannot be attributed to changes in expectations or elasticity our baseline estimates place the lower bound of a qe effect at around 5 percent of gross inflows above trend for the average developing economy which is a magnitude comparable to a one standard deviation change along the traditional channels we also find evidence of heterogeneity among different types of flows portfolio especially bond flows tend to be more sensitive than fdi to our measured qe effects

minimum information management systems and itq fisheries management abstract in 1986 new zealand reformed its fisheries management regime with the introduction of a rights based system of management at the beginning of each fishing season a government agency sets an allowable commercial catch individual firms hold an entitlement to harvest a share of the allowable commercial catch to date the government agency has relied almost exclusively on the results of stock assessment research when setting the allowable harvest excessive reliance on biological data in fisheries management has attracted criticism an alternative a minimum information management system uses information contained in quota prices as a guide to set limits on commercial harvest this paper examines price formation in one quota market we find evidence in the data that supports the use of quota prices to guide the setting of limits to commercial harvest furthermore time series analysis provides a basis for studying the temporal response of changes in asset prices to perturbations in the allowable harvest the results illustrate how information summarized in quota prices can complement the findings of stock assessment research in fisheries management

dynamic use of closures and imperfectly enforced quotas in a metapopulation the dynamic efficiency of closures in bioeconomic systems depends upon stock levels and in situ values that evolve over time and on relative costs of implementation a model of a harvested metapopulation is presented in which second best reduction of harvest from open access levels using input quotas balances monitoring costs against dynamic benefits of mitigating overharvesting temporary or permanent closures though generally still second best are preferable to quotas under certain conditions as demonstrated for a representative patch and time period interactions between patches are discussed numerical solutions illustrate comparative dynamics of closure use and show their potential benefits in a dynamic regulatory path

inflation ambiguity and the term structure of u s government bonds abstract variations in trend inflation are the main driver for variations in the nominal yield curve according to empirical data investors observe a set of empirical models that could all have generated the time series for trend inflation this set has been large and volatile during the 1970s and early 1980s and small during the 1990s i show that log utility together with knightian uncertainty about trend inflation can explain the term premium in u s treasury bonds the equilibrium has two inflation premiums an inflation risk premium and a knightian inflation ambiguity premium

the impact of late nineteenth century unions on labor earnings and hours iowa in 1894 this paper presents an analysis of data on male workers taken from an 1894 survey of the iowa labor market consistent with the results of earlier research by paul douglas the author finds evidence of a statistically significant and economically important union earnings premium the analysis also shows that late nineteenth century unionism like unionism in the twentieth century tended to reduce wage dispersion on the other hand the author finds no evidence that late nineteenth century unions reduced the length of the workday for union members compared to nonunion workers

measuring the effects of federal reserve forward guidance and asset purchases on financial markets i extend the methods of gurkaynak sack and swanson 2005 to separately identify the effects of federal reserve forward guidance and large scale asset purchases lsaps during the 2009 15 u s zero lower bound zlb period i find that both forward guidance and lsaps had substantial and highly statistically significant effects on medium term treasury yields stock prices and exchange rates comparable in magnitude to the effects of the federal funds rate before the zlb forward guidance was more effective than lsaps at moving short term treasury yields while lsaps were more effective than forward guidance and the federal funds rate at moving longer term treasury yields corporate bond yields and interest rate uncertainty however the effects of forward guidance were not very persistent with a half life of 1 4 months the effects of lsaps seem to be more persistent i conclude that overall in terms of these criteria lsaps were a more effective policy tool than forward guidance during the zlb period

do central bank liquidity facilities affect interbank lending rates in response to the global financial crisis that started in august 2007 central banks provided extraordinary amounts of liquidity to the financial system to investigate the effect of central bank liquidity facilities on term interbank lending rates near the start of the crisis we estimate a six factor arbitrage free model of u s treasury yields financial corporate bond yields and term interbank rates this model can account for fluctuations in the term structure of credit and liquidity spreads observed in the data a significant shift in model estimates after the announcement of the liquidity facilities suggests that these central bank actions did help lower the liquidity premium in term interbank rates

a new look at the union wage premium during the early years of the afl this study provides new evidence showing that the union wage premium in the late nineteenth century in the united states was lower than previously believed analysis of wage and productivity data from an 1890 survey of individual workers in maine yields a 9 2 union nonunion wage gap once correction is made for self selection bias the disproportionate representation in unions of workers who because of skills and other attributes would probably gain above average wages even in the absence of unions the author argues that business cycle conditions and distinctive union dynamics can affect the results of analyses that employ the heckman procedure a common procedure designed to correct for self selection bias

normative and social influences affecting compliance with fisheries regulations economic models of regulatory compliance in fisheries usually assume an instrumental determination of individual behavior in which the decision to comply or to violate depends primarily on the expected monetary costs and benefits policy implications tend as a result to focus only on deterrence that is increasing the expected monetary costs of violation more complete models of compliance behavior take into account factors such a social influence moral values and the perceived legitimacy of regulations and the regulatory authority the paper describes an investigation into the non monetary factors affecting compliance with output quota restrictions among fishermen in the united kingdom

the response of interest rates to us and uk quantitative easing we analyse declines in government bond yields following announcements by the federal reserve and the bank of england of plans to buy longer term debt using dynamic term structure models we decompose us and uk yields into expectations about future short term interest rates and term premiums we find that declines in us yields mainly reflected lower expectations of future short term interest rates while declines in uk yields appeared to reflect reduced term premiums thus the relative importance of the signalling and portfolio balance channels of quantitative easing may depend on market institutional structures and central bank communication policies

bargaining power strike durations and wage outcomes an analysis of strikes in the 1880s strike outcomes in the 1880s had a winner take all character successful strikes ended with a discrete wage gain failed strikes ended with a return to work at the prestrike wage we present a theoretical interpretation of these outcomes based on a war of attrition model we fit an empirical model specifying the capitulation times of the two parties and the size of the wage gain in the event of a strike success the results show a systematic relation between the determinants of strike success and the determinants of the wage gain for a successful strike

potential economic benefits from gear restrictions and license limitation in fisheries regulation the economic analysis of various fisheries management tools has been the subject of an enormous economic literature a large portion of which has been produced since the passage of extended fisheries jurisdiction laws in the majority of the countries of the world crutchfield 1961 anderson 1977 pearse 1979 rettig and ginter 1980 clark 1980 clark 1981 anderson 1981 sturgess and meany 1982 beddington and rettig 1984 the general conclusion of this literature is that traditional management techniques such as closed seasons closed areas gear restrictions and total quotas are economically inefficient in that directly or indirectly potential gains are dissipated through increases in costs

inflation expectations and risk premiums in an arbitrage free model of nominal and real bond yields differences between yields on comparable maturity u s treasury nominal and real debt the so called breakeven inflation bei rates are widely used indicators of inflation expectations however better measures of inflation expectations could be obtained by subtracting inflation risk premiums from the bei rates we provide such decompositions using an estimated affine arbitrage free model of the term structure that captures the pricing of both nominal and real treasury securities our empirical results suggest that long term inflation expectations have been well anchored over the past few years and inflation risk premiums although volatile have been close to zero on average

the effectiveness of alternative monetary policy tools in a zero lower bound environment this paper reviews alternative options for monetary policy when the shortterm interest rate is at the zero lower bound and develops new empirical estimates of the effects of the maturity structure of publicly held debt on the term structure of interest rates we use a model of risk averse arbitrageurs to develop measures of how the maturity structure of debt held by the public might affect the pricing of level slope and curvature term structure risk we find that these treasury factors historically were quite helpful for predicting both yields and excess returns over 1990 2007 the historical correlations are consistent with the claim that if in december 2006 the fed were to have sold off all its treasury holdings of less than 1 year maturity about 400 billion and use the proceeds to retire treasury debt from the long end this might have resulted in a 14 basis point drop in the 10 year rate and an 11 basis point increase in the 6 month rate we also develop a description of how the dynamic behavior of the term structure of interest rates changed after hitting the zero lower bound in 2009 our estimates imply that at the zero lower bound such a maturity swap would have the same effects as buying 400 billion in long term maturities outright with newly created reserves and could reduce the 10 year rate by 13 basis points without raising short term yields

inflation risk premia and the expectations hypothesis abstract we study the properties of the nominal and real risk premia of the term structure of interest rates we develop and solve the bond pricing implications of a structural monetary version of a real business cycle model with taxes and endogenous monetary policy we show the relation of this model with the class of essentially affine models that incorporate an endogenous state dependent market price of risk we characterize and estimate the inflation risk premium and find that over the last 40 years the ten year inflation risk premium has been has averaged 70 basis points it is time varying ranging from 20 to 140 basis points over the business cycle and its term structure is sharply upward sloping the inflation risk premium explains 23 42 of the time variation in the five ten year forward risk premium and it plays an important role in help explain deviations from the expectations hypothesis of interest rates

the union wage effect in late nineteenth century britain this paper gives a historical dimension to the impact of trade unions on earnings by estimating the union wage effect in britain between 1889 90 using data from the us commissioner of labour survey conducted at that time the determinants of union status are also investigated in terms of profit estimation using individual characteristics which may be correlated with union membership the results of this first stage are used in the computation of selectivity corrected estimates of the union wage effect it is found that the effect of union membership on earnings at this time was in the order of 15 20 for a range of different skill levels

decomposing real and nominal yield curves abstract inflation indexed and nominal yield curves capture investors expectations of real short rates and inflation as well as their required compensation for bearing liquidity inflation and real interest rate risk we estimate an affine term structure model that allows us to decompose real and nominal bond yields into these components and use the model to study the transmission of monetary policy the model decompositions imply that the federal reserve s announcements of lsaps lowered yields primarily by reducing real term premia changes in real term premia also account for the strong response of long term real forward rates to federal funds rate surprises

the interest rate effects of government bond purchases away from the lower bound abstract i analyze the recent experience of unconventional monetary policy in sweden to study the interest rate transmission mechanisms of government bond purchases when interest rates are away from the lower bound using dynamic term structure models and event study regressions i find that government bond purchases have important portfolio balance and signaling effects the signaling channel operates mainly by lowering short rate expectations in the intermediate segment of the yield curve while the portfolio balance channel is effective in lowering longer maturity term premia in addition i find that target interest rate policy and government bond purchases operate in different segments of the yield curve this suggests that a combination of the two policies can be used to lower interest rates across the whole maturity spectrum making monetary policy more expansionary

optimal governing instrument operation level and enforcement in natural resource regulation the case of the fishery most regulation studies have used industry output or inputs as the control variable s but these are only indirectly controlled by government action through its choice of governing instrument enforcement procedure and penalty structure and the operational level of each a model is developed which demonstrates how profit maximizing firms will react to these control variables taking into account the benefits extra production and costs possible penalties of noncompliance and the ability to avoid detection of noncompliance the optimal operation level for two sets of control variables is derived and discussed

monetary policy uncertainty and economic fluctuations uncertainty associated with the monetary policy transmission mechanism is a key driving force of business cycles to investigate this link we propose a new term structure model that allows the volatility of the yield curve to interact with macroeconomic indicators the data favors a model with two volatility factors that capture shortterm and long term monetary policy uncertainty increases in either of them lead higher unemployment rates but they interact with ination in opposite directions

entry deterrence and overexploitation of the fishery abstract two stackelberg game models open access and restricted entry of a poaching fishery situation are proposed only the long run noncooperative solution of managing resource stocks is assumed feasible the optimal stock under open access for poachers is shown to be lower than under restricted entry and the latter to be lower than under exclusive ownership deterrence is completely successful under open access but is partially successful only under restricted entry the game models considered are shown to be equivalent to a constrained ownership fishery control problem or its surrogate

estimating nominal interest rate expectations overnight indexed swaps and the term structure abstract no arbitrage dynamic term structure models dtsms have regularly been used to estimate interest rate expectations and term premia but are beset by empirical challenges i propose augmenting dtsms with overnight indexed swap ois rates to better estimate the decomposition along the term structure at daily frequencies a gaussian affine dtsm augmented with 3 to 24 month ois rates generates estimates of us expectations that closely correspond to survey implied measures out to a 10 year horizon and are more stable across sub samples compared to existing models in addition i provide narrative evidence in the form of an event study around us unconventional monetary policy announcements to further exemplify the benefits from ois augmentation