the effects of human resource management practices on productivity a study of steel finishing lines the authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies the productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices which include incentive pay teams flexible job assignments employment security and training achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach which includes narrow job definitions strict work rules and hourly pay with close supervision their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices

dynamic forecasts of qualitative variables a qual var model of u s recessions this article presents a new qual var model for incorporating information from qualitative and or discrete variables in vector autoregressions with a qual var it is possible to create dynamic forecasts of the qualitative variable using standard var projections previous forecasting methods for qualitative variables in contrast produce only static forecasts i apply the qual var to forecasting the 2001 business recession out of sample and to analyzing the romer and romer narrative measure of monetary policy contractions as an endogenous variable in a var out of sample the model predicts the timing of the 2001 recession quite well relative to the recession probabilities put forth at the time by professional forecasters qual vars which include information about the qualitative variable can also enhance the quality of density forecasts of the other variables in the system

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

estimating the open market desk s daily reaction function this paper presents the results of an empirical investigation into the proximate determinants of the federal reserve s daily open market operations using information available each morning at the fed conference call the author models the open market desk s choice of both the quantity and the type of operation using a friction model for the former and a multinomial logit framework for the latter different types of operations are shown to send different signals to the market about the underlying thrust of fed policy and open market operations in recent years are shown to have become increasingly keyed to the federal funds rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

the economic consequences of federal deficits an examination of the net wealth and instability issues there is currently disagreement over the economic consequences of federal deficits some economists argue that deficits put upward pressure on real interest rates and thereby crowd out interest sensitive private spending others argue that deficits stemming from lump sum tax cuts do not raise interest rates because the response of individuals will be to increase their saving by the full amount of the resulting deficit to enable future generations to service i e make interest and principal payments on the additional debt without curtailing their consumption in other words individuals view debt and taxes as perfect substitutes because debt financed tax cuts imply higher taxes in the future to service that debt this effectively means that there really is no permanent tax cut so there is no increase in private net wealth current consumption or interest rates stated another way the debt that is issued to finance a tax cut does not add to private net wealth because it implies an offsetting future tax liability but if debt is not viewed as implying future tax increases then debt and taxes are not perfect substitutes and increases in debt resulting from tax cuts will indeed add to private net wealth stimulate consumption and raise interest rates 2

the market value of u s government debt monthly 1942 1980 abstract the market value of outstanding united states treasury debt is calculated on a monthly basis using price and par value data from the treasury bulletin separate series for treasury bills bonds certificates of indebtedness notes and total treasury debt are presented along with estimates of privately held treasury debt and gross federal debt the calculated market value series is compared to par value and an existing annual market value series

an empirical test of the effects of government deficits on money demand there is a great deal of interest in how govenment deficits affect macroeconomic variables accordingly there is a large body of theoretical and empirical work on the topic this paper examines the relationship between deficits and interest rates among the difficulties in exploring this relationship is that when conducting monetary policy the federal reserve often targets interest rates such a policy can cloud any relationship between deficits and interest rates a way to avoid this problem among others is to estimate money demand functions that contain a measure of the market value of government debt no evidence is found to support a positive relationship between government debt and money demand this finding implies budget deficits do not affect interest rates through money demand

a test for complementarities among multiple technologies that avoids the curse of dimensionality abstract we propose a strategy to identify the complementarity or substitutability among technology bundles differences between the observed distribution of technology choices can be subjected to statistical tests combinations of technologies that occur with greater frequency than would occur under independence are complementary technologies combinations that occur with less frequency are substitute technologies we use the strategy to evaluate multiple technology adoptions on us hog farms as the number of bundled technologies increases they are increasingly likely to be complementary with one another even if subsets are substitutes when viewed in isolation

the operations of the bank of england 1890 1908 a dynamic probit approach this paper analyzes the workings of the pre world war i gold standard using weekly data and a dynamic probit econometric technique the authors evidence sheds light on three potentially conflicting motivations underlying bank rate changes profitability convertibility and concern for home trade the conflict among these goals manifests itself in the bank s asymmetric responses to inflows and outflows of gold and in the bank s asymmetric responses to changes in market interest rates the authors results are consistent with the view that central bank cooperation played an important role in the workings of the gold standard copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

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

estimating interest rate setting behaviour in korea a constrained ordered choices model approach abstractwe study the bank of korea s interest rate setting behaviour using an array of constrained ordered choices models where the monetary policy committee revises the target policy interest rate only when the current market interest rate deviates from the optimal rate by more than certain threshold values our models explain changes in the monetary policy stance well for the monthly frequency korean data since january 2000 we find important roles for the output gap and the foreign exchange rate in understanding the bank of korea s rate decision making process we also implement out of sample forecast exercises with september 2008 lehman brothers bankruptcy for a split point we demonstrate that out of sample predictability improves greatly for the rate cut and the rate hike decisions using se adjusted inaction bands

government debt government spending and private sector behavior reply roger kormendi 1983 presents apparently strong evidence that in contrast to the standard view consumption is not reduced by taxes but is reduced by government expenditure he interprets his results as supporting a consolidated approach to private sector behavior in which consumers effectively internalize the government budget constraint specifically he claims that consumers regard government spending as the true measure of the government s claim on private resources and so do not respond to changes in taxes given spending this is basically the approach advocated by robert barro 1974 and known also as the ricardian equivalence proposition hereafter rep kormendi s results appears to contradict other empirical work based on the life cycle hypothesis for example martin feldstein 1982 modigliani 1984a sterling 1985 although results similar to his have been reported see david aschauer 1985 john seater and roberto mariano 1985 and the references in kormendi in our view kormendi s analysis is seriously flawed his heuristic derivation of the consumption function leads him to a specification of the aggregate consumption function which is not consistent with the life cycle hypothesis lch or with rep and to questionable methods of estimation once his conceptual and methodological errors are corrected his formulation and more generally the rep hypothesis are found to receive little empirical support in the next section we rely on the lch to derive an aggregate consumption function which shows explicitly how government expenditure and taxes should effect private consumption this derivation helps to bring out the observable implications of rep which are shown to be equivalent to a limiting form of the lch in which the planning horizon is infinite it also serves to clarify the appropriate specification of the variables appearing in the consumption function next section ii reports our empirical estimates and tests section iii compares our results with kormendi s finally section iv reports the results of endeavors to improve the specification of fiscal variables notably by distinguishing between permanent and transitory tax changes

government debt and the demand for money an extreme bound analysis m keivan deravi charles e hegji and h dean moberly the article provides evidence that there is a relationship between government debt and interest rates via the demand for money this relationship is examined through the wealth effect of government debt on money demand and the robustness of the results is tested by the use of extreme bound analysis in addition to standard econometric techniques we find that ols regression shows government debt affecting the demand for money positively implying that federal government debt is net wealth in addition the extreme bound analysis shows that the estimates of the government debt coefficient are robust under alternative specifications of the goldfeld model i introduction this paper studies the relationship between government debt and interest rates the approach used in this paper differs from previous studies in two ways first this relationship is examined through the wealth effect of government debt on the demand for money second the robustness of the results is tested by use of extreme bound analysis as an alternative to standard econometric techniques theoretically there is no clear cut consensus as to whether or not government debt should be net wealth the argument used most often is that government debt will be net wealth if future tax liabilities to service the debt are for the aggregate economy only partially discounted two explanations for this partial discounting are offered first in dealing with finite lived individuals thompson 1967 assumes that the average remaining lifetime of current taxpayers is shorter than for future interest payments on the federal debt in this situation the net present value of a stream of equal interest payments and taxes will be positive as a counter argument barro 1974 has shown that current generations can act effectively as if they are infinite lived when they are linked to future generations through a series of pairwise transfers of wealth here the realization by current generations that tax liabilities will be left to future generations extends the lifetime of the relevant stream of tax liabilities for debt service government debt is then wealth neutral mundell 1971 provides a second reason for partial discounting by assuming that capital markets are imperfect and that the relevant discount rate for tax liabilities is higher than the rate for interest payments these discount rates are respectively thought of as applying to high risk of loan default and low risk of loan default individuals this difference in discount rates creates a positive wealth effect since under mundell s assumptions government debt held by taxpayers involves a loan from low discount rate to high discount rate individuals as barro 1974 has again countered this wealth effect will exist only to the extent that the government is more efficient at providing such a loan than the private sector finally barro 1974 kormendi 1983 and later aschauer 1985 advance an argument as to why government debt might be negative net wealth suppose there is considerable uncertainty about the intertemporal and cross sectional burden of the future tax liability necessary to service the debt in this case the certainty equivalent value of these future taxes might exceed the certainty equivalent value of the future income stream of the debt so that government debt would be negative net wealth the majority of the empirical studies of the net wealth induced linkage between government debt and interest rates have attempted to measure this relationship using consumption functions if privately owned government debt is net wealth the wealth effect of this debt working through a keynesian consumption function will be positive so that increased government borrowing will result in increased current consumption and interest rates several studies have assessed the relationship between government borrowing and consumption or interest rates via this mechanism

a tractable interest rate model with explicit monetary policy rates abstract this paper proposes a novel interest rate model that presents simple analytical pricing formulas for interest rate based derivatives including swaps futures swaptions caps and floors exploring the regime switching feature of markov chains the proposed model focuses on discrete changes in the central bank policy rates the main driver of short term rate fluctuations an empirical analysis shows that the proposed model generally outperforms other standard short term rate models in fitting cross sections of options prices moreover the explicit nature of policy rates to some extent enables the model to infer risk neutral probabilities of the central bank rate decisions

stop go monetary policy we propose and estimate several discrete choice models of monetary policy decision making that feature time varying inertia the models permit us to account for three stylized facts characterizing monetary policymaking in the united states 1 target interest rates are gradually adjusted in small discrete movements 2 there are some long stretches of time in which rates are repeatedly moved and 3 there are other long stretches in which the policy rate does not change our models are used to account for the fed s failure to adopt promptly an easier policy stance during the recession of 2001 they are also used to explain delay in tightening the policy stance during the 2003 2006 period that featured a bubble in house prices and was followed by a financial crisis in 2008

animal health inputs endogenous risk general infrastructure technology adoption and industrialized animal agriculture abstract this paper develops a microeconomic model of concentrated animal feeding operations that admits roles for all of animal health inputs genetic profile choices and the pertaining economic infrastructure the basic model emphasizes how time on feed feed density and biosecurity choices interact as well as how these choices respond to i input prices and ii attributes regarding animal productivity parameters that might be influenced by policy choices such as animal welfare strictures and restraints on use of medication we show that ostensibly substituting inputs in protecting against animal health risks may in fact be complements and that the model s production choices come as a complementary package we then extend the model to endogenize the choice of animal genetics a finding is that innovations in general infrastructure encourage herd owners to choose more feed efficient but less hardy animals higher feed conversion efficiency then induces the use of denser feed rations accelerated finishing and greater levels of biosecurity actions at farm perimeters our theory provides a coherent framework for explaining associations among inputs and outcomes that are linked with confined animal agriculture it also explains how animal protein supply chain technology adoption and performance can differ according to a region s state of infrastructure why responses to a change in infrastructure may be large and why public sector efforts to reduce production risk may beget private sector effort to do so

misplaced childhood when recession children grow up as central bankers abstract we examine how much an early i e childhood experience of recession influences the behavior of central bankers we develop a model of decision making by a committee whose leader and members exhibit recession aversion due to their personal experience the model reveals that recession aversion could lead to a reluctance of the policymaker to increase policy rates in a panel multinomial logit model for nine major central banks analyzed over the period 1999 2015 we find that growing up in a recession influences monetary policy making central bankers early personal experiences of recessions shape their policy reactions increasing the willingness to cut policy rates with policy relevant magnitudes the results are robust to alternative behavioral hypotheses accounting for a number of control variables or sample variation

has ecb communication been helpful in predicting interest rate decisions an evaluation of the early years of the economic and monetary union we examine the usefulness of communication by the european central bank for predicting its policy decisions during the early years of the european economic and monetary union using ordered probit models based on the taylor rule we find that statements on the main refinancing rate and future inflation are significantly related to interest rate decisions at the same time an out of sample evaluation shows that communication based models do not outperform models based on macroeconomic data in predicting decisions both types of models have difficulty in predicting changes in the main refinancing rate

are there systematic gender differences in the adoption of sustainable agricultural intensification practices evidence from kenya this paper uses sex disaggregated survey data at the plot level to test whether there are systematic gender differences in the adoption of multiple sustainable intensification practices sips in kenya we analyze plot level adoption decisions of sips by male female or joint plot managers within the household controlling for household characteristics asset wealth and land quality factors that condition investments in intensification options using a multivariate probit model we find gender differences in the adoption pattern for some sips compared to male plot mangers female managers are less likely to adopt minimum tillage and animal manure in crop production indicating the existence of certain socioeconomic inequalities and barriers for female farmers however we find no gender differences in the adoption of soil and water conservation measures improved seed varieties chemical fertilizers maize legume intercropping and maize legume rotations

dynamics of the federal funds target rate a nonstationary discrete choice approach we apply a discrete choice approach to model the empirical behaviour of the federal reserve in changing the federal funds target rate the benchmark of short term market interest rates in the us our methods allow the explanatory variables to be nonstationary as well as stationary this feature is particularly useful in the present application as many economic fundamentals that are monitored by the fed and are believed to affect decisions to adjust interest rate targets display some nonstationarity over time the chosen model successfully predicts the majority of the target rate changes during the time period considered 1994 2001 and helps to explain strings of similar intervention decisions by the fed based on the model implied optimal interest rate our findings suggest that there is a lag in the fed s reaction to economic shocks during this period copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

why were changes in the federal funds rate smaller in the 1990s we identify two major changes in the dynamics of the federal funds rate in the 1990s we model the desired rate in a two regime setting one when the fed makes no change and the other when the fed is moving the desired rate to a new level we find that the 1990s saw a longer duration in the no change regime as well as smaller changes in the other regime the smaller changes were neither due to a less aggressive fed nor due to lower volatility of the fundamentals in fact the fed responded more aggressively to changes in fundamentals in the 1990s copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

the heterogeneous effect of shocks on agricultural innovations adoption microeconometric evidence from rural ethiopia abstract theoretically the relationship between shocks and agricultural innovation adoption could be ambiguous while shocks could lower the competence and capacity of households to adopt new agricultural innovations households can also take up agricultural innovations as a coping mechanism against the different shocks they face using a nationally representative household data from ethiopia of the living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture lsms isa of the world bank this paper analyzes the effect of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks on adoption of different agricultural innovations assuming interdependence among the innovations we find shocks to have heterogeneous effects on the adoption of agricultural innovations specifically production and health shocks have negative effects on the adoption of high cost innovations such as improved seeds chemical fertilizer and irrigation however production shocks are positively associated with low cost innovations such as organic fertilizer to enhance farmers adoption of agricultural innovations especially high cost innovations there is a greater need towards the design of policies and interventions that would reduce household s exposure to production and health shocks

the effect of changes in the federal funds rate target on market interest rates in the 1970s abstract this paper examines the influence of monetary policy on interest rates by estimating the effect of changes in the federal funds rate target the federal reserve s policy instrument on market interest rates in the 1970s we find that changes in the target caused large movements in short term rates and smaller but significant movements in intermediate and long term rates we hypothesize that the similarity of the reactions of three six and twelve month rates to changes in the target offers a possible explanation for the lack of support for the expectations theory from studies that have tested the theory using these rates

the links between international parity conditions and granger causality a study of exchange rates and prices this article investigates granger causality between exchange rates and prices for the us and four of its trading partners canada germany japan and the uk we emphasize the distinction between direct and indirect granger causality exchange rates directly cause prices if movements in exchange rates lead movement in prices and exchange rates indirectly cause prices if deviations from the purchasing power parity ppp condition can help forecast movement in prices but only by including the interest rate differential in our error correction model do we obtain results that align with economic theory the economic theory of ppp suggests that exchange rates and prices are cointegrated with exchange rates moving proportionally to prices in the long run in general we find either direct or indirect feedback mechanisms between exchange rates and prices

dynamic limited dependent variable modeling and u s monetary policy i estimate using real time data a forward looking monetary policy reaction function that is dynamic and that also accounts for the fact that there are substantial restrictions in the period to period changes of the fed s policy instrument i nd a substantial contrast between the periods before and after paul volcker s appointment as fed chairman in 1979 both in terms of the fed s response to expected in ation and in terms of its response to the perceived output gap in the pre volcker era the fed s response to in ation was substantially weaker than in the volcker greenspan era conversely the fed seems to have been more responsive to real activity in the pre volcker era than later

deficits and the demand for money in recent years the large budget deficits of the federal government have renewed interest in the effects of government debt on private sector behavior to date empirical research has focused on the relationship between debt and two key variables consumption and interest rates by contrast empirical research on the effects of government debt on other variables of interest to macroeconomists is limited this paper examines the relationship between government debt and one such variable real money balances the neglect of government debt as a determinant of money demand is surprising many traditional macroeconomic models such as blinder and solow s 9 influential work include government debt as an argument to the money demand function moreover macroeconomic theorists have long been aware that a government debt money demand relationship has important implications for the efficacy of fiscal policy 2 this paper examines the relationship between government debt and real money holdings over the 1950 1990 period a positive money debt relationship was previously noted by butkiewicz 12 and deravi hegji and moberly 15 hereafter referred to as dhm our work improves upon this research in two ways first in contrast to butkiewicz 12 and dhm 15 we investigate the time series properties stationarity cointegration of relevant variables second we distinguish between supply side and demand side explanations of the debt money relationship the explanation advanced by butkiewicz 12 and dhm 15 is that an increase government debt is perceived by the private sector as an increase in net wealth and hence should increase money demand 3 this explanation ignores a potentially important connection between government debt and money supply if the federal reserve monetizes debt and if the private sector s adjustment to this monetization is lagged then debt and real money balances will exhibit a positive correla

modelling interregional links in electricity price spikes abnormally high price spikes in spot electricity markets represent a significant risk to market participants as such a literature has developed that focuses on forecasting the probability of such spike events moving beyond simply forecasting the level of price many univariate time series models have been proposed to dealwith spikes within an individual market region this paper is the first to develop a multivariate self exciting point process model for dealing with price spikes across connected regions in the australian national electricity market the importance of the physical infrastructure connecting the regions on the transmission of spikes is examined it is found that spikes are transmitted between the regions and the size of spikes is influenced by the available transmission capacity it is also found that improved risk estimates are obtained when inter regional linkages are taken into account

the relationship between budget deficits and money demand evidence from a small economy a considerable number of empirical studies exploring the links between budget deficits and the demand for money have led to mixed results by using annual data of the greek economy and previous empirical studies this paper empirically evaluates the sensitivity and validity of the keynesian proposition and the ricardian equivalence hypothesis the paper employs cointegration ecm methodology and several diagnostic and specification tests the empirical findings show a significant and positive relationship between budget deficits and the demand for money supporting the keynesian model

government deficits and aggregate demand abstract the evidence presented in this paper indicates that changes in government spending transfers and taxes can have substantial effects on aggregate demand the estimates also indicate that the promise of future social security benefits significantly reduces private saving each the basic implications of the so called ricardian equivalence theorem is contradicted by the data the results are consistent with the more general view of the effects of fiscal actions and fiscal expectations that is described in the paper

anxious periods and bank lending we examine the lending behavior of banks during anxious periods the main characteristic of anxious periods is that the perceptions and expectations about economic conditions worsen for economic agents even though the economy is not in a recession we identify distinct periods of anxiety for consumers ceos firms and analysts subsequently we study the lending behavior of us banks during the anxious quarters from 1985 to 2010 using bank level data the results show that banks lending falls when consumers and analysts are anxious and this effect is more pronounced when banks hold a higher level of credit risk these effects are more pronounced in anxious periods that were followed by recessions and in these periods loan growth also responds negatively to the anxiety of ceos yet these effects are quite less prevalent in the period after 2001

a model for the federal funds rate target this paper is a statistical analysis of the manner in which the federal reserve determines the level of the federal funds rate target one of the most publicized and anticipated economic indicators in the financial world the paper introduces new statistical tools for forecasting a discrete valued time series such as the target and suggests that these methods in conjunction with a focus on the institutional details of how the target is determined can significantly improve on standard vector autoregression forecasts of the effective federal funds rate we further show that the news that the fed has changed the target has statistical content substantially different from the news that the fed failed to make an anticipated target change causing us to challenge some of the conclusions drawn from standard linear var impulse response functions

semiparametric estimates of monetary policy effects string theory revisited we develop flexible semiparametric time series methods for the estimation of the causal effect of monetary policy on macroeconomic aggregates our estimator captures the average causal response to discrete policy interventions in a macrodynamic setting without the need for assumptions about the process generating macroeconomic outcomes the proposed estimation strategy based on propensity score weighting easily accommodates asymmetric and nonlinear responses using this estimator we show that monetary tightening has clear effects on the yield curve and on economic activity monetary accommodation however appears to generate less pronounced responses from both estimates for recent financial crisis years display a similarly dampened response to monetary accommodation

government debt government spending and private sector behavior a current period tax reduction financed by issuing government debt shifts the timing of tax collection from the current period to the future if the future taxes implied by government debt are not fully perceived and discounted by the private sector there will be a net wealth effect that increases private sector consumption thus reducing capital accumulation and growth if on the other hand the implied future taxes are perceived and discounted by the private sector the current period tax reduction will be used to increase private saving to pay for the future taxes and government debt will be absorbed without any real effects on the economy the effects of government spending financed by current period taxation also depend upon private sector perceptions 2 if the benefits of government spending are ignored private sector consumption will decrease in accordance with the reduction in permanent disposable income to the extent that government spending is on consumption type goods that are perceived as substitutes for privately provided consumption goods there will be a relatively greater reduction in private sector consumption to the extent that government spending is on investment type goods yielding future goods and services that are perceived as substitutes for future privately provided consumption goods there will be a relatively smaller reduction in private sector consumption the standard approach to modeling private sector consumption saving behavior involves a rather asymmetric set of assumptions as to how the private sector perceives the various elements of government fiscal policy 3 current period taxes are assumed to be fully perceived but current period government spending is implicitly assumed to be completely ignored by the private sector in considering permanent personal disposable income the private sector is assumed to be forward looking in its assessment of income and taxation the stock of government debt is nevertheless included as part of the stock of private wealth the implicit assumption associate professor of economics graduate school of business university of chicago 1101 east 58th street chicago il 60637 i thank eugene fama levis kochin michael mussa paul evans and an anonymous referee for helpful comments i am particularly grateful to daniel benjamin for contributing many hours of discussion and laura lahaye who was a research assistant and valuable adviser on earlier drafts the theoretical debate on the burden of the debt has been long standing gerald o driscoll 1977 documents ricardo s nineteenth century position robert barro 1974 reopened the debate by introducing the fundamental issue of intergenerational transfers also discussed in merton miller and charles upton 1974 the empirical side of the debate was initiated by levis kochin s 1974 attempt to test for the effects of deficits on consumption and by martin feldstein s 1974 attempt to test for the effects of social security wealth on consumption other empirical contributions include jess yawitz and laurence meyer 1976 myself 1978 and j earnest tanner 1978 1979 with respect to the effects of government deficits and debt and barro 1978 michael darby 1979 and dean leimer and selig lesnoy 1982 with respect to social security wealth see also interesting recent papers by john seater 1982 who generates detailed tests of the effects of deficits and debt on consumption charles plosser 1982 who explores the effects of government spending and debt shocks on interest rates and feldstein 1982 who attempts tests similar to some in this paper see fn 29 2martin bailey s 1962 1971 development of the effects of government spending on private consumption and aggregate economic activity is the seminal contribution paul david and john scadding 1974 extend bailey s ideas and provide some supporting empirical evidence more recently willem buiter 1977 and myself 1978 developed models based on bailey s earlier work barro 1981 has an interesting paper on related issues see also david aschauer 1982 3the standard approach incorporates fiscal policy through the concept of personal disposable income and by including the stock of government debt as part of personal wealth see for example the empirical specification of albert ando and franco modigliani 1963 which has been the basis of most empirical consumption studies since and feldstein 1974 for one of the more influential papers based on the ando modigliani specification

exchange rates and fomc days federal open market committee fomc meeting days provide a natural laboratory for exploring the effects of policy uncertainty and learning on exchange rate determination a reasonable hypothesis is that the meeting outcomes are price relevant public information associated with a switch to an informed trading state evidence is provided by intradaily exchange rates for 10 fomc meetings a particularly interesting finding is that the informed trading regime tends to emerge during the time that the fomc meets an extensive search of public news indicates that the informed trading cannot be explained as the response to public information

government financing decisions and asset returns abstract this paper presents an empirical investigation of the relation between government financing decisions and asset returns in particular the focus is on whether a substitution of debt financing for tax financing of a given level of expenditures is associated with an increase in interest rates the paper brings a different perspective to empirical investigations of government fiscal policies by examining the response of asset prices in an efficient capital market to such policies rather than focusing on aggregate consumption behavior the results are consistent with the idea that asset prices are unrelated to how the government finances its expenditures the results however also indicate that the capital market is not indifferent with respect to the level of government expenditures as higher interest rates are associated with increases in government purchases

market set up in advance of federal reserve policy rate decisions textabstractthis paper considers the uncertainty associated with upcoming federal open market committee fomc announcements and the extent to which participants in the fed funds futures market prepare for such announcements before they actually occur we demonstrate that markets set up well in advance of known announcement days going back as far as six months prior to an fomc meeting as a result there is often less variation in fed funds futures prices in the period immediately preceding an fomc announcement despite greater volume of activity as the market has already incorpo rated anticipated signals we find that macro announcements and central bank officials speeches and congressional testimony are of comparable importance in addition while macro announcements have stronger effects when they are released during the fed s blackout period congressional testimony is more important when it coincides with days when important macro variables are released

monetary policy surprises and interest rates evidence from the fed funds futures market abstract this paper estimates the impact of monetary policy actions on bill note and bond yields using data from the futures market for federal funds to separate changes in the target funds rate into anticipated and unanticipated components interest rates response to anticipated target rate changes is small while their response to unanticipated changes is large and highly significant these responses are generally consistent with the expectations hypothesis of the term structure surprise target rate changes have little effect on expectations of future actions however which helps to explain the lack of empirical support for the expectations hypothesis at the short end of the yield curve

multiple regimes in u s monetary policy a nonparametric approach we use two different nonparametric methods to determine whether there were multiple regimes in u s monetary policy over the period 1955 2003 we model monetary policy using two different versions of taylor s rule for the nominal interest rate target by contrast with parametric tests for regime changes the nonparametric methods we use allow the data to determine the dimensions on which to split the sample for purposes of estimating the coefficients of the taylor rule we find evidence for a few structural breaks and consistent agreement between our two nonparametric methods on the dating of those breaks

trade dynamics in the market for federal funds we develop a model of the market for federal funds that explicitly accounts for its two distinctive features banks have to search for a suitable counterparty and once they have met both parties negotiate the size of the loan and the repayment the theory is used to answer a number of positive and normative questions what are the determinants of the fed funds rate how does the market reallocate funds is the market able to achieve an efficient reallocation of funds we also use the model for theoretical and quantitative analyses of policy issues facing modern central banks

sensitivity analyses of the deterrence hypothesis let s keep the econ in econometrics abstract leamer and mcmanus applied extreme bound analysis eba in an empirical study of the deterrent effects of capital punishment and other penalties their analysis has questioned the validity of the deterrence hypothesis the thrust of our paper is twofold first by applying eba to well known econometric models of demand production and human capital investment our analysis exposes and illustrates the inherent flaws of eba as a method of deriving valid inferences about model specification second since the analysis shows leamer and mcmanus s inferences about deterrence to be based on a flawed methodology we offer an alternative theory based sensitivity analysis of estimated deterrent effects using similar data our analysis supports the deterrence hypothesis more generally it emphasizes the indispensable role of theory in guiding sensitivity analyses of model specification

when did the fomc begin targeting the federal funds rate what the verbatim transcripts tell us in october 1982 the fomc deemphasized m1 and moved to what is commonly referred to as a borrowed reserves operating procedure sometime thereafter the fomc switched to a funds rate targeting procedure but never formally announced the change given the close correspondence between a borrowed reserves operating procedure and a funds rate targeting procedure thornton 1988 suggested that the fomc went immediately to a funds rate targeting procedure others date the switch to the funds rate procedure later meulendyke 1998 suggests the switch came in late 1987 while others suggest the change occurred later this paper reviews the verbatim transcripts of the fomc meetings to establish the timing of the switch the verbatim transcripts suggest that the fomc effectively switched to a funds rate targeting procedure in 1982 the documentary evidence is supported by an analysis of the spread between the funds rate and the funds rate target which suggests that the differences in the behavior of the spread before october 1979 and after october 1982 are relatively small and economically unimportant

bank rate policy under the interwar gold standard a dynamic probit model the classical gold standard occupies an almost mystical position in the literature of international finance in popular accounts the gold standard is portrayed as a remarkably durable and efficient mechanism for achieving price and exchange rate stability and for relieving balance of payments pressures the system s resilience is attributed to the willingness of nationa monetary authorities to refrain from impeding the international adjustment process when central banks intervened in financial markets it is said they did so mechanically obeying rules of the game which dictated that they reinforce the impact on domestic money and credit of changing balance of payments conditions succeeding generations of economists and historians have sought to qualify this popular view the recent contributions of bordo i98i and cooper i982 make a critical assessment of extravagant claims concerning price and exchange rate stability under the classical gold standard other authors have extended the research of bloomfield i 959 ford i962 and triffin i964 who emphasised the special conditions that permitted the classical gold standard s smooth operation and cast doubt on the tendency of national monetary authorities to adhere faithfully to rules of the game all too often scant mention is made of the interwar gold standard for it is not evident how interwar experience fits into either view certain facts are clear it is clear that the interwar standard was far from durable britain s resumption of gold payments in i925 usually is taken to mark the gold standard s resurrection just as her devaluation a mere 6 years later is taken as its demise in the interim many of the major participants suffered serious balance of payments pressures that threatened to render their exchange rates indefensible the system was anything but conducive to stability it precluded neither price nor income fluctuations as the great depression dramatically illustrated numerous explanations have been advanced for the interwar gold standard s

the real time predictive content of money for output abstract data on monetary aggregates are subject to periodic redefinitions presumably in part to improve their link to measures of output money data are also revised on a regular basis taking these data imperfections into account we reassess the evidence on the marginal predictive content of m1 and m2 for real and nominal output in particular first by using the latest version of the data that is available and then using sequences of historical time series that would have been available to forecasters in real time we are able to provide a comprehensive assessment of whether money is useful for predicting output we conclude that the generally significant marginal predictive content of m1 or m2 for output that is found using a recently revised data set is not duplicated in a real time setting although m2 is shown to remain useful when 1 year ahead forecasts are constructed using fitted vector autoregressive models

monetary policy shocks and foreign investment income evidence from a large bayesian var abstract this paper assesses the transmission of monetary policy in a large bayesian vector autoregression based on the approach proposed by banbura et al 2010 the paper analyzes the impact of monetary policy shocks in the united states and canada not only on a range of domestic aggregates trade flows and exchange rates but also foreign investment income the analysis provides three main results first a surprise monetary policy contraction has a statistically important impact on both gross and net foreign investment income flows in both countries against the background of growing foreign wealth and investment income this result provides preliminary evidence that foreign balance sheet channels might play an increasingly significant role for monetary transmission second the impact of monetary policy on foreign investment income flows differs considerably across asset categories and over time suggesting that the investment instruments and the currency denomination of a country s foreign assets and liabilities are potentially relevant for the way in which monetary policy affects the domestic economy finally the results support existing evidence on the effectiveness of large vector autoregressions and the bayesian shrinkage approach in eliminating price and exchange rate puzzles

monetary policy implementation and the federal funds rate this paper investigates how the implementation of monetary policy affects the dynamics and the volatility of the federal funds rate since the early 1980s the most important changes in the fed s conduct of monetary policy refer to the role of the federal funds rate target and the reserve requirement system we show that the improved communication and transparency regarding the federal funds rate target has significantly increased the fed s influence on the federal funds rate since 1994 by contrast the declining role of required reserves in the u s has contributed to higher federal funds rate volatility our results suggest that the planned introduction of remunerated reserves will further enhance the controllability of the federal funds rate

the federal reserve s operating procedure nonborrowed reserves borrowed reserves and the liquidity effect abstract recently a number of researchers christiano and eichenbaum 1992 christiano et al 1996a b 1997 evans and marshall 1998 strongin 1995 pagan and robertson 1995 brunner 1994 claim to have found evidence of a statistically significant liquidity effect in a recursive structural var using nonborrowed reserves nbr it is claimed that innovations to nbr reflect the exogenous policy actions of the fed this paper argues that the opposite is true specifically i show that the fed has an incentive to offset bank initiated discount window borrowing when it implements the federal open market committee s policy directive and that it has done so since the late 1950s this practice has created a negative contemporaneous covariance between nbr and the funds rate that has been incorrectly attributed to the liquidity effect by showing that these models capture the endogenous response of the fed to bank borrowing on nbr rather than the effect of exogenous policy actions on the funds rate this paper also resolves the puzzle of the vanishing liquidity effect noted by pagan and robertson 1995 and christiano 1995

bond yields and the federal reserve bond yields respond to policy decisions by the federal reserve and vice versa to learn about these responses i model a high frequency policy rule based on yield curve information and an arbitrage free bond market in continuous time the fed s target is a pure jump process jump intensities depend on the state of the economy and the meeting calendar of the federal open market committee the model has closed form solutions for yields as functions of a few state variables introducing monetary policy helps to match the whole yield curve because the target is an observable state variable that pins down its short end and introduces important seasonalities around fomc meetings the volatility of yields is snake shaped which the model explains with policy inertia the policy rule crucially depends on the two year yield and describes fed policy better than taylor rules

why are prices sticky the dynamics of wholesale gasoline prices the menu cost interpretation of sticky prices implies that the probability of a price change should depend on the past history of prices and fundamentals only through the gap between the current price and the frictionless price we find that this prediction is broadly consistent with the behavior of nine philadelphia gasoline wholesalers nevertheless we reject the menu cost model as a literal description of these firms behavior arguing instead that price stickiness arises from strategic considerations of how customers and competitors will react to price changes

money demand function estimation by nonlinear cointegration conventionally the money demand function is estimated using a regression of the logarithm of money demand on either the interest rate or the logarithm of the interest rate this equation is presumed to be a cointegrating regression in this paper we aim to combine the logarithmic specification which models the liquidity trap better than a linear model with the assumption that the interest rate itself is an integrated process the proposed technique is robust to serial correlation in the errors for the usa our new technique results in larger coefficient estimates than previous research suggested and produces superior out of sample prediction copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

modeling multiple adoption decisions in a joint framework a multinomial probit mnp model is applied to the modeling of adoption decisions by farmers facing multiple technologies which can be adopted in various combinations this model allows for full investigation of the interactions between decisions to adopt or not adopt several technologies estimation is carried out in a bayesian framework employing gibbs sampling to circumvent past difficulties encountered in maximum likelihood estimation of the mnp model the model is estimated for a sample of u s apple growers with four possible sustainable production technology bundles the results show that adoption decisions are most significantly influenced by off farm labor supply

how does public information affect the frequency of trading in airline stocks abstract this paper examines how firm specific and macroeconomic announcements affect transaction rates in u s airline stocks using a version of the autoregressive conditional hazard framework of hamilton and jorda 2002 that incorporates market microstructure variables we show that on average trading intensity spikes prior and consequent to macroeconomic announcements but decreases around firm specific releases further when we use intraday crude oil futures returns as a proxy for industry relevant and globally important news we find that their effects are statistically significant with higher oil futures returns increasing the probability of trade

canadian interest rate setting the information content of canadian and u s central bank communication we explain canadian target rate decisions using macroeconomic variables as well as bank of canada and federal reserve communication indicators econometrically we employ an ordered probit model of a taylor rule to explain and predict 60 target rate decisions between 1998 and 2006 we find that communications especially speeches and testimony by canadian governing council members provide a significant and robust explanation of canadian target rate decisions however prior to the introduction of fixed announcement dates canadian communications contained more information on upcoming policy moves finally communications by the u s federal reserve bank which are much more frequent outperform our canadian communication indicators in explaining canadian interest rate decisions