are contributions of time and money substitutes or complements abstractthis article empirically investigates the relationship between donations of time and money using canadian tax policy reforms that changed the tax price of charitable donations the 1988 reform where a charitable tax deduction was converted to a credit and the 2000 reform in provincial income taxes provide tax price variations plausibly exogenous to individuals unobserved heterogeneity our estimates on cross price effects imply that individuals make more time donations as the tax price of charitable donations increases and hence money and time donations are substitutes as some theories would imply this contrasts with earlier findings using cross sectional data

the dynamic relationship between the federal funds rate and the treasury bill rate an empirical investigation this article examines the dynamic relationship between two key us money market interest rates the federal funds rate and the 3 month treasury bill rate using daily data over the period from 1974 99 we find a long run relationship between these two rates that is remarkably stable across monetary policy regimes of interest rate and monetary aggregate targeting employing a non linear asymmetric vector equilibrium correction model which is novel in this context we find that most of the adjustment toward the long run equilibrium occurs through the federal funds rate in turn there is strong evidence for the existence of significant asymmetries and non linearities in interest rate dynamics that have implications for the conventional view of interest rate behaviour

interest rate deregulation monetary policy efficacy and rate rigidity abstract this paper examines the effects of interest rate regulation and subsequent deregulation on the efficacy of monetary policy and rigidity of retail bank deposit rates in hong kong using an error correction model we find that interest rate deregulation increases the efficacy of monetary policy by improving the correlation between retail bank deposit rates and market interest rates and increasing the degree of long term pass through for retail bank deposit rates our study also shows that the adjustments in retail bank deposit rates are asymmetric and rigid upwards during the regulated period but tend to be rigid downwards during the deregulated period the spreads between retail bank deposit rates and market rates have also tightened sharply after the removal of interest rate controls

modeling charitable giving using a box cox standard tobit model there is a large literature investigating the determinants of charitable giving in particular price and income elasticities we find that many of the most often reported results from this literature rely on a model specification that is inappropriate when applied to recent federal tax file data we develop a standard tobit model with a box cox transformation parameter that nests a number of other specifications the box cox model yields estimates of price elasticities and expected charitable contributions that differ from those obtained using the typical specification additionally we find that the use of sample weights provides potentially important policy insights copyright 1991 by mit press

asymmetric changes in australia s small business loan rate this paper examines the dynamic asymmetric relationship between changes in the reserve bank of australia s rba cash rate and the interest rate for small business loans using monthly data 1990 2011 the results provide support for the rockets and feathers hypothesis with respect to both the amount and adjustment asymmetries while the rba s rate rises exert a one to one and instantaneous impact on the loan rate its rate cuts are only slowly and partially passed onto small businesses with a delay of 1 2 months the results also suggest that the recent global financial crisis increased the cost of borrowing for small businesses in australia by 2 21 these findings indicate that small businesses have limited time to respond to interest rate rises and not provided with the full benefit of interest rate decreases addressing this problem should ease the interest rate burden for small businesses and enhance their contribution to the economy

exchange rate pass through into import prices revisited what drives it a large sample of developed and emerging economies is utilized to investigate import exchange rate pass through panel models reveal that various economic aspects of the destination country can explain about one third of the total variation in pass through elasticities and the remaining variation comes largely in the form of unobserved country specific effects inflation exchange rate volatility openness and relative wealth play a clear role as drivers of emerging markets pass through whereas the output gap and protectionism appear influential more generally nonlinearity regarding large versus small changes in the exchange rate is quite pervasive our evidence challenges the widely held view that pass through has been universally falling in developed markets and that it is higher for emerging markets the economic drivers are shown to play a role as out of sample predictors of pass through the findings confirm pricing to market theories and have implications for the optimal conduct of monetary policy

estimating tax noncompliance with evidence from unaudited tax returns this article estimates the degree of tax noncompliance using evidence from unaudited tax returns measurements of noncompliance are derived from the relationship between reported charitable contributions and reported income from wages and salary as compared to alternative reported income sources such as self employment farm and other small business income assuming that the source of one s income is unrelated to one s charitable inclinations and that the ratio of true income to taxable income does not vary by income source any difference in the relationship between charitable contributions and the source of income can be attributed to relative underreporting by the individual we find that the implied amount of noncompliance is significant and that it varies by source of income as well as between positive and negative values of each type of income tax evasion creates horizontal inequity and if opportunities for evasion are correlated with income complicates the attempt to achieve vertical equity evasion also imposes economic costs because taxpayers expend resources to facilitate evasion and the tax agency expends resources to contain it the equity and efficiency implications of tax evasion and optimal policy to address it depend on its magnitude and nature which for obvious reasons is difficult to ascertain this article contributes to that effort by developing a new method for estimating the extent and nature of tax noncompliance based on evidence from unaudited tax returns this evidence is derived from the relationship between reported charitable contributions and reported taxable income from various sources such as wages and salaries selfemployment nonfarm small business and farm income and is based on the assumptions that the source of one s income is unrelated to one s charitable inclinations and that the ratio of true income to taxable income does not vary by income source we find that the implied amount of noncompliance on non wageand salary income is substantial and that it varies among these sources of income as well as between positive and negative values of each type of income on average reported positive self employment nonfarm small business and farm income must be multiplied by a factor of 1 54 4 54 and 3 87 respectively in order to obtain true income even those individuals who report zero income for a specific income source but file the schedule for that source are estimated to have true positive income finally those households that report negative schedule income may actually have greater true income than those households that report positive income

are there bubbles in the sterling dollar exchange rate new evidence from sequential adf tests there has been mixed evidence regarding the existence of rational bubbles in the foreign exchange markets this paper introduces recently developed sequential unit root tests into the analysis of exchange rates bubbles we find strong evidence of explosive behavior in the nominal sterling dollar exchange rate however this explosive behavior should not be simply interpreted as evidence of rational bubbles as we show that it might be driven by the relative prices of traded goods

cointegration and threshold adjustment this article proposes an extension to the engle granger testing strategy by permitting asymmetry in the adjustment toward equilibrium in two different ways we demonstrate that our test has good power and size properties over the engle granger test when there are asymmetric departures from equilibrium we consider an application namely whether there exists cointegration among interest rates for instruments with different maturities this issue has been widely tested with mixed results we argue that either cautious policy or possibly opportunistic behavior on the part of the federal reserve implies that an equilibrium relationship between short and long term interest rates exists but that adjustments from disequilibrium are asymmetric in nature empirical tests using u s yields confirm the asymmetric nature of error correction among interest rates of different maturities

cultivating disaster donors using data analytics nonprofit organizations use direct mail marketing to cultivate one time donors and convert them into recurring contributors cultivated donors generate much more revenue than new donors but also lapse with time making it important to steadily draw in new cultivations the direct mail budget is limited but better designed mailings can improve success rates without increasing costs we propose an empirical model to analyze the effectiveness of several design approaches used in practice based on a massive data set covering 8 6 million direct mail communications with donors to the american red cross during 2009 2011 we find evidence that mailed appeals are more effective when they emphasize disaster preparedness and training efforts over post disaster cleanup including small cards that affirm donors identity as red cross supporters is an effective strategy whereas including gift items such as address labels is not finally very recent acquisitions are more likely to respond to appeals that ask them t

household consumption of cheese an inverse hyperbolic sine double hurdle model with dependent errors the dependent double hurdle model is generalized by an inverse hyperbolic sine transformation of the dependent variable the resulting specification features a flexible parameterization accommodates heteroskedastic errors and nests a range of common limited dependent variable models results for u s household cheese consumption suggest that the homoskedastic and normal double hurdle model is misspecified income elasticities are small and vary across household groups foodstamp recipients are more responsive to income changes than nonrecipients foodstamp recipients are also less likely to consume cheese but conditional on consumption spend more than nonrecipients

cross section estimation of us demand for alcoholic beverage a flexible limited dependent variable model is used to examine us demand for alcoholic beverage parameterization and distributional assumptions of the double hurdle model cragg 1971 and tobit model tobin 1958 are rejected findings suggest that price income household composition and other characteristics have significant effects on alcohol consumption income and own price elasticities are significant but relatively small

low inflation pass through and the pricing power of firms abstract recently there has been a significant decline in the degree to which firms pass through changes in costs to prices a decline that is frequently characterized as a reduction in the pricing power of firms the decline appears to be associated with the decline in inflation in many countries the decline has important implications for monetary policy because it affects both forecasts of inflation and the effects of changes in monetary policy on inflation some have argued that the decline in pricing power helped to keep inflation low in the face of apparently strong demand pressures in the united states in the late 1990s this paper puts forth the view that the decline in pass through or pricing power is due to the low inflation environment that has recently been achieved in many countries first a microeconomic model of price setting is used to show that lower pass through is caused by lower perceived persistence of cost changes evidence is then presented showing that inflation is positively correlated with persistence of inflation suggesting that the low inflation itself has caused the low pass through an economy wide model consistent with the micromodel is then presented to illustrate how such changes in pricing power affect output and inflation dynamics in favorable ways but can disappear quickly if monetary policy and expectations change

charitable contributions and intergenerational transfers abstract this paper investigates the effects of bequest taxes and the income of children on the lifetime charitable contributions of parents using matched income tax records for parents and children the results show a positive elasticity of 0 6 for contributions with respect to the tax price of bequests the paper also finds that the income of children affects the amount that parents contribute to charity the results show a positive elasticity of up to 0 14 for contributions by parents with respect to the income of children implying that when children are better off parents are likely to increase charitable giving

the impact of tax deductibility on charitable giving by covenant in the uk the 1985 86 survey of personal incomes is used to estimate the impact of tax deductibility on giving by covenant estimates are based on two models a generalized tobit model and reece and zieschang s 1985 model that allows for a nonlinear budget constraint the results suggest that the latter is not appropriate for the u k tax system in the tobit models the income effects on participation and expenditure are well determined and similar to those in previous work for the united kingdom and in many u s studies there is no robust evidence of a tax price effect on participation or expenditure copyright 1991 by royal economic society

estimation of a type 2 tobit model with generalized box cox transformation this article considers estimation of a type 2 tobit model with bickel doksum transformation of the dependent variable of the regression equation the basic idea is that while the transformed depend

exchange rate models and exchange rate expectations an empirical investigation a non parametrictest of popular modern exchange rate models under alternative expectation specifications is presented it is found that there is little difference in the predictive success of the alternative exchange rate models however there are significant differences in the performance of a model depending upon the expectations mechanism specified our most important finding is that the flexible price monetary model the portfolio balance model and a hybrid model under extrapolative and adaptive expectations mechanisms provide statistically significant information about the direction of exchange rate movements by contrast the same models when employing static regressive and rational expectation mechanisms do not provideany satistically significant information

the private provision of public goods altruism and voluntary giving abstract a unique data set on exact giving by individual households for the support of a rural health care facility is used to examine the determinants of charitable giving including the role of altruism we examine whether a household s decision to give or not give and the amount it gives are influenced in the same or different ways by the household s characteristics and economic circumstances we also examine whether a household s altruistic history affects its current giving decisions

estimation of a two limit tobit model with generalized box cox transformation and unknown censoring thresholds this article considers estimation of a two limit tobit model with generalized box cox transformation and unknown censoring thresholds the maximum likelihood estimates of the censoring thresholds a

monetary policy transparency and pass through of retail interest rates abstract this paper examines the degree of pass through and adjustment speed of retail interest rates in response to changes in benchmark market rates in new zealand during the period 1994 2004 we consider the effects of policy transparency and financial structure of the monetary transmission mechanism new zealand is the first oecd country to adopt a full fledged inflation targeting regime with specific accountability and transparency provisions policy transparency was further enhanced by a shift from quantity settlement cash to price interest rate operating targets in 1999 using phillips loretan estimates of cointegrating regressions we find complete long term pass through for some but not all retail rates our results also show that the introduction of the official cash rate ocr increased the pass through of floating and deposit rates but not fixed mortgage rates in line with previous studies we find the immediate pass through of market interest rates to bank retail rates to be incomplete although we find no statistical evidence for asymmetric response of retail rates to changes in market rates other than for business lending rates in the pre ocr period differences in the magnitude of mean adjustment lags indicate that banks appear to pass on decreases to fixed mortgage rates faster overall our results confirm that monetary policy rate has more influence on short term interest rates and that increased transparency has lowered instrument volatility and enhanced the efficacy of policy

consistent estimation of the impact of tax deductibility on the level of charitable contributions when charitable contributions are tax deductible the marginal price of charitable giving in other consumption foregone per dollar of contributions is generally less than unity further if the income tax schedule is a progressive step function the marginal price of contributions is generally a rising step function of the level of contributions the problem of estimating a contributions demand function for individuals is therefore complicated by the spurious correlation between the level of contributions and the observed marginal price we take this econometric problem into account in estimating a contributions demand function using data from the 1972 73 consumer expenditure survey after comparing our results with those of estimation techniques used by other authors we provide evidence on the impacts of alternative tax policies on charitable giving using our estimates of the model parameters

the short run residential demand for electricity the model of short run residential demand for electricity combines price schedule information obtained from the federal energy regulatory commission with household specific data from the 1972 73 consumer expenditure survey to determine the household s level of electricity consumption and relate it to the household s demographic profile and appliance stock the overall short run price elasticity estimate of 0 550 supports existing findings that short run residential electricity demand is price inelastic however the variation in elasticities across end use categories suggests that the overall response is made up of a complex set of responses that vary substantially and significantly across appliances this implies that it may be more efficient to tailor conservation policies to the stock configuration of the population 17 references 6 tables

charitable giving by married couples revisited abstract this paper investigates the effect of gender differences and household bargaining on charitable giving i replicate the study of andreoni brown and rischall 2003 using a different data set the recently available panel study of income dynamics psid supplement on charitable giving and test the sensitivity of their results to inclusion of additional control variables and the endogeneity of the tax price of giving first focusing on singles i find that males and females have significantly different tendencies toward giving to different areas of charitable activity next comparing households in which husband and wife make a joint decision on donations with those in which couples separately decide or assign a sole decisionmaker i show that bargaining over giving increases the amount of charitable contributions by almost 7 percent

the degree and determinants of exchange rate pass through market structure non tariff barriers and multinational corporations this study investigates the exchange rate pass through for australian imports of manufactures pass through elasticities are estimated for total manufactures and forty product categories by applying an econometric procedure which avoids the pitfalls in previous studies to a carefully assembled data set the determinants of pass through are analyzed by relating the pass through elasticities to variables representing foreign control nontariff barriers product characteristics and market structure the author finds that pass through is incomplete for most products with significant variation across products unlike previous studies he finds that most of the variation in pass through is explained by the presence of multinational corporations and nontariff barriers copyright 1996 by royal economic society

new evidence on asymmetric gasoline price responses in a 1997 paper borenstein cameron and gilbert bcg claim that gasoline prices rise quickly following an increase in the price of crude oil but fall slowly following a decrease this note estimates an error correction model with daily spot gasoline and crude oil price data over the period 1985 1998 and finds no evidence of asymmetry in wholesale gasoline prices the sources of the difference in results are twofold first we use the standard engle granger two step estimation procedure whereas bcg used a nonstandard estimation methodology second even using bcg s nonstandard specification the use of daily rather than weekly data yields little evidence of price asymmetry

exchange rate pass through when market share matters the authors investigate the pass through from exchange rates to import prices when firms future demands depend on their current market shares they show that profit maximizing foreign firms may either raise or lower their dollar export prices when the dollar appreciates temporarily i e the pass through may be perverse and that current import prices may be more sensitive to expected future exchange rates than to current exchange rates they present evidence that suggests the behavior of expected future exchange rates may provide a clue to the puzzling recent behavior of u s import prices copyright 1989 by american economic association

evaluating the joint efficiency of german trade forecasts a nonparametric multivariate approach i analyse the joint efficiency of export and import forecasts by leading economic research institutes for the years 1970 to 2017 for germany in a multivariate setting to this end i compute in a

the determinants of donative revenue flows from alumni of higher education an empirical inquiry institutions of higher education are increasingly relying upon alumni giving and endowment earnings as sources of funding this paper utilizes a new database on average alumni donations at the institutional level and institutional characteristics to explore the role that lagged institutional characteristics and policy have on subsequent donations to the institution our results confirm the noncontemporaneous effects of variations in the average scholastic achievement of matriculated students a proxy for both student quality and student socioeconomic status on subsequent donative revenue flows and indirectly address some of the open questions left by previous theoretical inquiries

an alternative approach to the modelling of interest rate pass through and asymmetric adjustment abstract we propose an alternative approach to examine the nonlinear asymmetric behaviour of interest rates which can be both size and sign dependent compared to other widely used approaches our model performs quite well based on two model selection criteria

monetary transmission via the administered interest rates channel abstract this paper examines the dynamics of administered interest rate changes in response to changes in the benchmark money market rate in singapore our results show that the administered rates adjustment speed differs across both financial institutions and financial products the financial institutions administered lending and deposit rates moreover are more rigid when they are below their equilibrium level than when they are above our finding hence implies that the speed of monetary transmission is not uniform across all sectors of the economy and that a tightening monetary policy takes a longer time to impact the economy than an expansionary monetary policy

exchange rate pass through into german import prices a disaggregated perspective this study analyses the exchange rate pass through into german import prices based on disaggregated data taken on a monthly basis between 1995 and 2012 our main contribution is twofold firstly we employ various time series techniques to analyse data for different product categories and also cointegration techniques to carefully distinguish between short run and long run pass through coefficients secondly in a panel data approach we estimate time varying pass through coefficients and explain their development with regard to various macroeconomic factors our results show that long run pass through is only partly observable and incomplete whereas short run pass through shows a more unique character although heterogeneity across product groups does exist we are also able to identify several macroeconomic factors that determine changes in the degree of pass through which is especially relevant for policymakers

interest rate pass through and asymmetric adjustment evidence from the federal funds rate operating target period this study examines the long run interest rate pass through of the federal funds rate to the prime rate and whether there is asymmetric adjustment in the prime rate using the enders siklos 2001 momentum threshold autoregressive model over the period february 1987 to october 2005 once allowance is made for the endogenously determined structural break in the cointegrating relationship in april 1996 the adjustment of the prime rate to changes in the federal funds rate appears asymmetric with upward rigidity a result contrary to previous studies which found that the prime rate exhibits downward rigidity the finding of upward rigidity in the prime rate lends support for the customer reaction and adverse selection hypotheses moreover the empirical evidence seems to support the observation of increased pass through as a result of heightened competition in the banking industry as well as the federal reserve s enhanced transparency in monetary policy during the 1990s

identification in models of gasoline pricing abstract this paper presents evidence that the price of oil does not respond contemporaneously to shocks to the us gasoline market we find no support for the hypothesis of feedback from the us gasoline market to the price of oil justifying the identification of impulse response functions by applying a cholesky decomposition see e g kilian 2010 our results have implications for tests of asymmetric gasoline price responses and forecasting models of the price of crude oil

exchange rates and prices the adjustment of relative prices to exchange rate movements is explained in an industrial organization approach given labor costs in the respective currencies exchange rate movements change costs for firms selling in the home market and thus disturb the industry equilibrium the extent of absolute and relative price adjustment is shown to depend on market integration product substitutability the relative number of domestic and foreign firms and the market structure the impact of exchange rates on prices is illustrated in a variety of approaches including the cournot a dixit and j stiglitz 1977 and s salop 1979 models some empirical evidence is offered in support of the theory copyright 1987 by american economic association