bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Pavlovian Response of Term Rates to Fed Announcements
Authors: Demiralp Selva , Jorda Oscar
Published: August 2019

The traditional view of the monetary transmission mechanism rests on the premise that the Federal Reserve (Fed) controls the level of the federal funds rate via open market operations and the liquidity effect. By contrast, this paper argues that the Fed also manipulates the federal funds rate via public disclosures of the new level of the federal funds rate target and the ""announcement effect."" We define the announcement effect as the portion of interest rate movements associated with public statements on interest rate targets that do not require conventional open market operations for their support. This paper provides evidence on how the Fed uses the liquidity effect in conjunction with the announcement effect to execute monetary policy. In addition, it investigates the implications of the announcement effect in term structure behavior and the rational expectations hypothesis.
Incorporating Event Risk into Value-at-Risk
Authors: Gibson Michael S.
Published: August 2019

Event risk is the risk that a portfolio&#x27;s value can be affected by large jumps in market prices. Event risk is synonymous with &quot;fat tails&quot; or &quot;jump risk&quot;. Event risk is one component of &quot;specific risk&quot;, defined by bank supervisors as the component of market risk not driven by market-wide shocks. Standard Value-at-Risk (VaR) models used by banks to measure market risk do not do a good job of capturing event risk. In this paper, I discuss the issues involved in incorporating event risk into VaR. To illustrate these issues, I develop a VaR model that incorporates event risk, which I call the Jump-VaR model. The Jump-VaR model uses any standard VaR model to handle &quot;ordinary&quot; price fluctuations and grafts on a simple model of price jumps. The effect is to &quot;fatten&quot; the tails of the distribution of portfolio returns that is used to estimate VaR, thus increasing VaR. I note that regulatory capital could rise or fall when jumps are added, since the increase in VaR would be offset by a decline in the regulatory capital multiplier on specific risk from 4 to 3. In an empirical application, I use the Jump-VaR model to compute VaR for two equity portfolios. I note that, in practice, special attention must be paid to the issues of correlated jumps and double-counting of jumps. As expected, the estimates of VaR increase when jumps are added. In some cases, the increases are substantial. As expected, VaR increases by more for the portfolio with more specific risk.
The Importance of Employer-to-Employer Flows in the U.S. Labor Market
Authors: Fallick Bruce , Fleischman Charles A.
Published: August 2019

In order to measure the flexibility of the labor market, evaluate the job-worker matching process, and model business-cycle dynamics, economists have studied the flows of workers across the labor market states of employment, unemployment, and not in the labor force. One important flow that has been poorly measured is the movement of workers from one employer to another without any significant intervening period of nonemployment. This paper exploits the &quot;&quot;dependent interviewing&quot;&quot; techniques used in the Current Population Survey since 1994 to estimate such flows. We find that they are large, and their omission significantly understates the degree of mobility in the labor market. In 1999, for example, on average more than 4,000,000 workers changed employers from one month to the next, about the same number as left the labor force from employment and more than twice the number that moved from employment to unemployment. Close to half of the new jobs started in 1999 represented employer changes, as did close to half of the separations. Consistent with previous studies of younger workers, teenagers exhibit the highest rates of employer-switching, and the rate declines through about age 40. However, even among prime-aged workers, about 2 percent change employers each month. Contrary to the implications of many business cycle models, we find no evidence that employer-to-employer flows are procyclical, at least not as the labor market tightened between 1994 and 2000. This finding raises questions about the ways in which stylized facts about labor market flows have been used.
Looking Ahead: Young Men, Wage Growth, and Labor Market Participation
Authors: Aaronson Stephanie
Published: August 2019

Despite the long economic expansion, employment among young men is lower today than it was in the late 1960s. This decline has been largely driven by a 17 percentage point reduction in the proportion of high school dropouts working even a single week per year. One common explanation for this trend, declining real wages, ignores the fact that the value of working today depends on future returns to experience. This paper estimates a model of labor supply with returns to experience as an explanatory variable, using data from the Current Population Survey. The classic myopic labor supply model (in which only the current wage matters) is rejected in favor of one that includes forward-looking considerations, embodied in returns to experience. For high school dropouts, decreasing returns to experience explain 30 percent of the decline in participation between 1967 and 1977. Changes in wages do not explain any of this trend.
Anticipations of Monetary Policy in Financial Markets
Authors: Lange Joe , Sack Brian , Whitesell William C.
Published: August 2019

In recent years, financial markets appear better able to anticipate FOMC policy changes. Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, longer-term interest rates and futures rates have tended to incorporate movements in the federal funds rate several months in advance, in contrast to the largely contemporaneous response typically observed before that time. After identifying these emerging trends, the paper parses the enhanced predictability into a component that can be attributed to the autoregressive behavior of the funds rate and a non-autoregressive component. The paper considers institutional developments in FOMC policy making that may have contributed to each of these components, including gradualism in adjusting the federal funds rate target and transparency regarding the setting of the target and future policy intentions.
Employment Persistence
Authors: Gallin Joshua Hojvat , Fleischman Charles A.
Published: August 2019

The recent U.S. expansion has provided employment experience to individuals at tail of the skill distribution. Will these opportunities bestow persistent benefits in the form of greater future employability? Using synthetic cohorts constructed from the CPS, this paper estimates the degree of persistence in cohort-level employment rates in excess of persistence in aggregate macroeconomic conditions. This approach is in some ways superior to testing for hysteresis in the aggregate unemployment rate because it abstracts away from compositional changes in the labor force by focusing on particular demographic groups. After controlling for aggregate conditions, there is little evidence of significant persistence in cohorts&#x27; employment rates; the effects of aggregate shocks are essentially dissipated within three years. However, economic conditions that prevailed when the cohorts first entered the labor market significantly affect the average lifetime employment rate of cohorts of less-educated men.
Jump-Diffusion Term Structure and Ito Conditional Moment Generator
Authors: Zhou Hao
Published: August 2019

This paper implements a Multivariate Weighted Nonlinear Least Square estimator for a class of jump-diffusion interest rate processes (hereafter MWNLS-JD), which also admit closed-form solutions to bond prices under a no-arbitrage argument. The instantaneous interest rate is modeled as a mixture of a square-root diffusion process and a Poisson jump process. One can derive analytically the first four conditional moments, which form the basis of the MWNLS-JD estimator. A diagnostic conditional moment test can also be constructed from the fitted moment conditions. The market prices of diffusion and jump risks are calibrated by minimizing the pricing errors between a model-implied yield curve and a target yield curve. The time series estimation of the short-term interest rate suggests that the jump augmentation is highly significant and that the pure diffusion process is strongly rejected. The cross-sectional evidence indicates that the jump-diffusion yield curves are both more flexible in reducing pricing errors and are more consistent with the Martingale pricing principle.
Production Synergies, Technology Adoption, Unemployment, and Wages
Authors: Eudey Gwen , Molico Miguel
Published: August 2019

Recent empirical work reveals considerable heterogeneity in the use of technologies within industries, suggesting technology adoption depends on factors other than industry type. We present a model in which the factors that lead to heterogenous technology adoption play a key economic role in explaining other aspects of the U.S. economy that have been the focus of recent theoretical work, including wage and technology dispersion within and between skill groups and the U-shaped pattern of measured productivity that many other researchers have attributed to learning economies or to production externalities.
The Ability of Banks to Lend to Informationally Opaque Small Businesses
Authors: Berger Allen N. , Klapper Leora , Udell Gregory F.
Published: August 2019

We test hypotheses about the effects of bank size, foreign ownership, and distress on lending to informationally opaque small firms using a rich new data set on Argentinean banks, firms, and loans. We also test hypotheses about borrowing from a single bank versus multiple banks. Our results suggest that large and foreign-owned institutions may have difficulty extending relationship loans to opaque small firms. Bank distress appears to have no greater effect on small borrowers than on large borrowers, although even small firms may react to bank distress by borrowing from multiple banks, raising borrowing costs and destroying some relationship benefits.
Are Branch Banks Better Survivors? Evidence from the Depression Era
Authors: Carlson Mark A.
Published: August 2019

It is widely argued in the literature on the Great Depression that the prevalence of unit banks aggravated the problem of financial instability that afflicted the country. This paper tests the theory that more widespread branch banking would have reduced financial turbulence in the United States by examining the survival of individual branch and unit banks. Results indicate that instead of being more likely to survive, branch banks were more likely to fail. Further investigation suggests that this higher failure rate occurred because branch banks systematically held riskier portfolios than unit banks.
Data Uncertainty and the Role of Money as an Information Variable for Monetary Policy
Authors: Coenen Günter , Levin Andrew , Wieland Volker W.
Published: August 2019

This paper demonstrates that money can play an important role as an information variable and may result in major improvements in current output estimates. However, the specific nature of this role depends on the magnitude of the output measurement error relative to the money demand shock. In particular, we find noticeable but small improvements in output estimates due to the inclusion of money growth in the information set. Money plays a quantitatively more important role with regard to output estimation if we allow for a contribution of monetary analysis in reducing uncertainty due to money demand shocks. In this case, money also helps to reduce uncertainty about output forecasts.
Measurement Error in the Consumer Price Index: Where Do We Stand?
Authors: Lebow David E. , Rudd Jeremy Bay
Published: August 2019

We survey the evidence bearing on measurement error in the CPI and provide our best estimate of the magnitude of CPI bias. We also identify a &quot;weighting&quot; bias in the CPI that has not been previously discussed in the literature. In total, we estimate that the CPI overstates the change in the cost of living by about 0.6 percentage point per year, with a confidence interval that ranges from 0.1 to 1.2 percentage points. Roughly half of this bias is accounted for by the CPI&#x27;s inability to fully capture the welfare improvement from quality change and the introduction of new items. Our bias estimate is smaller than that found in several earlier studies, in part because the BLS has recently made a variety of improvements to its procedures; our study highlights several potential areas for further improvement.
Firm, Owner, and Financing Characteristics: Differences between Female- and Male-owned Small Businesses
Authors: Robb Alicia M. , Wolken John D.
Published: August 2019

Differences in financing patterns and financial characteristics between female- and male-owned firms are often attributed to imperfections in credit markets. However, these differences could arise for many reasons, such as differences in the characteristics and preferences of owners and firms. The differences in lending patterns by gender may in fact have little or nothing to do with supply side factors or market imperfections. The goal of our paper is to test the hypothesis that differences in financing patterns between female- and male-owned small businesses can be explained by differences in business, credit history, and owner characteristics other than gender. In what follows, we first describe how owner, business, and financing characteristics of female-owned businesses differ from male-owned businesses. We then conduct a multivariate analysis of indicators of credit use and recent lending experiences, modeling each of these as a function of firm, owner, and credit history characteristics.
To What Extent Will the Banking Industry Be Globalized? A Study of Bank Nationality and Reach in 20 European Nations
Authors: Berger Allen N. , Dai Qinglei , Ongena Steven , Smith David C.
Published: August 2019

We model two dimensions of bank globalization -- bank nationality (a bank from the firm's host nation, its home nation, or a third nation) and bank reach (a global, regional, or local bank) using a two-stage nested multinomial logit model. Our data set includes over 2,000 foreign affiliates of multinational corporations operating in 20 European nations. We find that these firms frequently use host nation banks for cash management services, and that bank reach may be strongly influenced by this choice of bank nationality. Our results suggest limits to the degree of future bank globalization.
Trading Activity and Price Volatility in the Municipal Bond Market
Authors: Downing Chris , Zhang Frank X.
Published: August 2019

Utilizing a comprehensive database of transactions in municipal bonds, we investigate the volume-volatility relationship in the muni market. We find a positive relationship between the number of transactions and a bond's price volatility. In contrast to previous studies, we find a negative relationship between average deal size and price volatility. These results are found to be robust throughout the sample. Our results are inconsistent with current theoretical models of the volume-volatility relationship. These inconsistencies may arise because current models fail to account for the effects of overall market liquidity on the costs of large transactions.
Market-Based Measures of Monetary Policy Expectations
Authors: Gürkaynak Refet S. , Sack Brian , Swanson Eric T.
Published: August 2019

A number of recent papers have used short-maturity financial instruments to measure expectations of the future course of monetary policy, and have used high-frequency changes in these instruments around FOMC dates to measure monetary policy shocks. This paper evaluates the empirical success of a variety of market instruments in predicting the future path of monetary policy. We find that federal funds futures dominate other market-based measures of monetary policy expectations at horizons out several months. For longer horizons, the predictive power of many of the instruments considered is very similar. In addition, we present evidence that monetary policy shocks computed using the current-month federal funds futures contract are influenced by changes in the timing of policy actions that do not influence the expected course of policy beyond a horizon of about six weeks. We propose alternative shock measures that capture changes in market expectations of policy over slightly longer horizons.
How Should Unemployment Benefits Respond to the Business Cycle?
Authors: Kiley Michael T.
Published: August 2019

Unemployment insurance programs balance the benefits of consumption smoothing for unemployed workers against the disincentive effects of unemployment benefits. Such a balancing of benefits and costs is likely sensitive to the cyclical state of the economy, and hence the generosity of benefits should also respond to the cyclical state of the economy. The nature of such responses in an optimal unemployment insurance (UI) program is analyzed in a simple model. The results suggest that an optimal UI program would increase the initial level of benefits and probably extend higher benefits over time in response to a recessionary shock. A simple extension of benefits, such as exists automatically in the system in the United States, provides both poorer insurance and poorer incentives than the optimal program, and does so at a higher cost. Moreover, the current UI system in the U.S. provides a substantially higher level of welfare to workers who lose jobs during tight labor markets.
What Did the Credit Market Expect of Argentina Default? Evidence from Default Swap Data
Authors: Zhang Frank X.
Published: August 2019

This article explores the expectations of the credit market by developing a parsimonious default swap model, which is versatile enough to disentangle default probability from the expected recovery rate, accommodate counterparty default risk, and allow flexible correlation between state variables. We implements the model to a unique sample of default swaps on Argentine sovereign debt, and found that the risk-neutral default probability was always higher than its physical counterpart, and the wedge between the two was affected by changes in the business cycle, the U.S. and Argentine credit conditions, and the overall strength of the Argentine economy. We also found that major rating agencies had assigned over-generous ratings to the Argentine debt, and they lagged the market in downgrading the debt.
Sticky Prices, Coordination and Enforcement
Authors: Driscoll John C. , Ito Harumi
Published: August 2019

Price-setting models with monopolistic competition and costs of changing prices exhibit coordination failure: In response to a monetary policy shock, individual agents lack incentives to change prices even when it would be Pareto-improving if all agents did so. The potential welfare gains are in part evaluated relative to a benchmark equilibrium of perfect, costless coordination; in practice, since agents will still have incentives to deviate from the benchmark equilibrium, coordination is likely to require enforcement. We consider an alternative benchmark equilibrium in which coordination is enforced by punishing deviators. This is formally equivalent to modeling agents as a cartel playing a punishment game. We show that this new benchmark implies that the welfare losses from coordination failure are smaller. Moreover, at the new benchmark equilibrium, prices are upwards-flexible but downwards-sticky. These last results suggest that the dynamic behavior of sticky-price models may more generally depend on the kind of imperfect competition assumed.
Coordination, Fair Treatment and Inflation Persistence
Authors: Driscoll John C. , Holden Steinar
Published: August 2019

Most wage-contracting models with rational expectations fail to replicate the persistence in inflation observed in the data. We argue that coordination problems and multiple equilibria are the keys to explaining inflation persistence. We develop a wage-contracting model in which workers are concerned about being treated fairly. This model generates a continuum of equilibria (consistent with a range for the rate of unemployment), where workers want to match the wage set by other workers. If workers' expectations are based on the past behavior of wage growth, these beliefs will be self-fulfilling and thus rational. Based on quarterly U.S. data over the period 1955-2000, we find evidence that inflation is more persistent between unemployment rates of 4.7 and 6.5 percent, than outside these bounds, as predicted by our model.
Did Pension Plan Accounting Contribute to a Stock Market Bubble?
Authors: Coronado Julia Lynn , Sharpe Steven A.
Published: August 2019

During the 1990s, the asset portfolios of defined-benefit (DB) pension plans ballooned with the booming stock market. Due to current accounting guidelines, the robust growth in pension assets resulted in a stealthy but substantial boost to the profits of sponsoring corporations. This study assesses the extent to which equity investors were fooled by pension accounting. First, we test whether stock prices reflected the fair market value of sponsoring firms' net pension assets reported in footnotes to the 10-K or, instead, some capitalization rate on the pension cost accruals embedded in the income statement. The results strongly favor the latter view. Additional tests indicate that the market does not value a firm's "pension earnings" differently from its "core earnings", suggesting that pension earnings are often overvalued. Simulations show that a failure to differentiate between core and pension earnings induces large valuation errors for many firms, although this pension effect did not materially contribute to aggregate in overvaluation 2000. However, overvaluation from pension earnings reached 5 percent in the aggregate in 2001, when the steep stock price decline and the drop in interest rates had slashed pension net asset values but not pension earnings.
Housing and the Business Cycle
Authors: Davis Morris A. , Heathcote Jonathan
Published: August 2019

In the United States, the percentage standard deviation of residential investment is more than twice that of non-residential investment. In addition, GDP, consumption, and both types of investment co-move positively. We reproduce these facts in a calibrated multi-sector growth model where construction, manufacturing and services are combined, in different proportions, to produce consumption, business investment and residential structures. New housing requires land in addition to new structures. The model can also account for important features of industry-level data. In particular, hours and output in all industries are positively correlated, and are most volatile in construction.
Medicaid's Nursing Home Coverage and Asset Transfers
Authors: Bassett William F.
Published: August 2019

Medicaid covers the costs of a long nursing home stay. This coverage may create an incentive for the elderly to transfer their assets to their children in order to qualify for Medicaid before entering a nursing home. Previous researchers had found little evidence that such behavior was widespread or that asset transfers were large. However, data from AHEAD suggest that the self-assessed probability of entering a nursing home is a significant determinant of the likelihood of making an asset transfer. The budgetary implications of these Medicaid-induced asset transfers are probably fairly small, but not insignificant.
Technology, Capital Spending, and Capacity Utilization
Authors: Bansak Cynthia , Morin Norman , Starr Martha A.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines the relationships between technology, capital spending, and capacity utilization. Recent technological changes have increased the flexibility of relationships between inputs and outputs in manufacturing, which may have eroded the predictive value of the utilization rate. This paper considers how technology might be expected to affect utilization. We show that recent changes could either lower average utilization by making it cheaper to hold excess capacity, or raise utilization by making further changes in capacity less costly and time-consuming. We then examine the effects of technology on utilization, using data on 111 manufacturing industries from 1974 to 2000. The results suggest that, for the average industry, the technological change of that period had a modest but appreciable effect, shaving between 0.2 percentage point and 2.3 percentage points off the utilization rate.
Employer-to-Employer Flows in the U.S. Labor Market: The Complete Picture of Gross Worker Flows
Authors: Fallick Bruce , Fleischman Charles A.
Published: August 2019

Despite the importance of employer-to-employer (EE) flows to our understanding of labor market and business cycle dynamics, the literature has lacked a comprehensive and representative measure of the size and character of these flows. To construct the first reliable measures of EE flows for the United States, this paper exploits the &quot;dependent interviewing&quot; techniques introduced in the Current Population Survey in 1994. The paper concludes that EE flows are large: On average 2.6 percent of employed persons change employers each month, a flow more than twice as large as that from employment to unemployment. Indeed, on-the-job search appears to be an important element in hiring, as nearly two-fifths of new jobs started between 1994 and 2003 represented employer changes. EE flows are also markedly procyclical, although the cyclicality is concentrated around the recession: EE flows did not increase as the labor market tightened between 1994 and 2000, but they did drop sharply as the labor market loosened during the period 2001 through 2003. We view the uneven cyclical pattern of EE flows as a pattern to be incorporated into future models.
Understanding the Risk of Synthetic CDOs
Authors: Gibson Michael S.
Published: August 2019

Synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or synthetic CDOs, are popular vehicles for trading the credit risk of a portfolio of assets. Following a brief summary of the development of the synthetic CDO market, I draw on recent innovations in modeling to present a pricing model for CDO tranches that does not require Monte Carlo simulation. I use the model to analyze the risk characteristics of the tranches of synthetic CDOs. The analysis shows that although the more junior CDO tranches -- equity and mezzanine tranches -- typically contain a small fraction of the notional amount of the CDO&#x27;s reference portfolio, they bear a majority of the credit risk. One implication is that credit risk disclosures relying on notional amounts are especially inadequate for firms that invest in CDOs. I show how the equity and mezzanine tranches can be viewed as leveraged exposures to the underlying credit risk of the CDO&#x27;s reference portfolio. Even though mezzanine tranches are typically rated investment-grade, the leverage they possess implies their risk (and expected return) can be many times that of an investment-grade corporate bond. The paper goes on to show how CDO tranches and other innovative credit products, such as single-tranche CDOs and first-to-default basket swaps, are sensitive to the correlation of defaults among the credits in the reference portfolio. Differences of opinion among market participants as to the correct default correlation can create trading opportunities. Finally, the paper shows how the dependence of CDO tranches on default correlation can also be characterized and measured as an exposure to the business cycle, or as &quot;business cycle risk.&quot; A mezzanine tranche, in particular, is highly sensitive to business cycle risk.
The Scope of Monetary Policy Actions Authorized under the Federal Reserve Act
Authors: Small David H. , Clouse James A.
Published: August 2019

The Federal Reserve Act authorizes the Federal Reserve to undertake various types of discount window loans and open market operations. While the Federal Reserve generally has not found it necessary to use all types of such authority, there could be circumstances in which the Federal Reserve might need to consider utilizing its statutory authority more broadly than it has in the past. We examine the limits imposed by the Federal Reserve Act along two dimensions: those types of counterparties and financial instruments with which the Federal Reserve may conduct monetary policy. In doing so, we develop a theme not commonly pursued in the literature--the ways and extent to which the Federal Reserve Act limits the Federal Reserve from taking credit risk onto its balance sheet. We also provide some historical perspective on how the current powers of the Federal Reserve came to be authorized.
Measuring Capital and Technology: An Expanded Framework
Authors: Corrado Carol , Hulten Charles R. , Sichel Daniel E.
Published: August 2019

Business outlays on intangible assets are usually expensed in economic and financial accounts. Following Hulten (1979), this paper develops an intertemporal framework for measuring capital in which consumer utility maximization governs the expenditures that are current consumption versus those that are capital investment. This framework suggests that any business outlay that is intended to increase future rather than current consumption should be treated as capital investment. Applying this principle to newly developed estimates of business spending on intangibles, we find that, by about the mid-1990s, business investment in intangible capital was as large as business investment in traditional, tangible capital. Relative to official measures, our framework portrays the U.S. economy as having had higher gross private saving and, under plausible assumptions, fractionally higher average annual rates of change in real output and labor productivity from 1995 to 2002.
Learning Dynamics with Private and Public Signals
Authors: Copeland Adam
Published: August 2019

This paper studies the evolution of firms' beliefs in a dynamic model of technology adoption. Firms play a simple variant of the classic two-armed bandit problem, where one arm represents a known, deterministic production technology and the other arm an unknown, stochastic technology. Firms learn about the unknown technology by observing both private and public signals. I find that because of the externality associated with the public signal, the evolution of beliefs under a market equilibrium can differ significantly from that under a planner. In particular, firms experiment earlier under the planner than they do under the market equilibrium and thus firms under the planner generate more information at the start of the model. This intertemporal effect brings about the unusual result that, on a per period basis, there exist cases where firms in a market equilibrium over-experiment relative to the planner in the latter periods of the model.
The Magnitude and Cyclical Behavior of Financial Market Frictions
Authors: Levin Andrew , Natalucci Fabio M. , Zakrajšek Egon
Published: August 2019

We quantify the cross-sectional and time-series behavior of the wedge between the cost of external and internal finance by estimating the structural parameters of a canonical debt-contracting model with informational frictions. For this purpose, we construct a new dataset that includes balance sheet information, measures of expected default risk, and credit spreads on publicly traded debt for about 900 U.S. firms over the period 1997Q1 to 2003Q3. Using nonlinear least squares, we obtain precise time-specific estimates of the bankruptcy cost parameter and consistently reject the null hypothesis of frictionless financial markets. For most of the firms in our sample, the estimated premium on external finance was very low during the expansionary period 1997-99, but rose sharply in 2000--especially for firms with higher ratios of debt to equity--and remained elevated until early 2003.
Job-Hopping in Silicon Valley: Some Evidence Concerning the Micro-Foundation of a High Technology Cluster
Authors: Fallick Bruce , Fleischman Charles A. , Rebitzer James B.
Published: August 2019

In Silicon Valley&#x27;s computer cluster, skilled employees are reported to move rapidly between competing firms. If true, this job-hopping facilitates the reallocation of resources towards firms with superior innovations, but it also creates human capital externalities that reduce incentives to invest in new knowledge. Outside of California, employers can use non-compete agreements to reduce mobility costs, but these agreements are unenforceable under California law. Until now, the claim of &quot;&quot;hyper-mobility&quot;&quot; of workers in Silicon has not been rigorously investigated. Using new data on labor mobility we find higher rates of job-hopping for college-educated men in Silicon Valley&#x27;s computer industry than in computer clusters located out of the state. Mobility rates in other California computer clusters are similar to Silicon Valley&#x27;s, suggesting some role for state laws restricting non-compete agreements. Outside of the computer industry, California&#x27;s mobility rates are no higher than elsewhere.
Housing, House Prices, and the Equity Premium Puzzle
Authors: Davis Morris A. , Martin Robert F.
Published: August 2019

Many recent papers have claimed that when housing services are treated separately from other forms of consumption in utility, a wide range of economic puzzles such as the equity premium puzzle can be explained. Our paper challenges these claims. The key assumption embedded in this literature is that households are not very willing to substitute housing services for consumption. We show that housing services and consumption must be much more substitutable than has been assumed for a neoclassical consumption model to be consistent with U.S. house price data. Further, when forced to match both historical house prices and stock returns, the lowest risk-free rate the model can generate is 11 percent.
Tracking the Source of the Decline in GDP Volatility: An Analysis of the Automobile Industry
Authors: Ramey Valerie A. , Vine Daniel J.
Published: August 2019

Recent papers by Kim and Nelson (1999) and McConnell and Perez-Quiros (2000) uncover a dramatic decline in the volatility of U.S. GDP growth beginning in 1984. Determining whether the source is good luck, good policy or better inventory management has since developed into an active area of research. This paper seeks to shed light on the source of the decline in volatility by studying the behavior of the U.S. automobile industry, where the changes in volatility have mirrored those of the aggregate data. We find that changes in the relative volatility of sales and output, which have been interpreted by some as evidence of improved inventory management, could in fact be the result of changes in the process driving automobile sales. We first show that the autocorrelation of sales dropped during the 1980s, and that the behavior of interest rates may be the force behind the change in sales persistence. A simulation of the assembly plants' cost function illustrates that the persistence of sal
Raising the Bar for Models of Turnover
Authors: Quintin Erwan , Stevens John J.
Published: August 2019

It is well known that turnover rates fall with employee tenure and employer size. We document a new empirical fact about turnover: Among surviving employers, separation rates are positively related to industry-level exit rates, even after controlling for tenure and size. Specifically, in a dataset with over 13 million matched employee-employer observations for France, we find that, all else equal, a 1 percentage point increase in exit rates raises separation rates by 1/2 percentage point on average. Among current year hires, the average effect is twice as large. This relationship between exit rates and separation rates is robust to a host of data and statistical considerations. We review several standard models of worker turnover and argue that a model with firm-specific human capital accumulation most easily accounts for this new empirical fact.
Prices, Production, and Inventories over the Automotive Model Year
Authors: Copeland Adam , Dunn Wendy E. , Hall George J.
Published: August 2019

This paper studies the within-model-year pricing and production of new automobiles. Using new monthly data on U.S. transaction prices, we document that for the typical new vehicle, prices typically fall over the model year at a 9.2 percent annual rate. Concurrently, both sales and inventories are hump shaped. To explain these time series, we formulate a market equilibrium model for new automobiles in which inventory and pricing decisions are made simultaneously. On the demand side, we use micro-level data to estimate time-varying aggregate demand curves for each vehicle. On the supply side, we solve a dynamic programming model of an automaker that, while able to produce only one vintage of a product at a time, may accumulate inventories and consequently sell multiple vintages of the same product simultaneously. The profit maximizing pricing and production strategies under a build-to-stock inventory policy imply declining prices and hump-shaped sales and inventories of the magnitudes observed in the data. Further, roughly half of the price decline is driven by inventory control considerations, as opposed to decreasing demand.
How Biased are Measures of Cyclical Movements in Productivity and Hours?
Authors: Aaronson Stephanie , Figura Andrew
Published: August 2019

The movement of hours worked over the business cycle is an important input into the estimation of many key parameters in macroeconomics. Unfortunately, the available data on hours do not correspond precisely to the concept required for accurate inference. We study one source of mismeasurement--that the most commonly used source data measure hours paid instead of hours worked--focusing our attention on salaried workers, a group for whom the gap between hours paid and hours worked is likely particularly large. We show that the measurement gap varies significantly and positively with changes in labor demand. As a result, we estimate that the standard deviations of the workweek and of total hours worked are 25 and 6 percent larger, respectively, than standard measures of hours suggest. We also find that this measurement gap is an unlikely source of the acceleration in published measures of productivity since 2000.
Measuring Counterparty Credit Exposure to a Margined Counterparty
Authors: Gibson Michael S.
Published: August 2019

Firms active in OTC derivative markets increasingly use margin agreements to reduce counterparty credit risk. Making several simplifying assumptions, I use both a quasi- analytic approach and a simulation approach to quantify how margining reduces counterparty credit exposure. Margining reduces counterparty credit exposure by over 80 percent, using baseline parameter assumptions. I show how expected positive exposure (EPE) depends on key terms of the margin agreement and the current mark-to-market value of the portfolio of contracts with the counterparty. I also discuss a possible shortcut that could be used by firms that can model EPE without margin but cannot achieve the higher level of sophistication needed to model EPE with margin.
Can Financial Innovation Help to Explain the Reduced Volatility of Economic Activity?
Authors: Dynan Karen E. , Sichel Daniel E. , Elmendorf Douglas W.
Published: August 2019

The stabilization of economic activity in the mid 1980s has received considerable attention. Research has focused primarily on the role played by milder economic shocks, improved inventory management, and better monetary policy. This paper explores another potential explanation: financial innovation. Examples of such innovation include developments in lending practices and loan markets that have enhanced the ability of households and firms to borrow and changes in government policy such as the demise of Regulation Q. We employ a variety of simple empirical techniques to identify links between the observed moderation in economic activity and the influence of financial innovation on consumer spending, housing investment, and business fixed investment. Our results suggest that financial innovation should be added to the list of likely contributors to the mid-1980s stabilization.
Competition and Price Discrimination in the Market for Mailing Lists
Authors: Borzekowski Ron , Thomadsen Raphael , Taragin Charles
Published: August 2019

This paper examines the relationship between competition and price discrimination in the market for mailing lists. More specifically, we examine whether sellers are more likely to segregate consumers by offering a menu of quality choices (second-degree price discrimination) and/or offering different prices to readily identifiable groups of consumers (third-degree price discrimination) in more competitive markets. We also examine how the fineness with which consumers are divided corresponds to the level of competition in the market. The dataset includes information about all consumer response lists derived from mail order buyers (i.e. lists derived from catalogs) available for rental in 1997 and 2002. Using industry classifications, we create measures of competition for each list. We then use these measures to predict whether given lists utilize discriminatory pricing strategies. Our results indicate that lists facing more competition are more likely to implement second-degree and third-degree price discrimination, and when implementing second-degree price discrimination, to offer menus with more choices.
A No-Arbitrage Analysis of Economic Determinants of the Credit Spread Term Structure
Authors: Wu Liuren , Zhang Frank X.
Published: August 2019

This paper presents an internally consistent analysis of the economic determinants of the term structure of credit spreads across different credit rating classes and industry sectors. Our analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we extract three economic factors from 13 time series that capture three major dimensions of the economy: inflation pressure, real output growth, and financial market volatility. In the second step, we build a no-arbitrage model that links the dynamics and market prices of these fundamental sources of economic risks to the term structure of Treasury yields and corporate bond credit spreads. Via model estimation, we infer the market pricing of these economic factors and their impacts on the whole term structure of Treasury yields and credit spreads. Estimation shows that positive inflation shocks increase both Treasury yields and credit spreads across all maturities and credit rating classes. Positive shocks on the real output growth also increase the Treasury yields, more so at short maturities than at long maturities. The impacts on the credit spreads are positive for high credit rating classes, but become negative and increasingly so at lower credit rating classes. The financial market volatility factor has small positive impacts on the Treasury yield curve, but the impacts are strongly positive on the credit spreads, and increasingly so at longer maturities and lower credit rating classes. Finally, when we divide each rating class into two industry sectors: financial and corporate, we find that with in each rating class, the credit spreads in the financial sector are on average wider and more volatile than the spreads in the corporate sector. Estimation further shows that the term structure of credit spreads in the financial sector is more responsive to shocks in the economic factors.
How Did the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut Affect Stock Prices?
Authors: Amromin Gene , Harrison Paul , Sharpe Steven A.
Published: August 2019

We test the hypothesis that the 2003 dividend tax cut boosted U.S. stock prices and thus lowered the cost of equity. Using an event-study methodology, we attempt to identify an aggregate stock market effect by comparing the behavior of U.S. common stock prices to that of European stocks and real estate investment trusts. We also examine the relative cross-sectional response of prices on high-dividend versus low-dividend paying stocks. We do not find any imprint of the dividend tax cut news on the value of the aggregate U.S. stock market. On the other hand, high-dividend stocks outperformed low-dividend stocks by a few percentage points over the event windows, suggesting that the tax cut did induce asset reallocation within equity portfolios. Finally, the positive abnormal returns on non-dividend paying U.S. stocks in 2003 do not appear to be tied to tax-cut news.
Taxation with Representation: Intergovernmental Grants in a Plebiscite Democracy
Authors: Lutz Byron F.
Published: August 2019

Economic theory predicts that unconditional intergovernmental grant income and private income are perfectly fungible. Despite this prediction, the literature on fiscal federalism documents that grant and private income are empirically non-equivalent. A large scale school finance reform in New Hampshire -- the typical school district experienced a 200 percent increase in grant income -- provides an unusually compelling test of the equivalence prediction. Most theoretical explanations for non-equivalence focus on mechanisms which produce public good provision levels which differ from the decisive voter's preferences. New Hampshire determines local public goods provision via a form of direct democracy -- a setting which rules out these explanations. In contrast to the general support in the literature for non-equivalence, the empirical estimates in this paper suggest that approximately 92 cents per grant dollar are spent on tax reduction. These results not only document that equivalence holds in a setting with a strong presumption that public good provision decisions reflect the preferences of voters, but also directly confirm the prediction of the seminal work of Bradford and Oates (1971) that lump-sum grant income is equivalent to a tax reduction. In addition, the paper presents theoretical arguments that grant income capitalization and heterogeneity in the marginal propensity to spend on public goods may generate spurious rejections of the equivalence prediction. The heterogeneity argument is confirmed empirically. Specifically, the results indicate that lower income communities spend more of the grant income on education than wealthier communities, a finding interpreted as revealing that the Engel curve for education is concave.
'Captive Markets': The Impact of Kidnappings on Corporate Investment in Colombia
Authors: Pshisva Rony , Suarez Gustavo A.
Published: August 2019

This paper measures the impact of crime on firm investment by exploiting variation in kidnappings in Colombia from 1996 to 2002. Our central result is that firms invest less when kidnappings directly target firms. We also find that broader forms of crime--homicides, guerrilla attacks, and general kidnappings--have no significant effect on investment. This finding alleviates concerns that our main result may be driven by unobserved variables that explain both overall criminal activity and investment. Furthermore, kidnappings that target firms reduce not only the investment of firms that sell in local markets, but also the investment of firms that sell in foreign markets. Thus, an unobservable correlation between poor demand conditions and criminal activity is unlikely to explain the negative impact of firm-related kidnappings on investment. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that managers are reluctant to invest when their freedom and life are at risk, although we cannot completely discard alternative explanations.