bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Quantitative Defense of Stabilization Policy
Authors: Cohen Darrel
Published: August 2019

In an analysis of the value of growth and stabilization of consumption, Robert Lucas presents a stunning set of calculations implying that a permanent increase in the growth rate of consumption of only one-tenth percentage point per year is worth nearly 50 times as much to consumers as complete elimination of consumption variability. This is because the higher growth of consumption is worth a lot while the reduced variability is worth virtually nothing (at least in the post-war United States). Taken at face value, such a result supports the pursuit of feasible growth policies but calls into serious question the study and practice of macroeconomic stabilization policy even if complete elimination of variance were feasible and costless. Primarily by considering alternative meanings of stabilization, this paper establishes that the value of stabilization relative to the value of higher growth is about 100 times larger than the corresponding figure in Lucas. The new quantitative estimates suggest, assuming feasibility, that even a small permanent increase in the growth rate of consumption is worth a lot, but so too is stabilization in the alternative senses considered here.
A Guide to the Use of Chain Aggregated NIPA Data
Authors: Whelan Karl
Published: August 2019

In 1996, the U.S. Department of Commerce began using a new method to construct all aggregate "real" series in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA). This method employs the so-called "ideal chain index" pioneered by Irving Fisher. The new methodology has some extremely important implications that are unfamiliar to many practicing empirical economists; as a result, mistaken calculations with NIPA data have become very common. This paper explains the motivation for the switch to chain aggregation and then illustrates the usage of chain-aggregated data with three topical examples, each relating to a different aspect of how information technologies are changing the economy.
Empirical Evidence on Human Capital Spillovers
Authors: Rudd Jeremy Bay
Published: August 2019

This paper examines whether the average level of human capital in a region affects the earnings of an individual residing in that region in a manner that is external to the individual's own human capital. I find little evidence of an external effect of human capital, which suggests that human capital spillovers of the form postulated by the new growth literature are unlikely to matter much in practice.
Parameterizing Credit Risk Models With Rating Data
Authors: Carey Mark S. , Hrycay Mark
Published: August 2019

Estimates of average default probabilities for borrowers assigned to each of a financial institution's internal credit risk rating grades are crucial inputs to portfolio credit risk models. Such models are increasingly used in setting financial institution capital structure, in internal control and compensation systems, in asset-backed security design, and are being considered for use in setting regulatory capital requirements for banks. This paper empirically examines properties of the major methods currently used to estimate average default probabilities by grade. Evidence of potential problems of bias, instability, and gaming is presented. With care, and perhaps judicious application of multiple methods, satisfactory estimates may be possible. In passing, evidence is presented about other properties of internal and rating-agency ratings.
Monetary Policy When the Nominal Short-Term Interest Rate is Zero
Authors: Clouse James A. , Henderson Dale W. , Orphanides Athanasios , Small David H. , Tinsley Peter A.
Published: August 2019

In an environment of low inflation, the Federal Reserve faces the risk that it has not provided enough monetary stimulus even when it has pushed the short-term nominal interest rate to its lower bound of zero. Assuming the nominal Treasury-bill rate has been lowered to zero, this paper considers whether further open market purchases of Treasury bills could spur aggregate demand through increases in the monetary base that may stimulate aggregate demand by increasing liquidity for financial intermediaries and households; by affecting expectations of the future paths of short-term interest rates, inflation, and asset prices; or by stimulating bank lending through the credit channel. This paper also examines the alternative policy tools that are available to the Federal Reserve in theory, and notes the practical limitations imposed by the Federal Reserve Act, The tools the Federal Reserve has at its disposal include open market purchases of Treasury bonds and private-sector credit instruments (at least those that may be purchased by the Federal Reserve); unsterilized and sterilized intervention in foreign exchange; lending through the discount window; and, perhaps in some circumstances, the use of options.
NAIRU Uncertainty and Nonlinear Policy Rules
Authors: Wieland Volker W. , Meyer Laurence H. , Swanson Eric T.
Published: August 2019

Meyer (1999) has suggested that episodes of heightened uncertainty about the NAIRU may warrant a nonlinear policy response to changes in the unemployment rate. This paper offers a theoretical justification for such a nonlinear policy rule, and provides some empirical evidence on the relative performance of linear and nonlinear rules when there is heightened uncertainty about the NAIRU.
Activist vs. Non-Activist Monetary Policy: Optimal Rules Under Extreme Uncertainty ((A Primer on Robust Control)
Authors: Von zur Muehlen P.
Published: August 2019

This paper analyzes the optimality of reactive feedback rules advocated by neo-Keynesians, and constant money growth rules proposed by monetarists. The basis for this controversy is not merely a disagreement concerning sources and impacts of uncertainty in the economy, but also an apparent fundamental difference in the attitude toward uncertainty about models. To address these differences, this paper compares the relative reactiveness of a monetary policy instrument to conditioning information for two starkly differing versions of model uncertainty about the model and the data driving it: Bayesian uncertainty that assumes known probability distributions for a model's parameters and the data and Knightian uncertainty that does not. In the latter case, the policy maker copes with extreme uncertainty by playing a mental game against “nature,'' using minmax strategies. Contrary to common intuition, extreme uncertainty about a model's parameters does not necessarily imply less responsiveness to conditioning information-here represented by the lagged gap between nominal income growth and its trend-and it certainly does not justify constancy of money growth except in an extreme version of Brainard's (1967) result. A partial constant money growth rule can be derived in only one special case: if the conditioning variable in the feedback rule is also uncertain in either Bayesian or Knightian senses and the authority uses Neyman-Pearson likelihood ratio tests to distinguish noise from information with each new observation.
A Two-Sector Approach to Modeling U.S. NIPA Data
Authors: Whelan Karl
Published: August 2019

The one-sector Solow-Ramsey model is the most popular model of long-run economic growth. This paper argues that a two-sector approach, which distinguishes the durable goods sector from the rest of the economy, provides a far better picture of the long-run behavior of the U.S. economy. Real durable goods output has consistently grown faster than the rest of the economy. Because most investment spending is on durable goods, the one-sector model's hypothesis of balanced growth, so that the real aggregates for consumption, investment, output, and the capital stock all grow at the same rate in the long run, is rejected by U.S. data. In addition, to model these aggregates as currently constructed in the U.S. National Accounts, a two-sector approach is required. Implications for empirical macroeconomics are explored.
Patterns of Plant Adjustment
Authors: Sakellaris Plutarchos
Published: August 2019

This paper provides a description of the dynamic choices of manufacturing plants when they undertake rapid adjustment in output. The focus is on episodes that involve lumpy adjustment in capital or employment. I examine the behavior of variables such as capital utilization, hours per worker, overtime use, capacity utilization, materials and energy use. Finally I describe the observed patterns of productivity during those adjustment episodes and propose some hypotheses that seem to fit them. The costs associated with output adjustment seem to arise from building and destroying a particular organization of the structure of production and associated worker experience. As such they are related to learning-by-doing and investment in specific training.
Production Function Estimation with Industry Capacity Data
Authors: Sakellaris Plutarchos
Published: August 2019

This paper introduces a new data set for the analysis of productivity in U.S. manufacturing. It consists of data on production and input levels when the plants in an industry operate at capacity. The estimates are consistent with those obtained using data on actual operations from the ASM. As an application, I use this data to estimate the rate of growth of technological change that is embodied in equipment capital. The estimates imply a larger role of equipment investment and embodied technological change on economic growth than is conventionally assumed.
Transition Dynamics in Vintage Capital Models: Explaining the Postwar Catch-Up of Germany and Japan
Authors: Williams John C. , Gilchrist Simon
Published: August 2019

We consider a neoclassical interpretation of Germany and Japan's rapid postwar growth that relies on a catch-up mechanism through capital accumulation where technology is embodied in new capital goods. Using a putty-clay model of production and investment, we are able to capture many of the key empirical properties of Germany and Japan's postwar transitions, including persistently high but declining rates of labor and total-factor productivity growth, a U-shaped response of the capital-output ratio, rising rates of investment and employment, and moderate rates of return to capital.
Estimates of the Productivity Trend Using Time-Varying Parameter Techniques
Authors: Roberts John M.
Published: August 2019

In the second half of the 1990s, U.S. productivity growth moved up to rates not seen in several decades. In this paper, I use time-varying parameter techniques to isolate trend from cyclical movements in productivity and to obtain an estimate of the trend rate of productivity growth. I examine models both with and without an explicit role for capital accumulation. I find that in the models without an explicit role for capital accumulation, trend productivity growth is estimated to have moved up from around 1-1/2 percent in the period from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s, to about 2-1/2 percent by the final observation used in this paper, the second quarter of 2000. I find that if I allow for an explicit role for capital accumulation, the recent pace of trend productivity growth is even higher, at around 3 percent.
Using Subordinated Debt to Monitor Bank Holding Companies: Is it Feasible?
Authors: Hancock Diana , Kwast Myron L.
Published: August 2019

Much research is needed to implement a supervisory surveillance system for banking organizations that relies on subordinated debt and other market data. This paper is germane to that task. We find subordinated debt spreads are most consistent across data sources for the most liquid bonds (i.e., those of relatively large issuance size, relatively young age, issued by relatively large firms) traded in a relatively robust overall bond market. We also find there is a high degree of concordance in rankings of firms by their minimum spreads across bonds with especially strong agreement about which large firms are in the tails of the spread distribution at each point in time. Our time-series results support and provide guidance for the use of subordinated debt spreads in supervisory monitoring, support the need for careful judgment when interpreting such spreads, highlight difficulties with currently available data sources, and motivate the need for further research.
New Tests of the New-Keynesian Phillips Curve
Authors: Rudd Jeremy Bay , Whelan Karl
Published: August 2019

Is the observed correlation between current and lagged inflation a function of backward-looking inflation expectations, or do the lags in inflation regressions merely proxy for rational forward-looking expectations, as in the new-Keynesian Phillips curve? Recent research has attempted to answer this question by using instrumental variables techniques to estimate "hybrid" specifications for inflation that allow for effects of lagged and future inflation. We show that these tests of forward-looking behavior have very low power against alternative, but non-nested, backward-looking specifications, and demonstrate that results previously interpreted as evidence for the new-Keynesian model are also consistent with a backward-looking Phillips curve. We develop alternative, more powerful tests, which find a very limited role for forward-looking expectations.
Reexamining Stock Valuation and Inflation: The Implications of Analysts' Earnings Forecasts
Authors: Sharpe Steven A.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines the effect of inflation on stock valuations and expected long-run returns. Ex ante estimates of expected long-run returns are constructed by incorporating analysts' earnings forecasts into a variant of the Campbell-Shiller dividend-price ratio model. The negative relation between equity valuations and expected inflation is found to be the result of two effects: a rise in expected inflation coincides with both (i) lower expected real earnings growth and (ii) higher required real returns. The earnings channel mostly reflects a negative relation between expected long-term earnings growth and expected inflation. The effect of expected inflation on required (long-run) real stock returns is also substantial. A one percentage point increase in expected inflation is estimated to raise required real stock returns about one percentage point, which on average would imply a 20 percent decline in stock prices. But the inflation factor in expected real stock returns is also in long-term Treasury yields; consequently, expected inflation has little effect on the long-run equity premium.
Understanding the Role of Recovery in Default Risk Models: Empirical Comarisons and Implied Recovery Rates
Authors: Bakshi Gurdip , Madan Dilip B. , Zhang Frank X.
Published: August 2019

This article presents a framework for modeling defaultable debt under alternative recovery conventions (for a wide class of processes describing recovery rates and default probability). These debt models have the ability to differentiate the impact of recovery rates and default probability, and can be utilized to invert the market expectation of recovery rates implicit in bond prices. Among potential applications, the framework can be used for pricing and hedging credit derivatives that are contingent on the default event and/or recovery levels. Empirical implementation of these models suggests two central findings. First, the recovery concept that specifies recovery as a fraction of the discounted par value has broader empirical support. Second, parametric debt valuation models can provide a useful assessment of recovery rates embedded in bond prices. This article has attempted to model recovery and comprehend their impact on debt values.
An Analytical Approach to the Welfare Cost of Business Cycles and the Benefit from Activist Monetary Policy
Authors: Kiley Michael T.
Published: August 2019

Typical dynamic general-equilibrium (DGE) models with stochastic productivity, consumers with state separable (expected utility) preferences, and capital accumulation imply a small welfare cost of business cycles and a small market price of risk (i.e., equity premium). I present an analytical solution to quantity and asset-price movements in a DGE model with preferences that are either state-separable or non-state-separable; non-state separable preferences leave the response of quantities to productivity shocks unaltered from the solutions under expected utility, but can raise substantially the welfare cost of fluctuations or the equity premium implied by the model. I then show that a large welfare loss to business cycles does not imply a large gain from an activist monetary policy. In particular, monetary policy can implement the optimal allocation in a sticky-price version of the model, but the welfare gain from such a policy is trivial because the optimal allocation continues to imp
Imperfect Credibility and Inflation Persistence
Authors: Erceg Christopher J. , Levin Andrew
Published: August 2019

In this paper, we formulate a dynamic general equilibrium model with staggered nominal contracts, in which households and firms use optimal filtering to disentangle persistent and transitory shifts in the monetary policy rule. The calibrated model accounts quite well for the dynamics of output and inflation during the Volcker disinflation, and implies a sacrifice ratio very close to the estimated value. Our approach indicates that inflation persistence and substantial costs of disinflation can be generated in an optimizing-agent framework, without relaxing the assumption of rational expectations or relying on arbitrary modifications to the aggregate supply relation.
Term Structure of Interest Rates with Regime Shifts
Authors: Bansal Ravi , Zhou Hao
Published: August 2019

We develop a term structure model where the short interest rate and the market price of risks are subject to discrete regime shifts. Empirical evidence from Efficient Method of Moments estimation provides considerable support for the regime shifts model. Standard models, which include affine specifications with up to three factors, are sharply rejected in the data. Our diagnostics show that only the regime shifts model can account for the well documented violations of the expectations hypothesis, the observed conditional volatility, and the conditional correlation across yields. We find that regimes are intimately related to business cycles.
Capital Requirements, Business Loans, and Business Cycles: An Empirical Analysis of the Standardized Approach in the New Basel Capital Accord
Authors: Carpenter Seth B. , Whitesell William C. , Zakrajšek Egon
Published: August 2019

In the current regulatory framework, capital requirements are based on risk-weighted assets, but all business loans carry a uniform risk weight, irrespective of variations in credit risk. The proposed new Capital Accord of the Bank for International Settlements provides for a greater sensitivity of capital requirements to credit risk, raising the question of whether, and to what extent, the new capital standards will intensify business cycles. In this paper, we evaluate the potential cyclical effects of the ""standardized approach"" to risk evaluation in the new Accord, which involves the ratings of external agencies. We combine Moody's data on changes in U.S. borrowers' credit ratings since 1970 with estimates of the risk profile of business loans at commercial banks from the Survey of Terms of Business Lending, and also a risk profile estimated by Treacy and Carey (1998). We find that the level of required capital against business loans would be noticeably lower under the new Accord compared with the current regime. We do not find evidence of any substantial additional cyclicality in required capital levels under the standardized approach of the new Accord relative to the current regime.
Measuring Equilibrium Real Interest Rates: What Can We Learn from Yields on Indexed Bonds?
Authors: Bomfim Antulio N.
Published: August 2019

What does the level of the real interest rates tell us about where the economy, or one&amp;#x27;s portfolio, is headed? The answer to this question depends on one&amp;#x27;s estimate of the &amp;quot;equilibrium&amp;quot; value of real interest rates, a measure that is unfortunately not directly observed in the market place. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of some of the existing approaches to defining and measuring equilibrium real rates and introduce a novel method based on yields on the U.S. Treasury&amp;#x27;s inflation-indexed securities (TIIS). I discuss a simple framework for analyzing TIIS yields and illustrate how to use them to gauge the stance of monetary policy and overall economic prospects.
Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest
Authors: Laubach Thomas , Williams John C.
Published: August 2019

A key variable for the conduct of monetary policy is the natural rate of interest -- the real interest rate consistent with output equaling potential and stable inflation. Economic theory implies that the natural rate of interest varies over time and depends on the trend growth rate of output. In this paper we apply the Kalman filter to jointly estimate the natural rate of interest, potential output, and the trend growth rate, and examine the empirical relationship between these estimated unobserved series. We find substantial variation in the natural rate of interest over the past four decades in the United States. Our natural rate estimates vary about one-for-one with changes in the trend growth rate. We show that policymakers' mismeasurement of the natural rate of interest can cause a significant deterioration in macroeconomic stabilization.
On the Economics of Discrimination in Credit Markets
Authors: Han Song
Published: August 2019

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of both taste-based and statistical discrimination in credit markets. We find that both types of discrimination have similar predictions for intergroup differences in loan terms. The commonly held view has been that if there exists taste-based discrimination, loans approved to minority borrowers would have higher expected profitability than to majorities with comparable credit background. We show that the validity of this profitability view depends crucially on how expected loan profitability is measured. We also show that there must exist taste-based discrimination if loans to minority borrowers have higher expected rate of return or lower expected rate of default loss than to majorities with the same exogenous characteristics at the time of loan origination. Empirical evidence on expected rate of default loss cannot reject the null hypothesis of non-existence of taste-based discrimination.
Growth Effects of Progressive Taxation
Authors: Li Wenli , Sarte Pierre-Daniel G.
Published: August 2019

Criticisms of endogenous growth models with flat rate taxes have highlighted two features that are not substantiated by the data. These models generally imply: (1) that economic growth must fall with the share of government expenditures in output across countries, and (2) that one-time shifts in marginal tax rates should instantaneously lead to similar shifts in output growth. In contrast, we show that allowing for heterogenous households and progressive taxes into otherwise conventional linear growth models radically changes these predictions. In particular, economic growth does not have to fall, and may even increase, with the share of government expenditures in output across countries. Moreover, discrete permanent shifts in tax policy now lead to protracted transitions between balanced growth paths. Both of these findings hold whether or not government expenditures are thought to be productive, and better conform to available empirical evidence.
Causes of Bank Suspensions in the Panic of 1893
Authors: Carlson Mark A.
Published: August 2019

There are two competing theories explaining bank panics. One argues that panics are driven by real shocks, asymmetric information, and concerns about insolvency. The other theory argues that bank runs are self-fulfilling, driven by illiquidity and the beliefs of depositors. This paper tests predictions of these two theories using information uniquely available for the Crisis of 1893. The results suggest that real economic shocks were important determinants of the location of panics at the national level, however at the local level, both insolvency and illiquidity were important as triggers of bank panics.
Consumption, Debt and Portfolio Choice: Testing the Effect of Bankruptcy Law
Authors: Lehnert Andreas , Maki Dean M.
Published: August 2019

Consumer bankruptcy laws, which vary across states and over time, permit debtors to keep assets below a statutory exemption while debts are forgiven. High exemptions distort household portfolio decisions and tempt households to default on debts, but they also provide a crude form of consumption insurance. We combine information on state-level bankruptcy laws with the Consumer Expenditure Survey from 1984-1999. We find that higher exemptions are associated with (1) higher bankruptcy rates, (2) households that are more likely to simultaneously hold low-return liquid assets and owe high-cost unsecured debt, and (3) slightly better insurance for renters and worse insurance for homeowners.
Is Reallocation Related to the Cycle? A Look at Permanent and Temporary Job Flows
Authors: Figura Andrew
Published: August 2019

How much of aggregate employment fluctuations is due to plants destroying and then recreating the same jobs over the cycle and how much is due to some plants permanently destroying jobs in a recession and other plants permanently creating jobs in an expansion? This paper decomposes plant level job flows into permanent and temporary components to answer this question, and finds that the permanent reallocation of jobs across plants accounts for approximately 30 percent of the cyclical fluctuations in aggregate employment.
Geographic Concentration and Establishment Size: Analysis in an Alternative Economic Geography Model
Authors: Holmes Thomas J. , Stevens John J.
Published: August 2019

Big cities specialize in services rather than manufacturing. Big-city establishments in services are larger than the national average while those in manufacturing are smaller. This paper proposes an explanation of these and other facts. The theory is developed in an economic geography model that is an alternative to the standard Dixit-Stiglitz structure. In our tractable structure that has potentially wider application, firms have monopoly power in local markets, but are price takers in export markets.
Technological Progress and the Geographic Expansion of the Banking Industry
Authors: Berger Allen N. , DeYoung Robert
Published: August 2019

We test some predictions about the effects of technological progress on geographic expansion using data on banks in U.S. multibank holding companies over 1985-1998. Specifically, we test whether over time (a) parental control over affiliate banks has increased, and (b) the agency costs associated with distance from the parent have decreased. The data suggest that banking organizations exercise significant control over affiliates that has been increasing over time, and that the agency costs associated with distance have decreased somewhat over time. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that technological progress has facilitated the geographic expansion of the banking industry.
The Role of Semiconductor Inputs in IT Hardware Price Decline: Computers vs. Communications
Authors: Aizcorbe Ana M. , Flamm Kenneth , Khurshid Anjum
Published: August 2019

Sharp declines in semiconductor prices are largely responsible for observed declines in computer prices. Although communications equipment also has a large semiconductor content,communications equipment prices do not fall nearly as fast as computer prices. This paper partly resolves the puzzle-first noted by Flamm(1989)-by demonstrating that prices for chips used in communications equipment do not fall nearly as fast as prices for those chips used in computers, and those differences are large enough to potentially explain all of the output price differences.
Household Switching Behavior at Depository Institutions: Evidence from Survey Data
Authors: Kiser Elizabeth K.
Published: August 2019

Understanding household deposit relationships is central to the analysis of competition and the application of merger policy in banking. This article presents descriptive findings from new survey data on households' decisions to change or remain with their providers of checking or savings accounts. The data show that the distribution of household tenure is wide, and that about a third of households have never changed depository institutions. The primary reason reported for changing banks is a household relocation; other reasons are customer service and price factors. Customer service and location are the most frequently cited reasons for remaining with a bank. The importance of location and mobility supports previous survey evidence that the local area is the appropriate market for competitive analysis in banking. The findings presented here are consistent with earlier studies showing that population migration increases competitive pressure on firms and therefore should mitigate the anticompetitive effects of bank mergers.
Insolvency or Liquidity Squeeze? Explaining Very Short-Term Corporate Yield Spreads
Authors: Covitz Daniel M. , Downing Chris
Published: August 2019

In this paper, we first document some stylized facts about very short-term and long-term corporate yield spreads. We find that short-term spreads are sizable, and the correlations between many firms' short-term and long-term yield spreads are at times negative. We then develop a structural model that generates levels and correlations of short-term and long-term spreads that are more consistent with what we observe. The model allows for the possibility of payment delays when a firm's liquid asset position deteriorates. Payment delays generate sizable short-term debt spreads because the realized returns on short-term investments are very sensitive to an increase in the holding period. The presence of liquidity risk can also explain negative correlations between short- and long-term spreads because liquidity risk is imperfectly correlated with insolvency risk. Using firm-level data, we provide empirical evidence that liquid assets holdings help predict short-term spreads, but not long-term spreads.
Market Discipline in Banking Reconsidered: The Roles of Deposit Insurance Reform, Funding Manager Decisions and Bond Market Liquidity
Authors: Covitz Daniel M. , Hancock Diana , Kwast Myron L.
Published: August 2019

This paper demonstrates that the risk sensitivity of a banking organization's subordinated debt yield spreads may understate the potential for market discipline in some periods and overstate in others because such spreads contain liquidity premiums that are driven, in part, by the risk-sensitivity of funding manager decisions. Once such decisions are accounted for, new evidence is provided that indicates that subordinated debt spreads were sensitive to organization-specific risks in the mid-1980s, and that the risk- sensitivity of such spreads was about the same in the pre- and post-FDICIA periods. These results resolve some anomalies in the existing literature. In addition, it is argued that mandating the regular issuance of subordinated debt would, by reducing the endogeneity of liquidity premiums, improve the information content of both primary and secondary market debt spreads, thereby augmenting both direct and indirect market discipline.
The S&P 500 Effect: Not Such Good News in the Long Run
Authors: Cooper Daniel H. , Woglom Geoffrey
Published: August 2019

This paper analyzes the effect on a company's stock price when it is added to the S&P; 500 Index. A simple theoretical model is developed to show how trading effects and changes to fundamentals should affect the price of S&P500; additions upon announcement and in the long run. This model predicts that a company added to the S&P500; should experience an initial price increase followed by a reversal of this price increase owing to the predicted increased stock price volatility of companies post-addition. All of these effects should be growing over time because of the increasing importance of S&P500; indexed mutual funds. We test the predictions of the model using a sample of 303 S&P500; Index additions between 1978 and 1998. We find results generally consistent with the model, particularly in the most recent period when it appears that the post-addition increase in stock price volatility reverses almost all of the initial price increase.
The Economic Effects of Technological Progress: Evidence from the Banking Industry
Authors: Berger Allen N.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines technological progress and its effects in the banking industry. Banks are intensive users of both IT and financial technologies, and have a wealth of data available that may be helpful for the general understanding of the effects of technological change. The research suggests improvements in costs and lending capacity due to improvements in "back-office" technologies, as well as consumer benefits from improved "front-office" technologies. The research also suggests significant overall productivity increases in terms of improved quality and variety of banking services. In addition, the research indicates that technological progress likely helped facilitate consolidation of the industry.
A Note on the Cointegration of Consumption, Income, and Wealth
Authors: Rudd Jeremy Bay , Whelan Karl
Published: August 2019

Lettau and Ludvigson (2001) argue that a log-linearized approximation to an aggregate budget constraint predicts that log consumption, assets, and labor income will be cointegrated. They conclude that this cointegrating relationship is present in U.S. data, and that the estimated cointegrating residual forecasts future asset growth. This note examines whether the cointegrating relationship suggested by Lettau and Ludvigson's theoretical framework actually exists. We demonstrate that we cannot reject the hypothesis that cointegration is absent from the data once we employ measures of consumption, assets, and labor income that are jointly consistent with an underlying budget constraint. By contrast, Lettau and Ludvigson use a set of variables that do not belong together in an aggregate budget constraint, thereby testing a cointegrating relationship that is not implied by their theory.
State Capital Taxes and the Location of Investment: Empirical Lessons from Theoretical Models of Tax Competition
Authors: Knight Brian
Published: August 2019

Applying insights from theoretical tax competition models, this study of manufacturing investment and taxes in U.S. states makes four contributions to the empirical tax competition literature. First, while the existing empirical literature has assumed exogenous tax rates, the theoretical model, which endogenizes state tax rate choices, demonstrates that tax rates and investment decisions are determined by the same set of jurisdiction characteristics. The endogeneity corrected estimates, which rely on instruments motivated by the theoretical model, suggest stronger responses to tax rates than the uncorrected estimates in both this paper and the existing literature. The second insight involves the appropriate unit of observation. The empirical literature has conducted both aggregate analyses, in which jurisdictions are the unit of observation, and discrete choice analyses, in which manufacturing plants are the unit of observation. While the tax competition model demonstrates the violation of a key assumption in discrete choice analyses, the estimating equation in this paper, an aggregate analysis, can be derived directly from the model. Third, the theoretical model sheds light on the appropriateness of previously employed measures of tax burdens. The effective tax rate is shown to be superior to the after-tax rate of return, which is both invariant across jurisdictions and dependent on the distribution of investment. Fourth, this paper provides estimates of the degree of undertaxation of capital, which has been the focus of the theoretical tax competition literature but has yet to be addressed empirically. These estimates suggest that the efficient revenues may be as much as two times the size of actual revenues.
Money Demand and Equity Markets
Authors: Carpenter Seth B. , Lange Joe
Published: August 2019

Money demand in part reflects a portfolio decision. As equities have become a significant store of household wealth, it seems plausible that variations in equity markets could affect money demand. We re-specify a standard money demand equation to include stock market volatility and revisions to analyst earnings projections. We find that these equity market variables are statistically significant and reduce the errors from money demand models.
The Stability of Dummy Variable Price Measures Obtained from Hedonic Regressions
Authors: Aizcorbe Ana M.
Published: August 2019

Although the stability of coefficients from hedonic regressions has received much attention recently, that of dummy variable (DV) price indexes obtained from these regressions has not. In principle, one problem translates into the other only when some prices are not observed in the data. Numerically, however, DV measures obtained from a "typical" specification can be quite unstable even when the number of missing prices is small. To the extent that collinearity is an important source of the problem, functional forms that use (orthogonal) fixed effects to control for quality differences across goods should yield more stable estimates. Data for Intel's microprocessors are used to illustrate these points.
A Monetary Policy Rule Based on Nominal and Inflation-Indexed Treasury Yields
Authors: Sack Brian
Published: August 2019

The yields on nominal and inflation-indexed Treasury debt securities can be used to derive a proxy for the inflation expectations of financial market participants. This paper finds that one such measure has been an effective predictor of monetary policy decisions by the Federal Reserve since 1999. This finding suggests that the inflation compensation measure serves as a summary statistic for the factors that drive monetary policy decisions.
Counterparty Credit Risk in Interest Rate Swaps during Times of Market Stress
Authors: Bomfim Antulio N.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines whether empirical and theoretical results suggesting a relatively small role for counterparty credit risk in the determination of interest rate swap rates hold during periods of stress in the financial markets, such as the chain of events that followed the Russian default crisis of 1998. The analysis sheds light on the robustness of netting and credit enhancement mechanisms, which are common in interest rate swaps, to widespread turmoil in the financial markets.
Does Monetary Policy Affect Stock Prices and Treasury Yields? An Error Correction and Simultaneous Equation Approach
Authors: Durham J. B.
Published: August 2019

This study pursues two addenda to the practitioner and academic on the effect of monetary policy on asset prices. First, this paper applies cointegration theory, and, second, relaxes the stringent assumption in the literature that changes in 10-year Treasury yields, stock returns, and changes in the stance of monetary policy are exogenous. Given quarterly data from 1978:Q4 to 2002:Q3, two-stage least squares (2SLS) regressions suggest that changes in the exogenous component of the federal funds rate affect changes in Treasury yields but not stock returns, ceteris paribus. However, this result is sensitive to alternative proxies for the stance of monetary policy. Also, little evidence suggests that monetary policy responds to the exogenous components of changes in financial asset prices.
New Evidence on the Interest Rate Effects of Budget Deficits and Debt
Authors: Laubach Thomas
Published: August 2019

Estimating the effects of government debt and deficits on Treasury yields is complicated by the need to isolate the effects of fiscal policy from other influences. To abstract from the effects of the business cycle, and associated monetary policy actions, on debt, deficits, and interest rates, this paper studies the relationship between long-horizon expected government debt and deficits, measured by CBO and OMB projections, and expected future long-term interest rates. The estimated effects of government debt and deficits on interest rates are statistically and economically significant: a one percentage point increase in the projected deficit-to-GDP ratio is estimated to raise long-term interest rates by roughly 25 basis points. Under plausible assumptions these estimates are shown to be consistent with predictions of the neoclassical growth model.
Market Structure and Quality: An Application to the Banking Industry
Authors: Dick Astrid A.
Published: August 2019

This paper presents empirical evidence consistent with the predictions of the endogenous sunk cost model of Sutton (1991), with an application to banks. In particular, banking markets remain concentrated regardless of market size. Given an asymmetric oligopoly where dominant and fringe firms coexist, the number of dominant banks remains unchanged with market size, with only the number of fringe banks varying across markets. Such structure is sustained by competitive investments in quality, with the level of quality increasing with market size and dominant banks providing higher quality than fringe banks. The analysis has implications for antitrust policy.
Monetary Policy and the Yield Curve
Authors: Bomfim Antulio N.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines the empirical properties of a two-factor affine model of the term structure of interest rates, estimated with LIBOR and interest rate swap data from 1989 through 2001. Despite its relative simplicity, the model fits the interest rate data remarkably well, both across time and maturity, and identifies changes in the current and expected stance of monetary policy as primary movers of the yield curve.
Wealth Effects and the Consumption of Leisure: Retirement Decisions During the Stock Market Boom of the 1990s
Authors: Coronado Julia Lynn , Perozek Maria
Published: August 2019

It is well accepted that households increase consumption of goods and services in response to an unexpected increase in wealth. Consensus estimates of this wealth effect are in the range of 3 to 5 cents of additional consumption spending in the long run for each additional dollar of wealth. Economic theory also suggests that consumption of leisure, like consumption of goods and services, should increase with positive shocks to wealth. In this paper, we ask whether the run-up in equity prices during the 1990s led older workers to retire earlier than they had previously planned. We identify the effect by exploiting unique data on retirement expectations from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). Our econometric results suggest that respondents who held corporate equity immediately prior to the bull market of the 1990s retired, on average, 7 months earlier than other respondents.
Regime-Shifts, Risk Premiums in the Term Structure, and the Business Cycle
Authors: Bansal Ravi , Tauchen George , Zhou Hao
Published: August 2019

We examine various dynamic term structure models for monthly US Treasury yields from 1964 to 2001. Of particular interest is the predictability of bond excess returns. Recent evidence indicates that using multiple forward rates can sharply predict future excess returns on bonds; the R2 of this predictability regression can be as high as 30%. In addition, the projection coefficients in these predictability regressions exhibit a tent shaped pattern that relates to the maturity of the forward rate. This dimension of the data in conjunction with the transition dynamics of bond yields (i.e., conditional volatility and cross-correlation of bond yields) poses an serious challenge to term structure models. In this paper we present and estimate a regime-shifts term structure model, and our findings show that this model can account for all aspects of the predictability regression and the transition dynamics of yields. Alternative models, such as affine factor models, cannot account for these features of the data. We find that the regimes in the model are related to the NBER business-cycle indicator.
The Recall and New Job Search of Laid-off Workers: A Bivariate Proportional Hazard Model with Unobserved Heterogeneity
Authors: Fallick Bruce , Ryu Keunkwan
Published: August 2019

Workers who lose their jobs can become re-employed either by being recalled to their previous employers or by finding new jobs. Workers' chances for recall should influence their job search strategies, so the rates of exit from unemployment by these two routes should be directly related. We solve a job search model to establish, in theory, a negative relationship between the recall and new job hazard rates. We look for evidence in the PSID by estimating a semi-parametric competing risks model with explicitly related hazards. We find only a small negative behavioral relationship between recall and new job hazard rates.
Inflation Persistence and Relative Contracting
Authors: Holden Steinar , Driscoll John C.
Published: August 2019

Macroeconomists have for some time been aware that the New Keynesian Phillips curve, though highly popular in the literature, cannot explain the persistence observed in actual inflation. We argue that one of the more prominent alternative formulations, the Fuhrer and Moore (1995) relative contracting model, is highly problematic. Fuhrer and Moore's 1995 formulation generates inflation persistence, but this is a consequence of their assuming that workers care about the past real wages of other workers. Making the more reasonable assumption that workers care about the current real wages of other workers, one obtains the standard formulation with no inflation persistence.
Firm Specific Human Capital vs. Job Matching: A New Test
Authors: Quintin Erwan , Stevens John J.
Published: August 2019

We use a unique data set on employee turnover by industry in Arizona to test competing theories of turnover. We find that industries with lower establishment survival rates have more employee turnover, even after controlling for differences in the distribution of employee tenure. This result is consistent with a model of turnover where employees choose how much firm specific human capital to accumulate, but it is inconsistent with job matching models.
Nationwide Branching and its Impact on Market Structure, Quality and Bank Performance
Authors: Dick Astrid A.
Published: August 2019

Based on a sample for 1993-1999, this paper examines the effects of nationwide branching, following the Riegle-Neal Act, on various aspects of banking markets and bank service and perfomance. While concentration at the regional level has increased dramatically, deregulation has left almost intact the market structure of urban markets, which have between two to three dominant firms--controlling over half of a market's deposits--in 1999 just as they did in 1993. A significant portion of the observed increase in bank quality can be traced to the implementation of nationwide branching. By allowing banks to open branches in any state, the new regime has permitted consumers to enjoy greater networks, free of fees, throughout large geographic regions. Consistent with an increase in service quality, costs and service fees increase. Credit risk increases as greater geographic diversification might provide a hedge against greater risk-return choices. Coherent with these findings and an increase in lending competition and profit efficiency, spreads fall and profits are unaffected.