bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Credit Unions on the Rates Offered for Retail Deposits by Banks and Thrift Institutions
Authors: Hannan Timothy H.
Published: August 2019

Because of the increasing significance of credit unions as potential competitors for consumer deposits, this paper examines the impact of the market presence of credit unions, variously measured, on the rates for three different types of consumer deposits offered by banks and thrift institutions. In contrast to previous studies, the sample employed covers the nation as a whole, incorporates all large urban areas, and employs survey data on deposit rates for a substantially larger number of institutions than previously employed. Despite circumstance that are argued to militate against the finding of a relationship, regression analyses yield positive coefficients of the measures of credit union presence, with statistical significance in a number of cases.
The Welfare Effects of Incentive Schemes
Authors: Copeland Adam , Monnet Cyril
Published: August 2019

This paper computes the change in welfare associated with the introduction of incentives. Specifically, we calculate by how much the welfare gains of increased output due to incentives outweigh workers' disutility from increased effort. We accomplish this by studying the use of incentives by a firm in the check-clearing industry. Using this firm's production records, we model and estimate the worker's dynamic effort decision problem. We find that the firm's incentive scheme has a large effect on productivity, raising it by 14% over the sample period. Using our parameter estimates, we show that the cost of increased effort due to incentives is equal to the dollar value of a 9% rise in productivity. Welfare is measured as the output produced minus the cost of effort, hence the net increase in welfare due to the introduction of the firm's bonus plan is 5%. Under a first-best scheme, we find that the net increase in welfare is 6%.
Robust Monetary Policy Rules with Unknown Natural Rates
Authors: Orphanides Athanasios , Williams John C.
Published: August 2019

We examine the performance and robustness properties of alternative monetary policy rules in the presence of structural change that renders the natural rates of interest and unemployment uncertain. Using a forward-looking quarterly model of the U.S. economy, estimated over the 1969-2002 period, we show that the cost of underestimating the extent of misperceptions regarding the natural rates significantly exceeds the costs of overestimating such errors. Naive adoption of policy rules optimized under the false presumption that misperceptions regarding the natural rates are likely to be small proves particularly costly. Our results suggest that a simple and effective approach for dealing with ignorance about the degree of uncertainty in estimates of the natural rates is to adopt difference rules for monetary policy, in which the short-term nominal interest rate is raised or lowered from its existing level I response to inflation and changes in economic activity. These rules do not require knowledge of the natural rates of interest or unemployment for setting policy and are consequently immune to the likely misperceptions in these concepts. To illustrate the differences in outcomes that could be attributed to the alternative policies we also examine the role of misperceptions for the stagflationary experience of the 1970s and the disinflationary boom of the 1990s.
Spillovers Across U.S. Financial Markets
Authors: Rigobon Roberto , Sack Brian
Published: August 2019

Movements in the prices of different assets are likely to directly influence one another. This paper develops a model that identifies the contemporaneous interactions between asset prices in U.S. financial markets by relying on the heteroskedasticity in their movements. In particular, we estimate a "structural-form GARCH" modle that includes the short-term interest rate, the long-term interst rate, and the stock market. The results indicate that there are strong contemporaneous interactions between these variables. Accounting for this behavior is critical for interpreting daily changes in asset prices and for predicting the future paths of their variances and correlations. We demonstrate the importance of this consideration in a risk-management application.
The Long-Run Relationship between House Prices and Income: Evidence from Local Housing Markets
Authors: Gallin Joshua Hojvat
Published: August 2019

The proposition that "housing prices can't continue to outpace growth in household income&quot; (Wall Street Journal; July 25, 2002) is the received wisdom among many housing-market observers. More formally, many in the housing literature argue that house prices and income are cointegrated. In this paper, I show that the data do not support this view. Standard tests using 27 years of national-level data do not find evidence of cointegration. However, it is known that tests for cointegration have low power, especially in small samples. I use panel-data tests for cointegration that have been shown to be more powerful than their standard time-series counterparts to test for cointegration in a panel of 95 metro areas over 23 years. Using a bootstrap approach to allow for cross-correlations in city-level house-price shocks, I show that even these more powerful tests do not reject the hypothesis of no cointegration. Thus the error-correction specification for house prices and income commonly found in the literature may be inappropriate.
Estimates of the Term Premium on Near-dated Federal Funds Futures Contracts
Authors: Durham J. B.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines estimates of the term premium on federal funds futures rates, with a focus on near-dated contracts and therefore the more immediate policy horizon. The first set of methods assumes that the term premium is constant over time. Under this framework, calculations that use survey data to proxy for forecast errors produce more intuitive results than estimates based on the restrictive assumption that forecast errors average to zero over the sample. The second set of methods allows the term premium to vary over time, but the results based on the term structure of near-dated federal funds futures contracts are highly volatile, which perhaps reflects numerous technical factors in the underlying federal funds market. Finally, under an asset-pricing approach, the CAPM suggests that the risk premium on federal funds futures is either less than or equal to zero, while APT indicates that it can be positive.
Minimum Wages, Labor Market Institutions, and Youth Employment: A Cross-National Analysis
Authors: Wascher William L. , Neumark David
Published: August 2019

We estimate the employment effects of changes in national minimum wages using a pooled cross-section time-series data set comprising 17 OECD countries for the period 1975-2000, focusing on the impact of cross-country differences in minimum wage systems and in other labor market institutions and policies that may either offset or amplify the effects of minimum wages. The average minimum wage effects we estimate using this sample are consistent with the view that minimum wages cause employment losses among youths. However, the evidence also suggests that the employment effects of minimum wages vary considerably across countries. In particular, disemployment effects of minimum wages appear to be smaller in countries that have subminimum wage provisions for youths. Regarding other labor market policies and institutions, we find that more restrictive labor standards and higher union coverage strengthen the disemployment effects of minimum wages, while employment protection laws and active labor market policies designed to bring unemployed individuals into the work force help to offset these effects. Overall, the disemployment effects of minimum wages are strongest in the countries with the least regulated labor markets.
Declining Required Reserves, Funds Rate Volatility, and Open Market Operations
Authors: Demiralp Selva , Farley Dennis
Published: August 2019

The standard view of the monetary transmission mechanism rests on the central bank's ability to manipulate the overnight interest rate by controlling the reserve supply. In the 1990s, there was a significant decline in the level of reserve balances in the U.S. accompanied at first by an increase in the funds rate volatility. However, following this initial rise, volatility declined. In this paper, we find evidence of a structural break in volatility. We then estimate a tobit model of the major types of temporary open market operations and conclude that there have been changes in the Desk's reaction function that played a major role in controlling volatility.
Do Banks Strategically Time Public Bond Issuance Because of the Accompanying Disclosure, Due Diligence, and Investor Scrutiny?
Authors: Covitz Daniel M. , Harrison Paul
Published: August 2019

This paper tests a new hypothesis that bank managers issue bonds, at least in part, to convey positive, private information and refrain from issuance to hide negative, private information. We find evidence for this hypothesis, using ratings migrations, equity returns, bond issuance, and balance sheet data for US bank holding companies. The results add to our understanding of the role of “market discipline” in monitoring bank holding companies and also inform upon how proposed regulatory requirements that banking organizations frequently issue public bonds might augment “market discipline.”
Economic and Regulatory Capital Allocation for Revolving Retail Exposures
Authors: Perli Roberto , Nayda William I.
Published: August 2019

The latest revision of the Internal Ratings Based approach of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's New Capital Accord Proposal for retail portfolios contains a significant innovation relative to previous versions: the recognition that, for revolving credits, future margin income will be available to cover losses before a bank's capital is threatened. We assemble a mini-portfolio of revolving exposures and we compare the capital charges generated by the latest Basel's formula with the capital charges generated by two possible earnings-at-risk internal capital allocation models. We find that in general, Basel's capital ratios are closer to those generated by our models for the groups with lower credit risk. We attribute the discrepancies to the different ways Basel and our models account for future margin income, to Basel assumptions about asset correlations, and to one our models taking macroeconomic conditions explicitly into account.
Volatility Puzzles: A Unified Framework for Gauging Return-Volatility Regressions
Authors: Bollerslev Tim , Zhou Hao
Published: August 2019

This paper provides a simple unified framework for assessing the empirical linkages between returns and realized and implied volatilities. First, we show that whereas the volatility feedback effect as measured by the sign of the correlation between contemporaneous return and realized volatility depends importantly on the underlying structural model parameters, the correlation between return and implied volatility is unambiguously positive for all reasonable parameter configurations. Second, the lagged return-volatility asymmetry, or the leverage effect, is always stronger for implied than realized volatility. Third, implied volatilities generally provide downward biased forecasts of subsequent realized volatilities. Our results help explain previous findings reported in the extant empirical literature, and is further corroborated by new estimation results for a sample of monthly returns and implied and realized volatilities for the aggregate S&P; market index.
The Replacement Demand for Motor Vehicles: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances
Authors: Aizcorbe Ana M. , Starr Martha A. , Hickman James T.
Published: August 2019

The motor vehicle industry has undergone important changes in recent years, including a shift in production from autos to light trucks and growth of vehicle leasing. This paper uses household-level data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances to document changes in households' acquisitions and financing of motor vehicles from 1989 to 2001. We examine what types of vehicles households had, what financing arrangements were used to acquire them, and how vehicle holdings vary with such household characteristics as income, age, wealth, and creditworthiness. The data provide useful insights into the determinants of replacement demand and the use of alternative financing arrangements like leasing.
Interest Rates as Options: Assessing the Markets' View of the Liquidity Trap
Authors: Bomfim Antulio N.
Published: August 2019

Nominal short term interest rates have been low in the United States, so low that some have wondered whether the federal funds rate is likely to hit its lower bound at 0 percent. Such a scenario, which some economists have called the liquidity trap, would imply that the Federal Reserve could no longer lower short-term interest rates to counter any deflationary tendencies in the economy. In this paper, I use an affine term structure model to infer what interest rates tell us about the probability, as assessed by financial market participants, of such an event taking place. I also examine whether U.S. short-term rates have been low enough to distort the shape of the yield curve.
Can Rational Expectations Sticky-Price Models Explain Inflation Dynamics?
Authors: Rudd Jeremy Bay , Whelan Karl
Published: August 2019

The canonical inflation specification in sticky-price rational expectations models (the new-Keynesian Phillips curve) is often criticized on the grounds that it fails to account for the dependence of inflation on its own lags. In response, many recent studies have employed a "hybrid" sticky-price specification in which inflation depends on a weighted average of lagged and expected future values of itself, in addition to a driving variable such as the output gap. In this paper, we consider some simple tests of the hybrid model that are derived from the model's closed-form solution. Our results suggest that the hybrid model provides a poor description of empirical inflation dynamics, and that there is little evidence of the type of rational forward-looking behavior implied by the model.
Estimating the Worldwide Volume of Counterfeit U.S. Currency: Data and Extrapolation
Authors: Judson Ruth A. , Porter Richard D.
Published: August 2019

The incidence of currency counterfeiting and the possible total stock of counterfeits in circulation are popular topics of speculation and discussion in the press and are of substantial practical interest to the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Secret Service. This paper assembles data from Federal Reserve and U.S. Secret Service sources and presents a range of estimates for the number of counterfeits in circulation. In addition, the paper presents figures on counterfeit passing activity by denomination, location, and method of production. The paper has two main conclusions: first, the stock of counterfeits in the world as a whole is likely on the order of 1 or fewer per 10,000 in both piece and value terms; second, losses to the U.S. public from the most commonly used note, the $20, are relatively small, and are miniscule when only counterfeit notes of reasonable quality are considered.
Central Bank Talk: Does It Matter and Why?
Authors: Kohn Donald L. , Sack Brian
Published: August 2019

Statements released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and congressional testimony by Chairman Greenspan are found to significantly affect market interest rates, indicating that central bank "talk" conveys important information to market participants. These effects arise not only because the statements provide information about the near-term policy inclinations of the FOMC but also because the statements convey information about the outlook for the economy. By contrast, statements raising questions about asset valuations typically have not generated a significant response of those asset prices.
What If Welfare had no Work Requirements? The Age of Youngest Child Exemption and the Rise in Employment of Single Mothers
Authors: Pingle Jonathan F.
Published: August 2019

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 required states to increase welfare recipient employment and participation in welfare-to-work programs. These work requirements are sometimes credited for bringing about large employment increases among single mothers. However, this paper finds that employment among single mothers who were exempted from work requirements because they had young children rose as much as that of other single mothers. The results imply that the employment gains among single mothers in the late 1990s were due to economic growth and other policy changes rather than to the work requirements.
Asset Prices and Rents in a GE Model with Imperfect Competition
Authors: Lafourcade Pierre
Published: August 2019

This paper analyses the general equilibrium effects on asset valuation and capital accumulation of an exogenous drop in the rate of return required by investors in a model of production with imperfectly competitive product markets. The model improves substantially on the standard perfectly competitive neo-classical framework, by dissociating the behavior of marginal and average q. It tracks more closely current observed data on the ratio of stock-market value to the economy's capital base, while uncoupling this valuation ratio from investment behavior. The model does so by assuming that asset holders price not only the future marginal productivity of capital, but also the value of monopoly franchises, which arise from the interplay of market power and returns to scale.
Risk-based Pricing of Interest Rates in Household Loan Markets
Authors: Edelberg Wendy
Published: August 2019

Focusing on observable default risk's role in loan terms and the subsequent consequences for household behavior, this paper shows that lenders increasingly used risk-based pricing of interest rates in consumer loan markets during the mid-1990s. It tests three resulting predictions. First, the premium paid per unit of risk should have increased over this period. Second, debt levels should react accordingly. Third, fewer high-risk households should be denied credit, further contributing to the interest rate spread between the highest- and lowest-risk borrowers. For those obtaining loans, the premium paid per unit of risk did indeed become significantly larger over this time period. For example, given a 0.01 increase in the probability of bankruptcy, the corresponding interest rate increase tripled for first mortgages, doubled for automobile loans and rose nearly six times for second mortgages. Additionally, changes in borrowing levels and debt access reflected these new pricing practices, particularly for secured debt. Borrowing increased most for the low-risk households who saw their relative borrowing costs fall. Furthermore, while credit access increased for very high-risk households, the increases in their risk premiums implied that their borrowing as a whole either rose less or, sometimes, fell.
Testing Conflicts of Interest at Bond Rating Agencies with Market Anticipation: Evidence that Reputation Incentives Dominate
Authors: Covitz Daniel M. , Harrison Paul
Published: August 2019

This paper presents the first comprehensive test of whether well-known conflicts of interest at bond rating agencies importantly influence their actions. This hypothesis is tested against the alternative that rating agency actions are primarily influenced by a countervailing incentive to protect their reputations as delegated monitors. These two hypotheses generate a number of testable predictions regarding the anticipation of credit-rating downgrades by the bond market, which we investigate using a new data set of about 2,000 credit rating migrations from Moody's and Standard & Poor's, and matching issuer-level bond prices. The findings strongly indicate that rating changes do not appear to be importantly influenced by rating agency conflicts of interest but, rather, suggest that rating agencies are motivated primarily by reputation-related incentives.
Market Structure and Market Definition: The Case of Small Market Banks and Thrifts
Authors: Cohen Andrew M.
Published: August 2019

This paper introduces a simple method to test between two general approaches to defining bank and thrift product markets. I estimate two models that endogenize market structure using data on banks and thrifts from 1,884 rural markets for the year 2000. The first model assumes that banks and thrifts are in &quot;independent product markets,&quot; i.e., that bank profitability depends only on competition from other banks and that thrift profitability depends only on competition from other thrifts. An alternative model is then estimated assuming that banks and thrifts are &quot;perfect strategic substitutes,&quot; i.e., that a bank&#x27;s equilibrium profitability falls equally with the presence of another bank or an additional thrift (and vice-versa). A transformation of the likelihood for the &quot;independent markets&quot; model allows me to test it against the &quot;perfect strategic substitutes&quot; model using Vuong&#x27;s (1989) non-nested likelihood ratio test. The hypothesis that banks and thrifts compete in independent product markets is soundly rejected against the hypothesis that banks and thrifts are perfect strategic substitutes.
Measuring the Effects of Monetary Policy: A Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) Approach
Authors: Bernanke Ben , Boivin Jean , Eliasz Piotr
Published: August 2019

Structural vector autoregressions (VARs) are widely used to trace out the effect of monetary policy innovations on the economy. However, the sparse information sets typically used in these empirical models lead to at least two potential problems with the results. First, to the extent that central banks and the private sector have information not reflected in the VAR, the measurement of policy innovations is likely to be contaminated. A second problem is that impulse responses can be observed only for the included variables, which generally constitute only a small subset of the variables that the researcher and policymaker care about. In this paper we investigate one potential solution to this limited information problem, which combines the standard structural VAR analysis with recent developments in factor analysis for large data sets. We find that the information that our factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) methodology exploits is indeed important to properly identify the monetary transmission mechanism. Overall, our results provide a comprehensive and coherent picture of the effect of monetary policy on the economy.
The Effects of the 1986 and 1993 Tax Reforms on Self-Employment
Authors: Moore Kevin B.
Published: August 2019

This paper adds a new dimension to the literature that uses individual level data to assess the effects of tax policy on self-employment. Specifically, this study uses repeated cross-section data from the Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCF) against the background of the tax reforms of 1986 and 1993 to gauge the influence of taxes on self-employment. Using the 1986 and 1993 tax rate reforms as natural experiments allows for the identification of the effect of taxes on the choice to become self-employed. The findings of this paper indicate that marginal and average tax rates are negatively related to the propensity to become self-employed. However, these effects are only significant for the 1986 tax reforms and are sensitive to the model specification. Other factors, such as education, industry, wealth, and attitude toward risks, are consistently more important influences on the choice to become self-employed.
Uncertainty and Investment: An Empirical Investigation Using Data on Analysts' Profits Forecasts
Authors: Bond Stephen R. , Cummins Jason G.
Published: August 2019

We investigate the empirical relationship between company investment and measures of uncertainty, controlling for the effect of expected future profitability on current investment decisions. We consider three measures of uncertainty derived from (1) the volatility in the firm's stock returns; (2) disagreement among securities analysts in their forecasts of the firm's future profits; and (3) the variance of forecast errors in analysts' forecasts of the firm's future profits. We consider two controls for expected profitability: (1) a standard measure of Brainard-Tobin's q constructed from the firm's stock market valuation; and (2) an alternative measure of the q ratio constructed from discounted forecasts of the firm's future profits. Our sample consists of publicly-traded U.S. companies that were tracked by two or more securities analysts for at least four consecutive years between 1982 and 1999. The results show that all three measures of uncertainty are positively correlated and appear to pick up underlying movements in uncertainty. When we consider these measures individually, we find a significantly negative long-run effect of higher uncertainty on capital accumulation, which is robust to the inclusion of either of our controls for expected profitability. When we consider our uncertainty measures jointly, we find that the level of disagreement among analysts provides the most informative indicator for identifying this long-run effect of uncertainty on capital accumulation. In addition, we find a significantly negative short-run interaction term between share price volatility and current sales growth, consistent with the idea that investment will respond less to a given demand shock at higher levels of uncertainty. These effects of uncertainty on investment are shown to be quantitatively as well as statistically significant.
The Geography of Stock Market Participation: The Influence of Communities and Local Firms
Authors: Brown Jeffrey R. , Ivkovich Zoran , Smith Paul A. , Weisbenner Scott J.
Published: August 2019

This paper is the first to investigate the importance of geography in explaining equity market participation. We provide evidence to support two distinct local area effects. The first is a community ownership effect, that is, individuals are influenced by the investment behavior of members of their community. Specifically, a ten percentage-point increase in equity market participation of the other members of one's community makes it two percentage points more likely that the individual will invest in stocks, conditional on a rich set of controls. We find further evidence that the influence of community members is strongest for less financially sophisticated households and strongest within "peer groups" as defined by age and income categories. The second is that proximity to publicly-traded firms also increases equity market participation. In particular, the presence of publicly-traded firms within 50 miles and the share of U.S. market value headquartered within the community are significantly correlated with equity ownership of individuals. These results are quite robust, holding up in the presence of a wide range of individual and community controls, the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and specification checks to rule out that the relations are driven solely by ownership of the stock of one's employer.
401(k) Matching Contributions in Company Stock: Costs and Benefits for Firms and Workers
Authors: Brown Jeffrey R. , Liang J. Nellie , Weisbenner Scott J.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines why some employers provide matching contributions to 401(k) plans in company stock and explores the implications of match policy for employee retirement wealth. Unlike stock option grants to non-executives, a firm's decision to match in company stock does not appear to be strongly correlated with cash flow or with measures of the benefits of aligning incentives of employees and employers. Rather, we find evidence that firms are more likely to provide the match in company stock if firm risk is low (i.e. lower stock price volatility and lower bankruptcy risk) and employees are also covered by a defined benefit plan. These findings suggest that firms consider the retirement security of their workers in making the match decision, either because firms want to minimize the risk of violating their fiduciary responsibility or because employees more fully value company stock at companies with lower firm-specific risk. Evidence also indicates that firms may want to match in company stock to boost employee ownership, perhaps to help deter takeovers, or because of the tax advantages for dividends on the company stock match. Simulation results suggest that sufficiently risk-tolerant individuals actually prefer a 401(k) plan at a company with a company stock match to a plan at a company with an unrestricted match, unless the equity premium is reduced substantially.
Loan Commitments and Private Firms
Authors: Agarwal Sumit , Chomsisengphet Souphala , Driscoll John C.
Published: August 2019

Bank lending is an important source of funding for firms. Most loans are in the form of credit lines. Empirical studies of line demand have been complicated by their use of data on publicly traded firms, which have a wide menu of financing options. We avoid this problem by using a unique proprietary data set from a large financial institution of loan commitments made to 712 privately-held firms. We test Martin and Santomero's (1997) model, in which lines give firms the speed and flexibility to pursue investment opportunities. Our findings are consistent with their predictions. Firms facing higher rates and fees have smaller credit lines. Firms with higher growth commit to larger lines of credit and have a higher rate of line utilization. Firms experiencing more uncertainty in their funding needs commit to smaller credit lines. Almost all firms convert unused credit line portions into spot loans and take out new lines.
Overnight Interbank Loan Markets
Authors: Demiralp Selva , Preslopsky Brian , Whitesell William C.
Published: August 2019

This paper investigates transactions and interest rates on brokered and direct trades in federal funds, Eurodollar transactions, and repurchase agreements, all of which are used by banks in overnight funding. We expand on earlier work on calendar-day effects in these markets, investigating also volumes of funding in recent years. Our data include daily trades in federal funds reported by major brokers and also records of uncollateralized transactions over the wire transfer system operated by the Federal Reserve. We find that the share of the overnight interbank loan market represented by brokered fed funds has decreased and is now only about one-third of the total. We also show evidence of close but incomplete arbitrage among the major segments of the overnight interbank market, though the specific calendarday patterns of spreads and volatilities have evolved relative to the literature using earlier sample periods.
To Leave or Not to Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives
Authors: Kopczuk Wojciech , Lupton Joseph P.
Published: August 2019

In this paper, we examine the effect of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the desire to die with positive net worth. Using a structural life-cycle model nested in a switching regression with unknown sample separation, we find that roughly 70 percent of the elderly single population has a bequest motive that may or may not be active depending on the level of resources at a given age. Both the presence and the magnitude of the bequest motive are statistically and economically significant. All else being equal, households with an operative bequest motive spend between $4,000 and $9,000 a year less on consumption expenditures on average. We conclude that, among the elderly single households in our sample, approximately half of bequeathed wealth will be due to a bequest motive.
Multimarket Bank Pricing: An Empirical Investigation of Deposit Interest Rates
Authors: Hannan Timothy H. , Prager Robin A.
Published: August 2019

In recent years, the number of large, geographically diversified banking organizations operating in the U.S. has grown. Empirical studies have found that, at least in the case of deposit interest rates, many of these banks offer the same rate for a given type of account throughout a state, or, in some cases, a broader geographical area. This phenomenon of uniform pricing raises questions as to what competitive factors are relevant in explaining the deposit interest rates offered by large multimarket banks. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence regarding the determinants of the deposit interest rates offered by these banking organizations.
Is Moderate-To-High Inflation Inherently Unstable?
Authors: Kiley Michael T.
Published: August 2019

The data across time and countries suggest the level and variance of inflation are highly correlated. This paper examines the effect of trend inflation on the ability of the monetary authority to ensure a determinate equilibrium and macroeconomic stability in a sticky-price model. Trend inflation increases the importance of future marginal costs for current price-setters in a staggered price-setting model. The greater importance of expectations makes it more difficult for the monetary authority to ensure stability; in fact, equilibrium determinacy cannot be achieved through reasonable specifications of nominal interest rate (Taylor) rules at moderate-to-high levels of inflation (for example, at levels around 4 percent per year). If monetary policymakers have followed these types of policy rules in the past, this result may explain why moderate-to-high inflation is associated with inflation volatility. It also suggests a revision to interpretations of the 1970s. At that time, inflation in many countries was at least moderate, which can contribute to economic instability. The results suggest that some moderate-inflation countries that have recently adopted inflation targeting may want to commit to low target inflation rates.
Competition, Product Differentiation and Quality Provision: An Empirical Equilibrium Analysis of Bank Branching Decisions
Authors: Cohen Andrew M. , Mazzeo Michael
Published: August 2019

We analyze the effects of market structure on the branching decisions of three types of depository institution: multimarket banks, single-market banks, and thrift institutions. We argue that additional branches increase quality for an institution&#x27;s consumers, and examine the interaction between market structure and this particular measure of quality. We account for endogenous market structure using an equilibrium structural model, which corrects for bias caused by correlation in the unobservables that may drive entry and branching activity. We estimate the model using data from over 1,750 concentrated rural markets. Our results demonstrate the importance of product differentiation, as competition from multimarket banks is associated with denser branch networks for all types of firm while the opposite correlation holds when competitors are single-market banks or thrifts.
Macroeconomic Volatility, Predictability and Uncertainty in the Great Moderation: Evidence from the Survey of Professional Forecasters
Authors: Campbell Sean D.
Published: August 2019

An emerging and influential literature finds a large and significant decline in macroeconomic volatility since the middle of the 1980's. In this paper, I examine the extent to which the decline in annual and quarterly real output volatility since the onset of this period of Great Moderation can be attributed to changes in macroeconomic uncertainty and macroeconomic predictability. I use point forecasts of future real output growth from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) between 1969 and 2003 as a proxy for the predictable component of real output growth. The results indicate that declining predictability has played a significant role in the Great Moderation. Prior to the Great Moderation, professional forecasts explained roughly 30 percent of the variance in output growth. Post-moderation, the predictive ability of professional forecasts quickly vanished. This decline in predictability implies that interpreting the decline in the volatility of output shocks identified from a fixed parameter autoregressive model overstates the decline in macroeconomic uncertainty by between 20-40 percent. I also examine forecasts of the probability of a decline in real output from the SPF. Consistent with the findings from the point forecast data, these probability forecasts indicate that the decline in macroeconomic uncertainty as measured from an autoregressive model is overstated. While both the average probability of a decline in output and the uncertainty surrounding future declines in output computed from an autoregressive model decrease sharply after the mid-1980's, the SPF probability forecasts exhibit no such decrease. I assess the economic significance of the overstatement in the decline of macroeconomic uncertainty in terms of its effects on forecasts of the future equity premium. These results indicate that using the decline in the total volatility of real output growth along with the standard CCAPM model overstates the decline in the future equity premium by roughly 20 percent.
Market Discipline in Banking Reconsidered: The Roles of Funding Manager Decisions and Deposit Insurance Reform
Authors: Covitz Daniel M. , Hancock Diana , Kwast Myron L.
Published: August 2019

We find that the risk-sensitivity of bank holding company subordinated debt spreads at issuance increased with regulatory reforms that were designed to reduce conjectural government guarantees, but declined somewhat with subsequent reforms that were aimed in part at reducing regulatory forbearance. In addition, we test and find evidence for a straightforward form of "market discipline:" The extent to which bond issuance penalizes relatively risky banks. Evidence for such discipline only appears in the periods after conjectural government guarantees were reduced.
A Consistent Accounting of U.S. Productivity Growth
Authors: Bartelsman Eric J. , Beaulieu J. Joseph
Published: August 2019

This paper is an exploration in the relative performance and sources of productivity growth of U.S. private businesses across industries and legal structure. In order to assemble the disparate data from various sources to develop a coherent productivity database, we developed a general system to manage data. The paper describes this system and then applies it by building such a database. The paper presents updated estimates of gross output, intermediate input use, and value added using the BEA's GPO data set. It supplements these data with estimates of missing data on intermediate input use and prices for the 1977-1986 period, and it concords these data, which are organized on a 1972 SIC basis, to the 1987 SIC in order to have consistent time series covering the last twenty-four years. It further refines these data by disaggregating them by legal form of organization. The paper also presents estimates of labor hours, labor quality, investment, capital services and, consequently, multifactor productivity disaggregated by industry and legal form of organization, and it analyzes the contribution of various industries and business organizations to aggregate productivity. The paper also reconsiders these estimates in light of the surge in spending in advance of the century-date change.
Quantitative Monetary Easing and Risk in Financial Asset Markets
Authors: Kimura Takeshi , Small David H.
Published: August 2019

In this paper, we empirically examine the portfolio-rebalancing effects stemming from the policy of "quantitative monetary easing" recently undertaken by the Bank of Japan when the nominal short-term interest rate was virtually at zero. Portfolio-rebalancing effects resulting from the open market purchase of long-term government bonds under this policy have been statistically significant. Our results also show that the portfolio-rebalancing effects were beneficial in that they reduced risk premiums on assets with counter-cyclical returns, such as government and high-grade corporate bonds. But, they may have generated the adverse effects of increasing risk premiums on assets with pro-cyclical returns, such as equities and low-grade corporate bonds. These results are consistent with a CAPM framework in which business-cycle risk importantly affects risk premiums. Our estimates capture only some of the effects of quantitative easing and thus do not imply that the complete set of effects were adverse on net for Japan's economy. However, our analysis counsels caution in accepting the view that, ceteris paribus, a massive large-scale purchase of long-term government bonds by a central bank provides unambiguously positive net benefits to financial markets at zero short-term interest rates.
Monetary Policy and Inflation Dynamics
Authors: Roberts John M.
Published: August 2019

Since the early 1980s, the United States economy has changed in some important ways: Inflation now rises considerably less when unemployment falls and the volatility of output and inflation have fallen sharply. This paper examines whether changes in monetary policy can account for these phenomena. The results suggest that changes in the parameters and shock volatility of monetary policy reaction functions can account for most or all of the change in the inflation-unemployment relationship. As in other work, monetary-policy changes can explain only a small portion of the output growth volatility decline. However, changes in policy can explain a large proportion of the reduction in the volatility of the output gap. In addition, a broader concept of monetary-policy changes--one that includes improvements in the central bank's ability to measure potential output--enhances the ability of monetary policy to account for the changes in the economy.
Reading the Minds of Investors: An Empirical Term Structure Model for Policy Analysis
Authors: Clouse James A.
Published: August 2019

Building on the recent macro finance literature, this paper develops an empirical term structure model in which investors' judgmental forecasts of macro variables play an important role. The model allows for a limited form of time-variation in the dynamics describing the behavior of short-term interest rates and macro variables. As a result, changes in economic forecasts over time reflect the influence of both economic shocks and perceived changes in economic structure. The latter, in particular, are shown to be important in explaining the evolution of the yield curve over time. An interest rate accounting framework based on the model is applied in parsing changes in long-term interest rates into portions associated with changes in term premiums and changes in expected future short-rates. The changes in expected future short rates are then further decomposed into portions attributable to changes in the expected future paths for inflation, the unemployment rate, and GDP growth and also to a fourth factor interpreted as changes in the "stance of monetary policy." The model results indicate that changes in long-term interest rates, on average, have been about equal parts changes in term premia and changes in expected future short rates. Changes in expected future short rates seem to be driven largely by changes in the stance of monetary policy and in the outlook for inflation while the estimated influence of changes in the outlook for the unemployment rate and GDP growth is more muted.
The Reform of October 1979: How It Happened and Why
Authors: Lindsey David E. , Orphanides Athanasios , Rasche Robert H.
Published: August 2019

This study offers a historical review of the monetary policy reform of October 6, 1979, and discusses the influences behind it and its significance. We lay out the record from the start of 1979 through the spring of 1980, relying almost exclusively upon contemporaneous sources, including the recently released transcripts of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings during 1979. We then present and discuss in detail the reasons for the FOMC's adoption of the reform and the communications challenge presented to the Committee during this period. Further, we examine whether the essential characteristics of the reform were consistent with monetarism, new, neo, or old-fashioned Keynesianism, nominal income targeting, and inflation targeting. The record suggests that the reform was adopted when the FOMC became convinced that its earlier gradualist strategy using finely tuned interest rate moves had proved inadequate for fighting inflation and reversing inflation expectations. The new plan had to break dramatically with established practice, allow for the possibility of substantial increases in short-term interest rates, yet be politically acceptable, and convince financial markets participants that it would be effective. The new operating procedures were also adopted for the pragmatic reason that they would likely succeed.
The Effect of Housing Government-Sponsored Enterprises on Mortgage Rates
Authors: Passmore Wayne , Sherlund Shane M. , Burgess Gillian
Published: August 2019

We derive a theoretical model of how jumbo and conforming mortgage rates are determined and how the jumbo-conforming spread might arise. We show that mortgage rates reflect the cost of funding mortgages and that this cost of funding can drive a wedge between jumbo and conforming rates (the jumbo-conforming spread). Further, we show how the jumbo-conforming spread widens when mortgage demand is high or core deposits are not sufficient to fund mortgage demand, and tighten as the mortgage market becomes more liquid and realizes economies of scale. Using MIRS data for April 1997 through May 2003, we estimate that the GSE funding advantage accounts for about seven basis points of the 15-18 basis point jumbo-conforming spread.
Does Trading Frequency Affect Subordinated Debt Spreads?
Authors: Bianchi Christopher , Hancock Diana , Kawano Laura
Published: August 2019

Because illiquid bonds may be relatively poorly priced, the ability to infer investor perceptions of changes in a banking organization's financial health from such bonds may be obscured. To examine the time-series effect of trading frequency on subordinated debt spreads, we consider the liquidity of subordinated debt for large, complex U.S. banking organizations over the 1987:Q2 - 2002:Q4 period. Since trade volumes are unobservable, we construct various measures of weekly trading frequency from observed bond prices. Using these indirect liquidity measures, we find evidence that trading frequency does significantly affect observed subordinated debt spreads. We also provide estimates for the premium of illiquidity.
An Empirical Analysis of Bond Recovery Rates: Exploring a Structural View of Default
Authors: Covitz Daniel M. , Han Song
Published: August 2019

A frictionless, structural view of default has the unrealistic implication that recovery rates on bonds, measured at default, should be close to 100 percent. This suggests that standard "frictions" such as default delays, corporate-valuation jumps, and bankruptcy costs may be important drivers of recovery rates. A structural view also suggests the existence of nonlinearities in the empirical relationship between recovery rates and their determinants. We explore these implications empirically and find direct evidence of jumps, and also evidence of the predicted nonlinearities. In particular, recovery rates increase as economic conditions improve from low levels, but decrease as economic conditions become robust. This suggests that improving economic conditions tend to boost firm values, but firms may tend to default during particularly robust times only when they have experienced large, negative shocks.