bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Firms' Relative Sensitivity to Aggregate Shock and the Dynamics of Gross Job Flows
Authors: Pinto Eugénio P.
Published: August 2019

We propose a measure for the importance of aggregate shocks for fluctuations in job flows at the firm level. Using data for the Portuguese economy, we find that large and old firms exhibit higher relative sensitivity to aggregate shocks and have a disproportional influence over the dynamics of aggregate job reallocation. In the overall economy, since large and old firms reallocate jobs less procyclically than small and young firms, job reallocation is less procyclical than if firm size and age classes were equally sensitive to aggregate shocks. A similar result applies in the manufacturing and the transportation and public utilities sectors. However, in the services and retail trade sectors the reallocation patterns are more similar across firm size and age, likely reflecting the expansion of existing and the creation of new industries. We conclude that large and old firms seem relatively more important to assess the state of the business cycle.
Factor Intensity and Price Rigidity: Evidence and Theory
Authors: Peneva Ekaterina V.
Published: August 2019

This paper establishes a new empirical finding: the degree of labor intensity and the degree of price flexibility are negatively correlated across industrial sectors. I model this in an economy with staggered nominal wage contracts and production sectors that differ in labor and capital intensities. Nominal disturbances affect capital-intensive and labor-intensive sectors asymmetrically: prices of labor-intensive goods change less than do prices of capital-intensive goods. In addition, when prices are costly to adjust, more firms in the capital-intensive sectors optimally choose to update their prices than firms in the labor-intensive sectors. Thus, varying factor intensity generates different degrees of price stickiness across sectors that face the same degree of wage rigidity.
Modeling Earnings Dynamics
Authors: Vidangos Ivan , Altonji Joseph G. , Smith Anthony
Published: August 2019

In this paper we use indirect inference to estimate a joint model of earnings, employment, job changes, wage rates, and work hours over a career. Our model incorporates duration dependence in several variables, multiple sources of unobserved heterogeneity, job-specific error components in both wages and hours, and measurement error. We use the model to address a number of important questions in labor economics, including the source of the experience profile of wages, the response of job changes to outside wage offers, and the effects of seniority on job changes. We provide estimates of the dynamic response of wage rates, hours, and earnings to various shocks and measure the relative contributions of the shocks to the variance of earnings in a given year and over a lifetime. We find that human capital accounts for most of the growth of earnings over a career although job seniority and job mobility also play significant roles. Unemployment shocks have a large impact on earnings in the short run as well a substantial long long-term effect that operates through the wage rate. Shocks associated with job changes and unemployment make a large contribution to the variance of career earnings and operate mostly through the job-specific error components in wages and hours.
Heterogeneous Car Buyers: A Stylized Fact
Authors: Aizcorbe Ana M. , Bridgman Benjamin , Nalewaik Jeremy J.
Published: August 2019

Using a new dataset, we document a systematic pattern in the demographic characteristics of car buyers over the model year: as vehicle prices fall over the model year, so do buyer incomes. This pattern is consistent with price-insensitive buyers purchasing early in the year, while others wait until prices decline, and suggests price skimming (i.e. intertemporal price discrimination). Such consumer heterogeneity over the model year raises questions for measuring quality improvements in new goods.
Demand-Driven Job Separation: Reconciling Search Models with the Ins and Outs of Unemployment
Authors: Barnichon Régis
Published: August 2019

This paper presents a search model of unemployment with a new mechanism of job separation based on firms' demand constraints. The model is consistent with the cyclical behavior of labor market variables and can account for three stylized facts about unemployment that the Mortensen-Pissarides (1994) model has difficulties explaining jointly: (i) the unemployment-vacancy correlation is negative, (ii) the contribution of the job separation rate to unemployment fluctuations is small but non-trivial, (iii) movements in the job separation rate are sharp and short-lived while movements in the job finding rate are persistent. In addition, the model can rationalize two hitherto unexplained findings: why unemployment inflows were less important in the last two decades, and why the asymmetric behavior of unemployment weakened after 1985.
What is the Chance that the Equity Premium Varies over Time? Evidence from Predictive Regressions
Authors: Wachter Jessica A. , Warusawitharana Missaka
Published: August 2019

We examine the evidence on stock return predictability in a Bayesian setting that includes uncertainty about both the existence and strength of predictability. We consider an investor who believes that excess stock returns exhibit predictability with prior probability q < 1. In addition, the investor downweights observed predictability by placing a prior distribution on the R2 of the predictability regression. When we apply our analysis to the dividend-price ratio, we find that even investors who are quite skeptical about the existence and strength of predictability sharply modify their views in favor of predictability when confronted by the evidence. We depart from previous model-selection work by treating the regressor as stochastic rather than known we find that this has a large impact on inference about time- varying expected returns.
Confidence Intervals for Long-Horizon Predictive Regressions Via Reverse Regressions
Authors: Wei Min , Wright Jonathan H.
Published: August 2019

Long-horizon predictive regressions in finance pose formidable econometric problems when estimated using the sample sizes that are typically available. A remedy that has been proposed by Hodrick (1992) is to run a reverse regression in which short-horizon returns are projected onto a long-run mean of some predictor. By covariance stationarity, the slope coefficient is zero in the reverse regression if and only if it is zero in the original regression, but testing the hypothesis in the reverse regression avoids small sample problems. Unfortunately this only allows us to test the null of no predictability. In this paper we show how to use the reverse regression to test other hypotheses about the slope coefficient in a long-horizon predictive regression, and to form confidence intervals for this coefficient. We show that this approach to inference works well in small samples.
Does Speculation Affect Spot Price Levels? The Case of Metals with and without Futures Markets
Authors: Korniotis George M.
Published: August 2019

This paper finds no evidence that speculative activity in futures markets for industrial metals caused higher spot prices in recent years. The empirical analysis focuses on industrial metals with and without futures contracts and is organized around two key themes. First, I show that the comovement between metals with and without futures contracts has not weakened in recent years as speculative activity has risen. Specifically, the annual and quarterly price growth rates of the two metal categories have been positively correlated with their growth rates experiencing a structural shift by the end of 2002. This comovement is driven by economic fundamentals because world GDP growth is strongly correlated with metal price growth, especially after 2002. The structural change in 2002 is also consistent with supply and demand information found in industry newsletters. In the second set of results, I focus more directly on financial speculation and spot price inflation. I use the S&P Goldman-Sachs Commodity Index returns to proxy for the volume of speculative activity and I show that these returns are unrelated to metal prices. The final test follows storage models, which suggest that speculation can affect spot markets only if it leads to physical hoarding. Focusing on metals with established futures markets, I find no evidence of physical hoarding because inventory growth is found to be negatively correlated with price growth rates.
Do Self-Insurance and Disability Insurance Prevent Consumption Loss on Disability?
Authors: Ball Steffan , Low Hamish W.
Published: August 2019

In this paper we show the extent to which public insurance and self-insurance mitigate the cost of health shocks that limit the ability to work. We use consumption data from the UK to estimate the insurance provided by the government disability programme and account for the effectiveness of alternative self-insurance mechanisms. Individuals with a work-limiting health condition, but in receipt of disability insurance, have 7 percent lower consumption than those without such a condition. Self-insurance through savings and a working partner each provide some insurance benefit, improving outcomes from 2 percent to 4 percent. Reductions in the generosity of incapacity benefit after 1995 are associated with increases in the consumption loss associated with disability.
Improving Real-Time Estimates of the Output Gap
Authors: Trimbur Thomas M.
Published: August 2019

This paper investigates strategies for real-time estimation of the output gap. First, I examine estimates from univariate models with stochastic cycles. This corresponds to the use of model-based band-pass filters in real-time, and I find that the turning points in real-time and final output gap series match more closely for higher order models and that the revisions properties and real-time accuracy are more favorable. Second, I investigate the use of capacity utilization as an auxiliary indicator to improve on output gap estimates in real-time. I find that this bivariate approach leads to significant gains in the accuracy of real-time estimates and in the quality of revisions.
Determinants of the Locations of Payday Lenders, Pawnshops and Check-Cashing Outlets
Authors: Prager Robin A.
Published: August 2019

A large and growing number of low-to-moderate income U.S. households rely upon alternative financial service providers (AFSPs) for a variety of credit products and transaction services, including payday loans, pawn loans, automobile title loans, tax refund anticipation loans and check-cashing services. The rapid growth of this segment of the financial services industry over the past decade has been quite controversial. One aspect of the controversy involves the location decisions of AFSPs. This study examines the determinants of the locations of three types of AFSPs--payday lenders, pawnshops, and check-cashing outlets. Using county-level data for the entire country, I find that the number of AFSP outlets per capita is significantly related to demographic characteristics of the county population (e.g., racial/ethnic composition, age, and education level), measures of the population's credit worthiness, and the stringency of state laws and regulations governing AFSPs.
The Evolution of a Financial Crisis: Panic in the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Market
Authors: Covitz Daniel M. , Liang J. Nellie , Suarez Gustavo A.
Published: August 2019

The $350 billion contraction in the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market in the last five months of 2007 played a central role in transforming concerns about the credit quality of mortgage-related assets into a global financial crisis. This paper attempts to better understand why the substantial contraction in ABCP occurred by measuring and analyzing runs on ABCP programs over the period from August 2007 through December 2007. While it has been suggested that commercial paper programs, like commercial banks, may be prone to runs, we are the first to conduct a comprehensive empirical analysis of runs in the ABCP market using a rich and novel issue-level data set for all ABCP programs in the U.S. market. A program is defined as being run when it does not issue new paper during a week despite having a substantial share of its outstandings scheduled to mature, and then continuing in a run until it issues. We find evidence of extensive runs: more than 100 programs (one-third of all ABCP programs) were in a run within weeks of the onset of the turmoil and the odds of subsequently leaving the run state were very low. We interpret this finding as an indication that the ABCP market was subject to a bank-like &#x27;panic.&#x27; We also find that while runs were linked to credit and liquidity exposures of individual programs, runs were also related importantly to non-program specific variables in the first several weeks of the turmoil, indicating that runs were relatively indiscriminate during the early part of the panic. Thus the ABCP market may be inherently unstable and a source of systemic risk.
A Framework for Assessing the Systemic Risk of Major Financial Institutions
Authors: Huang Xin , Zhou Hao , Zhu Haibin
Published: August 2019

In this paper we propose a framework for measuring and stress testing the systemic risk of a group of major financial institutions. The systemic risk is measured by the price of insurance against financial distress, which is based on ex ante measures of default probabilities of individual banks and forecasted asset return correlations. Importantly, using realized correlations estimated from high-frequency equity return data can significantly improve the accuracy of forecasted correlations. Our stress testing methodology, using an integrated micro-macro model, takes into account dynamic linkages between the health of major U.S. banks and macrofinancial conditions. Our results suggest that the theoretical insurance premium that would be charged to protect against losses that equal or exceed 15 percent of total liabilities of 12 major U.S. financial firms stood at $110 billion in March 2008 and had a projected upper bound of $250 billion in July 2008.
Intergenerational Aspects of Health Care
Authors: Sheiner Louise
Published: August 2019

The physical process of aging means that the use of health services varies significantly by age. This association between age and health care consumption raises a number of issues related to intergenerational and intragenerational equity, including the allocation of societal resources across age groups and the effects of population aging and health cost growth on public sector health care burdens and, hence, on intergenerational redistribution. This working paper (forthcoming as a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Health Economics) provides a detailed look at the theoretical and empirical relationships between health spending and age, both in the US and internationally, and reviews the evidence on the intergenerational redistribution associated with public health spending over time.
Education's Role in China's Structural Transformation
Authors: Lee Soohyung , Malin Benjamin
Published: August 2019

We explore education&#x27;s role in improving the allocation of labor between China&#x27;s agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and measure the portion of China&#x27;s recent growth attributable to this channel. Building from micro-level estimates, we find that education&#x27;s impact on labor reallocation between sectors accounts for about 9 percent of Chinese growth, whereas its impact on within-sector human capital growth explains only 2 percent. Our findings suggest that, when frictions cause large productivity gaps across sectors and returns to education are greater in higher-productivity sectors, education policy may be a useful tool for increasing efficiency.
Reversing the Trend: The Recent Expansion of the Reverse Mortgage Market
Authors: Shan Hui
Published: August 2019

Reverse mortgages allow elderly homeowners to tap into their housing wealth without having to sell or move out of their homes. However, very few eligible homeowners have used reverse mortgages to achieve consumption smoothing until recently when the reverse mortgage market in the United States witnessed substantial growth. This paper examines 1989-2007 loan-level reverse mortgage data and presents a number of findings. First, I show that recent reverse mortgage borrowers are significantly different from earlier borrowers in many respects. Second, I find that borrowers who take the line-of-credit payment plan, single male borrowers, and borrowers with higher house values exit their homes sooner than other reverse mortgage borrowers. Third, I combine the reverse mortgage data with county-level house price data to show that elderly homeowners are more likely to purchase reverse mortgages when the local housing market is at its peak. This finding suggests that the 2000-05 housing market boom may be partially responsible for the rapid growth of reverse mortgage markets. Lastly, I show that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage limits, which cap the amount of housing wealth that an eligible homeowner can borrow against, have no effect on the demand for reverse mortgages. The findings have important implications to both policy-making and the economics of housing and aging.
Firm Volatility and Banks: Evidence from U.S. Banking Deregulation
Authors: Correa Ricardo , Suarez Gustavo A.
Published: August 2019

This paper exploits the staggered timing of state-level banking deregulation in the United States during the 1980s to study the causal effect of banking integration on the volatility of non-financial corporations. We find that firm-level employment, production, sales, and cash flows are less volatile after interstate banking deregulation, particularly for firms that have limited access to external finance. This finding suggests that bank-dependent firms exploit wider access to finance after deregulation to smooth out idiosyncratic shocks. In fact, short-term credit becomes less pro-cyclical after out-of-state bank entry is permitted. Finally, lower volatility in real-side variables after deregulation translates into lower idiosyncratic risk in stock returns.
Information Sharing and Stock Market Participation: Evidence from Extended Families
Authors: Li Geng
Published: August 2019

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we document that, controlling for observable characteristics, household investors&#x27; likelihood of entering the stock market within the next five years is about 30 percent higher if their parents or children had entered the stock market during the previous five years. Because even family members who live far away from each other tend to communicate frequently, despite the fact that interactions among people living close geographically have declined with the rise of alternative social channels, we argue that these findings highlight the significance of information sharing regarding household financial decisions. In addition, focusing on the sequential patterns of stock market entry, we explicitly take into account the time needed for information to be shared and disseminated among family members. Our finding that one member&#x27;s entry positively influences future entries of other family members at distinct stages of the life cycle allows us to largely rule out the hypothesis that the observed correlations in stock market entries are primarily caused by common preferences shared by family members. Furthermore, because we do not find similar sequential patterns in stock market exits, our results do not support the hypothesis of herding behavior.
The Rigidity of Labor: Processing Savings and Work Decisions through Shannon's Channels
Authors: Tutino Antonella
Published: August 2019

This paper argues that constraining people to choose consumption and labor under finite Shannon capacity produces results in line with U.S. business cycle data. My model has a simple partial equilibrium setting in which risk averse consumers keep high labor supply and low consumption profile at early stage of life to hedge against wealth fluctuations. They rationally choose to keep consumption and labor unchanged until they collect enough information. I find that at high frequency consumption appears to be more sluggish than labor supply. However, when people decide to change consumption they do so by a large amount. This combination leads to higher variance of consumption with respect to labor supply. My model also finds high persistence and strong comovement of consumption and employment and delayed response of consumption and labor with respect to wealth. Furthermore, my framework generates endogenously a wedge between marginal rate of substitution and marginal rate of transformation or wages. Such wedge is bigger and more volatile the lower information flow. These findings suggest that rational inattention offers a promising avenue to bridge the gap between theory and U.S. business cycle data.
The Impact of Low-Skilled Immigration on the Youth Labor Market
Authors: Smith Christopher L.
Published: August 2019

The employment-to-population rate of high-school aged youth has fallen by about 20 percentage points since the late 1980s. The human capital implications of this decline depend on the reasons behind it. In this paper, I demonstrate that growth in the number of less-educated immigrants may have considerably reduced youth employment rates. This finding stands in contrast to previous research that generally identifies, at most, a modest negative relationship across states or cities between immigration levels and adult labor market outcomes. At least two factors are at work: there is greater overlap between the jobs that youth and less-educated adult immigrants traditionally do, and youth labor supply is more responsive to immigration-induced changes in their wage. Despite a slight increase in schooling rates in response to immigration, I find little evidence that reduced employment rates are associated with higher earnings ten years later in life. This raises the possibility that an immigration-induced reduction in youth employment, on net, hinders youths&#x27; human capital accumulation.
Constant Proportion Debt Obligations: A Post-Mortem Analysis of Rating Models
Authors: Gordy Michael B. , Willemann Søren
Published: August 2019

In its complexity and its vulnerability to market volatility, the CPDO might be viewed as the poster child for the excesses of financial engineering in the credit market. This paper examines the CPDO as a case study in model risk in the rating of complex structured products. We demonstrate that the models used by S&P and Moody's would have assigned very low probability to the spread levels realized in the investment grade corporate credit default swap market in late 2007, even though these spread levels were comparable to those of 2002. The spread levels realized in the first quarter of 2008 would have been assigned negligibly small probabilities. Had the models put non-negligible likelihood on attaining these high spread levels, the CPDO notes could never have achieved investment grade status. We conclude with larger lessons for the rating of complex products and for modeling credit risk in general.
The Mechanics of a Graceful Exit: Interest on Reserves and Segmentation in the Federal Funds Market
Authors: Bech Morten L. , Klee Elizabeth
Published: August 2019

To combat the financial crisis that intensified in the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve injected a substantial amount of liquidity into the banking system. The resulting increase in reserve balances exerted downward price pressure in the federal funds market, and the effective federal funds rate began to deviate from the target rate set by the Federal Open Market Committee. In response, the Federal Reserve revised its operational framework for implementing monetary policy and began to pay interest on reserve balances in an attempt to provide a floor for the federal funds rate. Nevertheless, following the policy change, the effective federal funds rate remained below not only the target but also the rate paid on reserve balances. We develop a model to explain this phenomenon and use data from the federal funds market to evaluate it empirically. In turn, we show how successful the Federal Reserve may be in raising the federal funds rate even in an environment with substantial reserve balances.
A Reliable and Computationally Efficient Algorithm for Imposing the Saddle Point Property in Dynamic Models
Authors: Anderson Gary S.
Published: August 2019

This paper describes a set of algorithms for quickly and reliably solving linear rational expectations models. The utility, reliability and speed of these algorithms are a consequence of 1) the algorithm for computing the minimal dimension state space transition matrix for models with arbitrary numbers of lags or leads, 2) the availability of a simple modeling language for characterizing a linear model and 3) the use of the QR Decomposition and Arnoldi type eigenspace calculations. The paper also presents new formulae for computing and manipulating solutions for arbitrary exogenous processes.
Commercial and Residential Land Prices Across the United States
Authors: Nichols Joseph B. , Oliner Stephen D. , Wolken John D.
Published: August 2019

We use a national dataset of land sales to construct land price indexes for 23 MSAs in the United States and for the aggregate of those MSAs. We construct the price indexes by estimating hedonic regressions with a large sample of land transactions dating back to the mid-1990s. The regressions feature a flexible method of controlling for spatial price patterns within an MSA. The resulting price indexes show a dramatic increase in both commercial and residential land prices over several years prior to their peak in 2006-07 and a steep descent since then. These fluctuations in land prices are considerably larger than those in well-known indexes of commercial real estate and house prices. Because those existing indexes price a bundle of land and structures, this comparison implies that land prices have been more volatile than structures prices over this period.
Using a Projection Method to Analyze Inflation Bias in a Micro-Founded Model
Authors: Anderson Gary S. , Kim Jinill , Yun Tack
Published: August 2019

Since Kydland and Prescott (1977) and Barro and Gordon (1983), most studies of the problem of the inflation bias associated with discretionary monetary policy have assumed a quadratic loss function. We depart from the conventional linear-quadratic approach to the problem in favor of a projection method approach. We investigate the size of the inflation bias that arises in a microfounded nonlinear environment with Calvo price setting. The inflation bias is found to lie between 1% and 6% for a reasonable range of parameter values, when the bias is defined as the steady-state deviation of the discretionary inflation rate from the optimal inflation rate under commitment.
Financial Market Shocks during the Great Depression
Authors: Chin Alycia , Warusawitharana Missaka
Published: August 2019

This study examines the effect of shocks observed in financial markets on output and employment during the Great Depression. We present three main findings. First, an adverse financial shock leads to a decline in the manufacturing sector's output and employment that peaks about 11 months afterward. Next, this shock has a much greater impact on the durables sector than the nondurables sector. Last, continuing financial market weakness in 1933 and 1934 may have restrained the recovery from the Great Depression. The findings suggest that financial market weakness contributed to the length and depth of the Great Depression, and that this occurred mainly through the investment channel. In addition, we use the estimates from the Great Depression data to evaluate the effect of recent financial market disruptions.
Output Gaps
Authors: Kiley Michael T.
Published: August 2019

What is the output gap? There are many definitions in the economics literature, all of which have a long history. I discuss three alternatives: the deviation of output from its long-run stochastic trend (i.e., the 'Beveridge-Nelson cycle') the deviation of output from the level consistent with current technologies and normal utilization of capital and labor input (i.e., the 'production-function approach') and the deviation of output from 'flexible-price' output (i.e., its 'natural rate'). Estimates of each concept are presented from a dynamic-stochastic-general-equilibrium (DSGE) model of the U.S. economy used at the Federal Reserve Board. Four points are emphasized: the DSGE model's estimate of the Beveridge-Nelson gap is very similar to gaps from policy institutions, but the DSGE model's estimate of potential growth has a higher variance and substantially different covariance with GDP growth the natural rate concept depends strongly on model assumptions and is not designed to guide nominal interest rate movements in 'Taylor' rules in the same way as the other measures the natural rate and production function trends converge to the Beveridge-Nelson trend and the DSGE model's estimate of the Beveridge-Nelson gap is as closely related to unemployment fluctuations as those from policy institutions and has more predictive ability for inflation.
The Effect of Gasoline Prices on Household Location
Authors: Molloy Raven Saks , Shan Hui
Published: August 2019

Gasoline prices influence where households decide to locate by changing the cost of commuting. Consequently, the substantial increase in gas prices since 2003 may have reduced the demand for housing in areas far from employment centers, leading to a decrease in the price and/or quantity of housing in those locations relative to locations closer to jobs. Using annual panel data on ZIP codes and municipalities in a large number of metropolitan areas of the United States from 1981 to 2008, we find that a 10 percent increase in gas prices leads to a 10 percent decrease in construction after 4 years in locations with a long average commute relative to locations closer to jobs, but to no significant change in house prices. Thus, the supply response may prevent the change in housing demand from capitalizing in house prices. Because housing is durable, the resulting change in construction has a long-lived impact on the spatial distribution of housing units.
Exports, borders, distance, and plant size
Authors: Holmes Thomas J. , Stevens John J.
Published: August 2019

The fact that large manufacturing plants export relatively more than small plants has been at the foundation of much work in the international trade literature. We examine this fact using Census micro data on plant shipments from the Commodity Flow Survey. We show the fact is not entirely an international trade phenomenon part of it can be accounted for by the effect of distance, distinct from any border effect. Export destinations tend to be further than domestic destinations, and large plants tend to ship further distances even to domestic locations, as compared with small plants. We develop an extension of the Melitz (2003) model and use it to set up an analysis with model interpretations of ratios between large plant and small plant shipments that can be calculated with the data. We obtain a decomposition of the overall ratio into a term that varies with distance, holding fixed the border, and a term that varies with the border, holding fixed the distance. The distance term accounts for more than half of the overall difference.
Money, Reserves, and the Transmission of Monetary Policy: Does the Money Multiplier Exist?
Authors: Carpenter Seth B. , Demiralp Selva
Published: August 2019

With the use of nontraditional policy tools, the level of reserve balances has risen significantly in the United States since 2007. Before the financial crisis, reserve balances were roughly $20 billion whereas the level has risen well past $1 trillion. The effect of reserve balances in simple macroeconomic models often comes through the money multiplier, affecting the money supply and the amount of bank lending in the economy. Most models currently used for macroeconomic policy analysis, however, either exclude money or model money demand as entirely endogenous, thus precluding any causal role for reserves and money. Nevertheless, some academic research and many textbooks continue to use the money multiplier concept in discussions of money. We explore the institutional structure of the transmission mechanism beginning with open market operations through to money and loans. We then undertake empirical analysis of the relationship among reserve balances, money, and bank lending. We use aggregate as well as bank-level data in a VAR framework and document that the mechanism does not work through the standard multiplier model or the bank lending channel. In particular, if the level of reserve balances is expected to have an impact on the economy, it seems unlikely that a standard multiplier story will explain the effect.
A Semiparametric Characterization of Income Uncertainty Over the Life Cycle
Authors: Feigenbaum James , Li Geng
Published: August 2019

We propose a novel approach to estimate household income uncertainty at various future horizons and characterize how the estimated uncertainty evolves over the life cycle. We measure income uncertainty as the variance of linear forecast errors conditional on information available to households prior to observing the realized income. This approach is semiparametric because we impose essentially no restrictions on the statistical properties of the forecast errors. Relative to previous studies, we find lower and less persistent income uncertainties that call for a life cycle consumption profile with a less pronounced hump.
The Cross Section of Money Market Fund Risks and Financial Crises
Authors: McCabe Patrick E.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines the relationship between money market fund (MMF) risks and outcomes during crises, with a focus on the ABCP crisis in 2007 and the run on money funds in 2008. I analyze three broad types of MMF risks: portfolio risks arising from a fund's assets, investor risk reflecting the likelihood that a fund's shareholders will redeem shares disruptively, and sponsor risk due to uncertainty about MMF sponsors' support for distressed funds. I find that during the run on MMFs in September and October 2008, outflows were larger for MMFs that had previously exhibited greater degrees of all three types of risk. In contrast, as the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) crisis unfolded in 2007, many MMFs suffered capital losses, but investor flows were relatively unresponsive to risks, probably because investors correctly believed that sponsors would absorb the losses. However, the consequences of MMF risks were quite costly for some sponsors: Using a unique data set of sponsor interventions, I show that sponsor financial support was more likely for MMFs that previously earned higher gross yields (a measure of portfolio risk) and funds with bank-affiliated sponsors. Funds' gross yields and bank affiliation (but not funds' ratings) also would have helped forecast holdings of distressed ABCP. This paper provides some useful lessons for investors and policymakers. The significance of MMF risks in predicting poor outcomes in past crises highlights the importance of monitoring such risks, and I offer some useful proxies for doing so. The paper also argues for greater attention to the systemic risks posed by the industry's reliance on discretionary sponsor support.
Financial Integration, Entrepreneurial Risk and Global Dynamics
Authors: Panousi Vasia , Angeletos George-Marios
Published: August 2019

How does financial integration impact capital accumulation, current-account dynamics, and cross-country inequality? This paper investigates this question within a two-country, general-equilibrium, incomplete-markets model that focuses on the importance of idiosyncratic entrepreneurial risk---a risk that introduces, not only a precautionary motive for saving, but also a wedge between the interest rate and the marginal product of capital. Our contribution is then to show that this friction provides a simple explanation for the emergence of global imbalances, a simple resolution to the empirical puzzle that capital often fails to flow from the rich or slow-growing countries to the poor or fast-growing ones, and a distinct set of policy lessons regarding the intertemporal costs and benefits of capital-account liberalization.
Inflation Persistence, Backward-Looking Firms, and Monetary Policy in an Input-Output Economy
Authors: Strum Brad Everett
Published: August 2019

This paper studies the implications of inflation persistence (generated by backward-looking price setters) for monetary policy in a New Keynesian 'input-output' model--a model with sticky prices both in intermediate and final goods sectors. Optimal policy under commitment depends on the degree of inflation persistence in both sectors. Under discretion, speed-limit targeting--targeting the change in the output gap--outperforms price-level and inflation targeting in the presence of inflation persistence. If inflation persistence is low in the intermediate goods sector, price-level targeting outperforms inflation targeting despite high inflation persistence in the final goods sector.
Capital Taxation with Entrepreneurial Risk
Authors: Panousi Vasia
Published: August 2019

This paper studies the effects of capital taxation in a dynamic heterogeneous-agent economy with uninsurable entrepreneurial risk. Although it allows for rich general-equilibrium effects and a stationary distribution of wealth, the model is highly tractable. This permits a clear analysis, not only of the steady state, but also of the entire transitional dynamics following any change in tax policies. Unlike either the complete-markets paradigm or Bewley-type models where idiosyncratic risk impacts only labor income, here it is shown that capital taxation may actually stimulate capital accumulation. This possibility emerges because of the general-equilibrium effects of the insurance aspect of capital taxation. In particular, for the preferred calibrated version of the model, when the tax on capital is 25 percent, output per work-hour is 2.2 percent higher than it would have been had the tax rate been zero. Turning to the welfare effects of a reform in capital taxation, it is examined how these effects depend on whether one focuses on the steady state or also takes into account transitional dynamics, as well as how they vary in the cross-section of the population (rich versus poor, entrepreneurs versus non-entrepreneurs).
Verifying the State of Financing Constraints: Evidence from U.S. Business Credit Contracts
Authors: Meisenzahl Ralf
Published: August 2019

Which of the strategies for financing constraints in economic models is the most empirically plausible? This paper tests two commonly used models of financing constraints, costly state verification (Townsend, 1979) and moral hazard (Holmstrӧm and Tirole, 1997), using a comprehensive data set of US small business credit contracts. The data include detailed information about the business, its owner, bank balance sheet information, and the terms of credit. In line with the predictions of models of financing constraints, I find that an additional dollar of net worth accounts for about 30 cents of external finance. More than two thirds of the business credit contracts can be rationalized by one period debt contracts with costly state verification. The parameter values obtained in the costly state verification model imply bankruptcy costs of 28% of expected output and a rate of return ranging between 5% and 8% annually, which are consistent with studies on bankruptcy incidences and returns to entrepreneurial investment. The moral hazard model, however, performs poorly. The correlation between model implied interest rates and actual interest rates paid is close to zero because the bank variables emphasized by this model do not explain loan interest rates.
Systemic Risk Contributions
Authors: Huang Xin , Zhou Hao , Zhu Haibin
Published: August 2019

We adopt a systemic risk indicator measured by the price of insurance against systemic financial distress and assess individual banks&#x27; marginal contributions to the systemic risk. The methodology is applied using publicly available data to the 19 bank holding companies covered by the U.S. Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP), with the systemic risk indicator peaking around $1.1 trillion in March 2009. Our systemic risk contribution measure shows interesting similarity to and divergence from the SCAP expected loss measure. In general, we find that a bank&#x27;s contribution to the systemic risk is roughly linear in its default probability but highly nonlinear with respect to institution size and asset correlation.
Securitization Markets and Central Banking: An Evaluation of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility
Authors: Pence Karen M. , Campbell Sean D. , Covitz Daniel M. , Nelson William R.
Published: August 2019

In response to the near collapse of US securitization markets in 2008, the Federal Reserve created the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, which offered non-recourse loans to finance investors&#x27; purchases of certain highly rated asset-backed securities. We study the effects of this program and find that it lowered interest rate spreads for some categories of asset-backed securities but had little impact on the pricing of individual securities. These findings suggest that the program improved conditions in securitization markets but did not subsidize individual securities. We also find that the risk of loss to the US government was small.
Forecasting Recessions using Stall Speeds
Authors: Nalewaik Jeremy J.
Published: August 2019

This paper presents evidence that the economic stall speed concept has some empirical content, and can be moderately useful in forecasting recessions. Specifically, output tends to transition to a slow-growth phase at the end of expansions before falling into a recession, and the paper designs Markov-switching models that behave in that way. While the switching models using output growth alone produce a considerable number of false positive recession signals, adding the slope of the yield curve, the percent change in housing starts, and the change in the unemployment rate to the model reduces false positives and improves recession forecasting. The switching model is particularly good at forecasting at long horizons, outperforming Blue Chip consensus forecasts.
Friedman's Monetary Economics in Practice
Authors: Nelson Edward
Published: August 2019

This paper views the policy response to the recent financial crisis from the perspective of Milton Friedman's monetary economics. Five major aspects of the policy response are: 1) discount window lending has been provided broadly to the financial system, at rates low relative to the market rates prevailing pre-crisis 2) the Federal Reserve's holdings of government securities have been adjusted with the aim of putting downward pressure on the path of several important interest rates relative to the path of short-term rates 3) deposit insurance has been extended, helping to insulate the money stock from credit market disruption 4) the commercial banking system has received assistance via a recapitalization program, while existing equity holders have borne losses and 5) an interest-on-reserves system has been introduced. These five elements of the policy response are in keeping with those that would arise from Friedman's framework, while a number of the five depart appreciably from other prominent benchmarks (such as the Bagehot-Thornton prescription for discount rate policy, and New Keynesian approaches to stabilization policy). One notable part of the policy response, the TALF initiative, draws largely on frameworks other than Friedman's. But, in important respects, the overall monetary and financial policy response to the crisis can be viewed as Friedman's monetary economics in practice.
Credit Supply to Personal Bankruptcy Filers: Evidence from Credit Card Mailings
Authors: Han Song , Keys Benjamin J. , Li Geng
Published: August 2019

Are consumers who have filed for personal bankruptcy before excluded from the unsecured credit market? Using a unique data set of credit card mailings, we directly explore the supply of unsecured credit to consumers with the most conspicuous default risk--those with a bankruptcy history. On average, over one-fifth of personal bankruptcy filers receive at least one offer in a given month, with the likelihood being even higher for those who filed for bankruptcy within the previous two years. However, offers to bankruptcy filers carry substantially less favorable terms than those to comparable consumers without a bankruptcy history, with higher interest rates, lower credit limits, a greater likelihood of having an annual fee, and a smaller likelihood of having rewards or promotions. In addition, our analysis of credit terms typically disclosed only in the fine print suggests that offers to filers tend to include more hidden costs.
Internal Migration in the United States
Authors: Molloy Raven Saks , Smith Christopher L. , Wozniak Abigail
Published: August 2019

We review patterns in migration within the U.S. over the past thirty years. Internal migration has fallen noticeably since the 1980s, reversing increases from earlier in the century. The decline in migration has been widespread across demographic and socioeconomic groups, as well as for moves of all distances. Although a convincing explanation for the secular decline in migration remains elusive and requires further research, we find only limited roles for the housing market contraction and the economic recession in reducing migration recently. Despite its downward trend, migration within the U.S. remains higher than that within most other developed countries.
Have Cyclical Movements in the Unemployment Rate Become More Persistent?
Authors: Figura Andrew
Published: August 2019

I examine whether the cyclical behavior of unemployment has changed over the post WWII period. Specifically, I test whether cyclical movements in unemployment have become more persistent. Finding that they have, indeed, become more persistent, I then take some initial steps in explaining why. I find that the increase in persistence has affected private nonfarm payroll employment as well as unemployment and that increased persistence appears to be widespread across industries. At the same time, increased persistence owes primarily to greater persistence in job finding rates and greater persistence in unemployment among permanent job losers. This combination suggests that the welfare loss from cyclical increases in unemployment is becoming increasingly concentrated among permanent job losers who become unemployed for extended durations during cyclical downturns.
Two Practical Algorithms for Solving Rational Expectations Models
Authors: Brayton Flint
Published: August 2019

This paper describes the E-Newton and E-QNewton algorithms for solving rational expectations (RE) models. Both algorithms treat a model's RE terms as exogenous variables whose values are iteratively updated until they (hopefully) satisfy the RE requirement. In E-Newton, the updates are based on Newton's method E-QNewton uses an efficient form of Broyden's quasi-Newton method. The paper shows that the algorithms are reliable, fast enough for practical use on a mid-range PC, and simple enough that their implementation does not require highly specialized software. The evaluation of the algorithms is based on experiments with three well-known macro models--the Smets-Wouters (SW) model, EDO, and FRB/US--using code written in EViews, a general-purpose, easy-to-use software package. The models are either linear (SW and EDO) or mildly nonlinear (FRB/US). A test of the robustness of the algorithms in the presence of substantial nonlinearity is based on modified versions of each model that include a smoothed form of the constraint that the short-term rate of interest cannot fall below zero. In two single-simulation experiments with the standard and modified versions of the models, E-QNewton is found to be faster than E-Newton, except for solutions of small-to-medium sized linear models. In a multi-simulation experiment using the standard versions of the models, E-Newton dominates E-QNewton.