bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Home Market and the Pattern of Trade: Round Three
Authors: Holmes Thomas J. , Stevens John J.
Published: August 2019

Does national market size matter for industrial structure? Round One (Krugman) answered in the affirmative: Home market effects matter. Round Two (Davis) refuted this, arguing that an assumption of convenience--transport costs only for the differentiated goods--conveniently obtained the result. In Round Three we relax another persistent assumption of convenience--industry types differentiated only by the degree of scale economies--and find that market size reemerges as a relevant force in determining industrial structure.
Small Business Loan Turndowns, Personal Wealth and Discrimination
Authors: Cavalluzzo Ken , Wolken John D.
Published: August 2019

Using newly available data from the Federal Reserve, we examine the impact of personal wealth on small business loan turndowns across demographic groups. Information on home ownership, home equity, and personal net worth excluding the business owner's home, in combination with data on the personal credit history of the principal owner, the business credit history of the firm, a rich set of additional explanatory variables, and information on the competitiveness of local banking markets, contributes to our understanding of the credit market experiences of small businesses across demographic groups. We find substantial unexplained differences in denial rates between African American-, Hispanic-, Asian-, and white-owned firms. We also find that greater personal wealth is associated with a lower probability of loan denial. However, even after controlling for personal wealth, large differences in denial rates across demographic groups remain. Further, consistent with Becker's classic consistent with Becker’s classic theories (1957), we find some evidence that African American-denial rates increase with lender market concentration.
Investor Behavior and the Purchase of Company Stock in 401(k) Plans - The Importance of Plan Design
Authors: Liang J. Nellie , Weisbenner Scott J.
Published: August 2019

Using panel data for nearly 1,000 companies during 1991 to 2000, this paper finds that employees allocated nearly 20 percent of their total 401(k) contributions to purchases of company stock, and then relates this share to plan design features and firm financial characteristics. We find that the number of investment alternatives offered, n, and whether the company requires some of the match to be in company stock are key factors of the share of total contributions in company stock. We cannot reject the hypothesis that participants invest 1/n of their contributions in company stock. In addition, participants do not offset an employer match in company stock with a smaller share of their own contributions to company stock, contrary to efficient diversification. Workers also appear to view other plan restrictions as providing cues about the desirability of purchasing company stock. Thus, plan design is very important in determining the share of 401(k) assets in company stock.
Health Care Finance and the Early Adoption of Hospital Information Systems
Authors: Borzekowski Ron
Published: August 2019

This study examines the adoption of hospital information systems (HIS), specifically focusing on the connection between the financing of health care and the adoption of these new technologies. Using a recently uncovered dataset detailing the systems installed at over 2300 hospitals, the results indicate that state price regulations slowed the adoption of these systems during the 1970's. In contrast, hospitals increased their adoption of HIS in response to the implementation of Medicare's prospective payment system. The evidence suggests that in the early years, these systems did not have the ability to save sufficient funds to justify their expense and adopters, in particular not-for-profit hospitals, were motivated by factors other than cost. By the early 1980's, this had changed: hospitals with the greatest incentives to lower costs were now more likely to adopt these technologies.
Measuring the Cost Impact of Hospital Information Systems: 1987-1994
Authors: Borzekowski Ron
Published: August 2019

This study measures the impact of information technology (IT) use on hospital operating costs during the late 1980's and early 1990's. Using a proprietary eight-year panel dataset (1987-1994) that catalogues application-level automation for the complete census of the 3,000 U.S. hospitals with more than 100 beds, this study finds that both financial/administrative and clinical IT systems at the most thoroughly automated hospitals are associated with declining costs three and five years after adoption. At the application level, declining costs are associated with the adoption of some of the newest technologies, including systems designed for cost management, the administration of managed care contracts, and for both financial and clinical decision support. The association of cost declines with lagged IT as well as the cost patterns at the less automated hospitals both provide evidence of learning effects.
The Geographic Scope of Retail Deposit Markets
Authors: Heitfield Erik , Prager Robin A.
Published: August 2019

In the United States, antitrust authorities rely heavily on numerical measures of local banking market concentration such as the Herfindahl Hirschmann Index to assess the likely competitive effects of proposed bank mergers and acquisitions. This approach to antitrust enforcement relies on two important assumptions: (1) that markets for at least some types of banking products are local in scope, and (2) that market concentration measures can serve as effective proxies for banks' abilities to extract monopoly rents. This paper uses balance sheet data from most banks operating in the United States in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 1999 to test these assumptions.
Demand Estimation and Consumer Welfare in the Banking Industry
Authors: Dick Astrid A.
Published: August 2019

This paper estimates a structural demand model for commercial bank deposit services. Following the discrete choice literature, consumer decisions are based on prices and bank characteristics. The results, based on the U.S. for 1993-1999, indicate that, with respect to prices, consumers respond to deposit rates, and to a lesser extent, to account fees, in choosing a depository institution. Moreover, consumers respond favorably to the branch staffing and geographic density, as well as to the bank's age, size, and geographic diversification. In light of the banks' responses to regulatory changes throughout the period, most markets experience a slight increase in welfare.
The Institutional Memory Hypothesis and the Procyclicality of Bank Lending Behavior
Authors: Berger Allen N. , Udell Gregory F.
Published: August 2019

Stylized facts suggest that bank lending behavior is highly procyclical. We offer a new hypothesis that may help explain why this occurs. The institutional memory hypothesis is driven by deterioration in the ability of loan officers over the bank's lending cycle that results in an easing of credit standards. This easing of standards may be compounded by simultaneous deterioration in the capacity of bank management to discipline its loan officers and reduction in the capacities of external stakeholders to discipline bank management. We test the empirical implications of this hypothesis using data from individual U.S. banks over the period 1980-2000. We employ over 200,000 observations on commercial loan growth measured at the bank level, over 2,000,000 observations on interest rate premiums on individual loans, and over 2,000 observations on credit standards and bank-level loan spreads from bank management survey responses. The empirical analysis provides support for the hypothesis.
Initial Public Offerings in Hot and Cold Markets
Authors: Helwege Jean , Liang J. Nellie
Published: August 2019

Asymmetric information models characterize hot IPO markets as periods when better quality firms have an incentive to issue equity, and cold markets when the lemons premium associated with equity is too high to draw in many issuers. Recent empirical evidence, however, suggests that firms that issue in hot markets are a major source of stock price underperformance of equity issuers. We investigate these opposing views with data on IPO firms that issued in 1983, a hot market, and 1988, a cold market. We find that the two sets of firms have similar operating performance, but stock returns are worse for firms that went public in the hot market. Our results are largely consistent with investor overoptimism in hot markets, but not with the asymmetric information models.
The Effects of War Risk on U.S. Financial Markets
Authors: Rigobon Roberto , Sack Brian
Published: August 2019

This paper measures the effects of the risks associated with the war in Iraq on various U.S. financial variables using a heteroskedasticity-based estimation technique. The results indicate that increases in what we call the "war risk" factor caused declines in Treasury yields and equity prices, a widening of lower-grade corporate spreads, a fall in the dollar, and a rise in oil prices. This factor accounted for a considerable portion of the variances of these financial variables over the three months leading up to the arrival of coalition forces in central Baghdad.
Inventory Dynamics and Business Cycles: What Has Changed?
Authors: McCarthy Jonathan , Zakrajšek Egon
Published: August 2019

Despite the recent patch of sluggish growth, the U.S. economy has experienced a period of remarkable stability since the mid-1980s. One popular explanation attributes the diminished variability of economic activity to information-technology-led improvements in inventory management. Our results, however, indicate that the changes in inventory dynamics since the mid-1980s played a reinforcing--rather than a leading--role in the volatility reduction. Movements in the volatility of manufacturing output over the past three decades almost entirely reflect changes in the variability of the growth contribution of sales. Although the volatility of total inventory investment has fallen, the decline occurred well before the mid-1980s and was driven by the reduced variability of materials and supplies. Our analysis does show that since the mid-1980s, inventory dynamics have played a role in stabilizing manufacturing production: Inventory "imbalances" tend to correct more rapidly, and the quicker response of inventories to monetary policy and commodity price shocks buffers production from fluctuations in sales to a greater extent. But more extensive production smoothing and faster dissolution of inventory imbalances appear to be a consequence of changes in the way industry-level sales and aggregate economic activity respond to shocks, rather than a cause of changes in macroeconomic behavior.
Itô Conditional Moment Generator and the Estimation of Short Rate Processes
Authors: Zhou Hao
Published: August 2019

This paper exploits the Itô's formula to derive the conditional moments vector for the class of interest rate models that allow for nonlinear volatility and flexible jump specifications. Such a characterization of continuous-time processes by the Ito Conditional Moment Generator noticeably enlarges the admissible set beyond the affine jump-diffusion class. A simple GMM estimator can be constructed based on the analytical solution to the lower order moments, with natural diagnostics of the conditional mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that the proposed estimator has desirable finite sample properties, relative to the asymptotically efficient MLE. The empirical application singles out the nonlinear quadratic variance as the key feature of the U.S. short rate dynamics.
Further Evidence on the Link between Finance and Growth: An International Analysis of Community Banking and Economic Performance
Authors: Berger Allen N. , Hasan Iftekhar , Klapper Leora
Published: August 2019

We try to contribute to both the finance-growth literature and the community banking literature by testing the effects of the relative health of community banks on economic growth, and investigating potential transmission mechanisms for these effects using data from 1993-2000 on 49 nations. Data from both developed and developing nations suggest that greater market shares and efficiency ranks of small, private, domestically-owned banks are associated with better economic performance, and that the marginal benefits of higher shares are greater when the banks are more efficient. Only mixed support is found for hypothesized transmission mechanisms through improved financing for SMEs or greater overall bank credit flows. Data from developing nations are also consistent with favorable economic effects of foreign-owned banks, but unfavorable effects from state-owned banks.
Does Mortgage Hedging Amplify Movements in Long-term Interest Rates?
Authors: Perli Roberto , Sack Brian
Published: August 2019

The growth of the mortgage market in recent years has raised the question of what effects, if any, the hedging of mortgage portfolios has on the behavior of long-term interest rates. This paper finds that the volatility of the ten-year swap rate implied by swaptions increases when the prepayment risk of outstanding mortgages increases--most likely because investors expect the hedging of prepayment risk to amplify future interest rate movements. These amplification effects can be considerable in magnitude, but they are generally expected to persist only for several months.
Welfare Effects of Tax Policy in Open Economies: Stabilization and Cooperation
Authors: Kim Jinill , Kim Sunghyun H.
Published: August 2019

This paper studies an international tax policy design problem by employing a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model with incomplete asset markets. We investigate the possibility of welfareimproving active tax policies, in particular capital and labor income tax, under the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium and the cooperative equilibrium. Unlike the conventional wisdom regarding stabilization policies, optimal tax policies in our economy are procyclical. Relative to the non-cooperative setting, international tax policy cooperation requires more active tax policies (about two times) and generates large extra welfare gains (by about a third).
Bank Risk Ratings and the Pricing of Agricultural Loans
Authors: Walraven Nicholas Alan , Barry Peter J.
Published: August 2019

In this paper, we review the prevalence of the use of risk ratings by commercial banks that participated in the Federal Reserve's Survey of Terms of Bank Lending to Farmers between 1997 and 2002. We find that adoption of risk rating procedures held about steady over the period, with a little less than half the banks on the panel either not using a risk rating system, or reporting the same rating for all their loans in the survey. However, most of these banks were small, and roughly four-fifths of all sample loans carried an informative risk rating. We found that after controlling for the size and performance of the bank and as many nonprice terms of the loan as possible, banks consistently charged higher rates of interest for the farm loans that they characterized as riskier, with an average difference in rates between the most risky and least risky loans of about 1-1/2 percentage points.
Capital Flows Among the G-7 Nations: A Demographic Perspective
Authors: Feroli Michael
Published: August 2019

The standard life-cycle model of consumption behavior predicts that a household's age will influence its saving behavior. Moreover, simple national accounting identities reveal that a country's current account balance reflects its savings-investment imbalance. Thus, differences in national age-profiles should affect the current account. To test this theory's plausibility and significance, I simulate a multi-region overlapping generations model that is calibrated to match the demographic differences among the major industrialized countries over the past 50 years. In the model, it is found that these differences can explain some of the observed long-term capital movements in the G-7. In particular, the model does a good job of predicting the size and timing of American current account deficits as well as Japanese current account surpluses.
Modeling the Whole Firm: The Effect of Multiple Inputs and Financial Intermediation on Bank Deposit Rates
Authors: Kiser Elizabeth K.
Published: August 2019

Empirical studies of price competition typically analyze the direct effects of market structure, cost, and local demand on prices; this approach has been applied widely to studies of bank deposit rates. However, the theory of the banking firm suggests that substitutability between sources of deposits and conditions in the bank loan market should also affect the pricing of retail deposits. This paper develops a theoretical model to incorporate these effects, and tests the predictions empirically using institution-level deposit rate data from Bank Rate Monitor. The results suggest that the cost of large-scale deposits affects how banks price retail deposits, and that conditions in lending markets feed back into retail deposit rates.
Testing for Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Consumer Loan Markets
Authors: Edelberg Wendy
Published: August 2019

This paper explores the significance of unobservable default risk in mortgage and automobile loan markets. I develop and estimate a two-period model that allows for heterogeneous forms of simultaneous adverse selection and moral hazard. Controlling for income levels, loan size and risk aversion, I find robust evidence of adverse selection, with borrowers self-selecting into contracts with varying interest rates and collateral requirements. For example, ex-post higher-risk borrowers pledge less collateral and pay higher interest rates. Moreover, there is strongly suggestive evidence of moral hazard such that collateral is used to induce a borrower's effort to avoid repayment problems. Thus, loan terms may have a feedback effect on behavior. Also, higher-risk borrowers are more difficult to induce into exerting effort, explaining the counter-intuitive result that higher-risk borrowers sometimes pay lower interest rates than observably lower-risk borrowers.
The Effects of Technology on the Age Distribution of Health Spending: A Cross-Country Perspective
Authors: Sheiner Louise
Published: August 2019

The conventional method used to project a country's future health care expenditures is to assume that relative health spending by age remains constant. This method has been criticized as being too pessimistic, on the one hand, because of continued improvements in the health status of older people, and as too optimistic, on the other, because of the effects of technological innovations on increasing health spending on the elderly relative to the nonelderly. This paper uses cross-country data to shed light on this question. I find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the theoretical effects of technology on health spending are to decrease the concentration of health spending on the elderly. Empirically, I find that relative health spending by age has been quite stable over time. I also find that countries with the most technologically intensive health sectors spend relatively less on the oldest old compared to the younger old.
A New Approach to the Valuation of Intangible Capital
Authors: Cummins Jason G.
Published: August 2019

Intangible capital is not a distinct factor of production as is physical capital or labor. Rather it is the "glue" that creates value from other factor inputs. This perspective naturally suggests an empirical model in which intangible capital is defined in terms of adjustment costs. My estimates of these adjustment costs from firm-level panel data suggest that no appreciable intangibles are associated with R&D; and advertising, whereas information technology creates intangibles with a 72% annual rate of return--a sizable figure that is nevertheless much smaller than that reported in previous studies. To build a bridge to previous research, I show that much larger estimates can be obtained with ordinary least squares, a method that ignores the possibility that the value of the firm and its investment policy are simultaneously determined.
Convenience or Necessity? Understanding the Recent Rise in Credit Card Debt
Authors: Johnson Kathleen W.
Published: August 2019

Economist disagree whether the recent increase in credit card debt has been detrimental to U.S. households. However, many rely on a measure of revolving credit published by the Federal Reserve, which captures transactions in which a credit card is used because of its advantages over cash or a check. An increase in debt stemming from such convenience use likely would not signal greater financial vulnerabiltiy for households. In this paper, I present evidence that some of the significant increase in both the level of credit card debt and its growth from 1992 to 2001 was due to convenience use.
Monetary Policy Alternatives at the Zero Bound: An Empirical Assessment
Authors: Bernanke Ben , Reinhart Vincent , Sack Brian
Published: August 2019

The success over the years in reducing inflation and, consequently, the average level of nominal interest rates has increased the likelihood that the nominal policy interest rate may become constrained by the zero lower bound. When that happens, a central bank can no longer stimulate aggregate demand by further interest-rate reductions and must rely on "non-standard" policy alternatives. To assess the potential effectiveness of such policies, we analyze the behavior of selected asset prices over short periods surrounding central bank statements or other types of financial or economic news and estimate "no-arbitrage" models of the term structure for the United States and Japan. There is some evidence that central bank communications can help to shape public expectations of future policy actions and that asset purchases in large volume by a central bank would be able to affect the price or yield of the targeted asset.
Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts for the United States: Draft SNA-USA
Authors: Antoniewicz Rochelle L. , McIntosh Susan Hume , Mead Charles Ian , Moses Karin , Moulton Brent R. , Palumbo Michael G. , Solomon Genevieve , Teplin Albert M.
Published: August 2019

This paper presents integrated macroeconomic accounts for the United States for the period 1985 to 2002 and discusses issues related to their construction and use. Specifically, it focuses on tying together the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) and international transaction accounts (ITA) published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the flow of funds accounts (FFA) published by the Federal Reserve Board. The paper provides integrated accounts for seven sectors: households and nonprofit organizations serving households, nonfinancial noncorporate businesses, nonfinancial corporate businesses, financial businesses, federal government, state and local governments, and the rest of the world. Each sector table has a full complement of accounts: current accounts (production and income accounts), accumulation accounts (capital account, financial account, and other changes in volume account), revaluation account, and balance sheet account. As a result, the sector statements trace the factors leading to changes in sector net worth. Relative to current publications of the two agencies, the tables go quite a bit further toward providing for the United States the sequence of accounts suggested in the System of National Accounts 1993 (SNA93), the recognized international standard. The tables use official data as of June 10, 2004; however, a few series have been created by the authors, and they are unofficial preliminary estimates at this time.
Diverging Measures of Capacity Utilization: An Explanation
Authors: Morin Norman , Stevens John J.
Published: August 2019

In the wake of the recent recovery in manufacturing production, the capacity utilization rates published by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) have rebounded much more slowly than those published by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). As a result, some observers have speculated that the manufacturing sector may have considerably less slack than is indicated by the FRB measures. Our view is that the two characterizations of manufacturing slack are not as incongruent as they first appear. This paper discusses the practical and conceptual differences between these measures of capacity utilization, and concludes that the recent divergence simply reflects the character of the latest business cycle.
The GSE Implicit Subsidy and the Value of Government Ambiguity
Authors: Passmore Wayne
Published: August 2019

The housing-related government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the "GSEs") have an ambiguous relationship with the federal government. Most purchasers of the GSEs' debt securities believe that this debt is implicitly backed by the U.S. government despite the lack of a legal basis for such a belief. In this paper, I estimate how much GSE shareholders gain from this ambiguous government relationship. I find that (1) the government's ambiguous relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac imparts a substantial implicit subsidy to GSE shareholders, (2) the implicit government subsidy accounts for much of the GSEs' market value, and (3) the GSEs would hold far fewer of their mortgage-backed securities in portfolio and their capital-to-asset ratios would be higher if they were purely private.
The Effects of Local Banking Market Structure on the Bank-Lending Channel of Monetary Policy
Authors: Adams Robert M. , Amel Dean F.
Published: August 2019

We study the relationship between banking competition and the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel. Using business small loan origination data provided from the Community Reinvestment Act from 1996-2002 in our analysis, we are able to reaffirm the existence of the bank lending channel of monetary transmission. Moreover, we find that the impact of monetary policy on loan originations is weaker in more concentrated markets.
Branch Banking, Bank Competition, and Financial Stability
Authors: Carlson Mark A. , Mitchener Kris James
Published: August 2019

It is often argued that branching stabilizes banking systems by facilitating diversification of bank portfolios; however, previous empirical research on the Great Depression offers mixed support for this view. Analyses using state-level data find that states allowing branch banking had lower failure rates, while those examining individual banks find that branch banks were more likely to fail. We argue that an alternative hypothesis can reconcile these seemingly disparate findings. Using data on national banks from the 1920s and 1930s, we show that branch banking increases competition and forces weak banks to exit the banking system. This consolidation strengthens the system as a whole without necessarily strengthening the branch banks themselves. Our empirical results suggest that the effects that branching had on competition were quantitatively more important than geographical diversification for bank stability in the 1920s and 1930s.
A Review of Backtesting and Backtesting Procedures
Authors: Campbell Sean D.
Published: August 2019

This paper reviews a variety of backtests that examine the adequacy of Value-at-Risk (VaR) measures. These backtesting procedures are reviewed from both a statistical and risk management perspective. The properties of unconditional coverage and independence are defined and their relation to backtesting procedures is discussed. Backtests are then classified by whether they examine the unconditional coverage property, independence property, or both properties of a VaR measure. Backtests that examine the accuracy of a VaR model at several quantiles, rather than a single quantile, are also outlined and discussed. The statistical power properties of these tests are examined in a simulation experiment. Finally, backtests that are specified in terms of a pre-specified loss function are reviewed and their use in VaR validation is discussed.
Growing Old Together: Firm Survival and Employee Turnover
Authors: Quintin Erwan , Stevens John J.
Published: August 2019

Labor market outcomes such as turnover and earnings are correlated with employer characteristics, even after controlling for observable differences in worker characteristics. We argue that this systematic relationship constitutes strong evidence in favor of models where workers choose how much to invest in future productivity. Because employer characteristics are correlated with firm survival, returns to these investments vary across firm types. We describe a dynamic general equilibrium model where workers employed in firms more likely to survive choose to devote more time to productivity enhancing activities, and therefore have a steeper earnings-tenure profile. Our model also predicts that quit rates should be lower in firms more likely to survive, and should tend to fall during slow times, while job destruction rates should rise. These predictions, we argue, are borne out by the existing empirical evidence.
An Arbitrage-Free Three-Factor Term Structure Model and the Recent Behavior of Long-Term Yields and Distant-Horizon Forward Rates
Authors: Kim Don H. , Wright Jonathan H.
Published: August 2019

This paper reviews a simple three-factor arbitrage-free term structure model estimated by Federal Reserve Board staff and reports results obtained from fitting this model to U.S. Treasury yields since 1990. The model ascribes a large portion of the decline in long-term yields and distant-horizon forward rates since the middle of 2004 to a fall in term premiums. A variant of the model that incorporates inflation data indicates that about two-thirds of the decline in nominal term premiums owes to a fall in real term premiums, but estimated compensation for inflation risk has diminished as well.
Liquidity, Default, Taxes and Yields on Municipal Bonds
Authors: Wang Junbo , Wu Chunchi , Zhang Frank X.
Published: August 2019

We examine the relative yields of Treasuries and municipals using a generalized model that includes liquidity as a state factor. Using a unique transaction dataset, we are able to estimate the liquidity risk of municipals and its effect on bond yields. We find that a substantial portion of the maturity spread between long- and short-maturity municipal bonds is attributable to the liquidity premium. Controlling for the effects of default and liquidity risk, we obtain implicit tax rates very close to the statutory tax rates of high-income individuals and corporations, and these tax rate estimates are remarkably stable over maturities.
Risk, Uncertainty, and Asset Prices
Authors: Bekaert Geert , Engstrom Eric , Xing Yuhang
Published: August 2019

We identify the relative importance of changes in the conditional variance of fundamentals (which we call &#x27;uncertainty&#x27;) and changes in risk aversion (&#x27;risk&#x27; for short) in the determination of the term structure, equity prices, and risk premiums. Theoretically, we introduce persistent time-varying uncertainty about the fundamentals in an external habit model. The model matches the dynamics of dividend and consumption growth, including their volatility dynamics and many salient asset market phenomena. While the variation in dividend yields and the equity risk premium is primarily driven by risk, uncertainty plays a large role in the term structure and is the driver of counter-cyclical volatility of asset returns.
Estimates of Home Mortgage Originations, Repayments, and Debt on One-to-Four-Family Residences
Authors: Greenspan Alan , Kennedy James E.
Published: August 2019

Since 1997, when the Department of Housing and Urban Development discontinued its quarterly gross mortgage flow system, there has been no systematic attempt to disaggregate the net change in outstanding home mortgage debt into its constituent gross flows. Using a different approach, we have developed a system that reconciles the change in regular home mortgage debt with mortgage flows. The latter includes home purchase and refinance originations, and mortgage purchases, sales, and repayments for five types of mortgage originators and six categories of other mortgagees. In the process, we derive the sources of equity extraction from homes financed by mortgages.
The Effects of Mortgage Prepayments on M2
Authors: O'Brien Yueh-Yun C.
Published: August 2019

Mortgage prepayments can contribute significantly to fluctuations in M2 growth rates. These mortgage prepayment effects are primarily driven by certain rules of mortgage-backed-security (MBS) insurers that require mortgage servicers to hold in M2-type deposits the prepayment proceeds due to MBS investors. This paper provides a methodology for estimating prepayment effects on M2. The effects are estimated separately for refinancing and home sales. The results indicate that excluding the mortgage prepayment effects from M2 produces smoother monthly growth rates. The stability of the relationship between money and GDP as measured by M2 velocity is also increased. Refinancing prepayments account for most of the prepayment effects on M2.
Job Creation and Housing Construction: Constraints on Metropolitan Area Employment Growth
Authors: Molloy Raven Saks
Published: August 2019

Differences in the supply of housing generate substantial variation in housing prices across the United States. Because housing prices influence migration, the elasticity of housing supply also has an important impact on local labor markets. Specifically, an increase in labor demand will translate into less employment growth and higher wages in places where it is relatively difficult to build new houses. To identify metropolitan areas where the supply of housing is constrained, I assemble evidence on housing supply regulations from a variety of sources. In places with relatively few barriers to construction, an increase in housing demand leads to a large number of new housing units and only a moderate increase in housing prices. In contrast, for an equal demand shock, places with more regulation experience a 17 percent smaller expansion of the housing stock and almost double the increase in housing prices. Furthermore, I find that housing supply regulations have a significant effect on local labor market dynamics. Whereas a 1 percent increase in labor demand generally leads to a 1 percent increase in the long-run level of employment, the employment response is less than 0.8 percent in places where the housing supply is highly constrained.
Expectations Formation and the Effectiveness of Strategies for Limiting the Consequences of the Zero Bound on Interest Rates
Authors: Reifschneider David , Roberts John M.
Published: August 2019

We use simulations of the Federal Reserve's FRB/US model to examine the efficacy of a number of proposals for reducing the consequences of the zero bound on nominal interest rates. Among the proposals are: a more aggressive monetary policy; promises to make up any shortfall in monetary ease during the zero-bound period by keeping interest rates lower in the future; and the adoption of a price-level target. We consider two assumptions about expectations formation. One assumption is fully model-consistent expectations (MCE)--a reasonable assumption when a policy has been in place for some time, but perhaps less so for a newly announced policy. We therefore also consider the possibility that only financial markets have MCE, and that other agents form their expectations using a small-scale VAR model estimated using historical data. All of the policies noted above are highly effective at reducing the adverse effects of the zero bound under MCE, but their efficacy drops considerably when households and firms base their expectations on the historical average behavior of the economy, and only investors fully recognize the economic implications of the various proposals.
The Road to Price Stability
Authors: Orphanides Athanasios
Published: August 2019

Nearly a quarter-century after Paul Volcker's declaration of war on inflation on October 6, 1979, Alan Greenspan declared that the goal had been achieved. Drawing on the extensive historical record, I examine the views of Chairmen Volcker and Greenspan on some aspects of the evolving monetary policy debate and explore some of the distinguishing characteristics of the disinflation.
Do Macro Variables, Asset Markets, or Surveys Forecast Inflation Better?
Authors: Ang Andrew , Bekaert Geert , Wei Min
Published: August 2019

Surveys do! We examine the forecasting power of four alternative methods of forecasting U.S. inflation out-of-sample: time series ARIMA models; regressions using real activity measures motivated from the Phillips curve; term structure models that include linear, non-linear, and arbitrage-free specifications; and survey-based measures. We also investigate several methods of combining forecasts. Our results show that surveys outperform the other forecasting methods and that the term structure specifications perform relatively poorly. We find little evidence that combining forecasts produces superior forecasts to survey information alone. When combining forecasts, the data consistently places the highest weights on survey information.
What Do Financial Asset Prices Say About the Housing Market?
Authors: Durham J. B.
Published: August 2019

This paper examines the first three moments of investors' expectations for the housing sector. That is, first, what do financial markets imply about expected future home prices? Second, how much confidence do investors have in their forecast? And, third, do market participants see more downside than upside risk? Housing futures and options, which trade on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), are not yet deep and liquid, and derivatives on homebuilders' shares reflect considerable idiosyncratic information and are therefore an imperfect proxy. Nonetheless, prices suggest that investors currently expect some mild depreciation in home values within the next year. Also, uncertainty has increased, but, generally inconsistent with the perception of a "bubble," the implied risks do not seem particularly tilted to the downside. Probability density functions derived from options on homebuilders' stocks are not appreciably skewed to the left in general, vis-à-vis the broader market, or with respect to recent history.
Incompatibility and Investment in ATM Networks
Authors: Hannan Timothy H. , Borzekowski Ron
Published: August 2019

The literature on network industries and network effects notes that incompatibility across rival systems can influence firms' incentives to invest in product changes that are beneficial to the consumer. We investigate this phenomenon in the case of bank ATM networks, where the number of ATM locations serves as the measure of product quality and surcharge fees serve as an index of incompatibility. Using as a natural experiment the lifting of a surcharge ban in Iowa (and not in neighboring states), we find that the associated increase in incompatibility for Iowa banks caused a substantial increase in the number of ATM locations offered to customers. This effect is found to be larger (in percentage terms) for larger banks than for smaller ones.
A Model in Which Outside and Inside Money are Essential
Authors: Mills David C.
Published: August 2019

I present an environment for which both outside and inside money are essential as means of payment. The key model feature is that there is imperfect monitoring of issuers of inside money. I use a random matching model of money where some agents have private trading histories and others have trading histories that can be publicly observed only after a lag. I show via an example that for lags that are neither too long nor too short, there exist allocations that use both types of money that cannot be duplicated when only one type is used. Inside money provides liquidity that increases the frequency of trades, but incentive constraints restrict the amount of output that can be traded. Outside money is immune to such constraints and can trade for higher levels of output.
Inflation Measurement
Authors: Lebow David E. , Rudd Jeremy Bay
Published: August 2019

Inflation measurement is the process through which changes in the prices of individual goods and services are combined to yield a measure of general price change. This paper discusses the conceptual framework for thinking about inflation measurement and considers practical issues associated with determining an inflation measure&#x27;s scope; with measuring individual prices; and with combining these individual prices into a measure of aggregate inflation. We also discuss the concept of &quot;core inflation,&quot; and summarize the implications of inflation measurement for economic theory and policy.
Measurement of Monetary Aggregates Across Countries
Authors: O'Brien Yueh-Yun C.
Published: August 2019

This paper compares the compositions and definitions of monetary aggregates being published by the 30 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and 10 non-OCED countries. These countries are divided into 5 groups according to the similarity of their monetary aggregates and their membership in the European Union (EU) and/or OECD. The first three groups are countries in the EU who have adopted the European Central Bank's definitions of the monetary aggregates with some variations. Their monetary aggregates are discussed together and presented in one table. The monetary aggregates for the countries in the other two groups are very heterogeneous and each country is discussed separately. The criteria used to classify and define monetary aggregates by individual countries are compared and summarized. Variations among the countries' monetary aggregates resulting from emphasis on different criteria for money definitions are also addressed.
Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk Premia
Authors: Bollerslev Tim , Zhou Hao
Published: August 2019

We find that the difference between implied and realized variances, or the variance risk premium, is able to explain more than fifteen percent of the ex-post time series variation in quarterly excess returns on the market portfolio over the 1990 to 2005 sample period, with high (low) premia predicting high (low) future returns. The magnitude of the return predictability of the variance risk premium easily dominates that afforded by standard predictor variables like the P/E ratio, the dividend yield, the default spread, and the consumption-wealth ratio (CAY). Moreover, combining the variance risk premium with the P/E ratio results in an R2 for the quarterly returns of more than twenty-five percent. The results depend crucially on the use of "model- free&#44;" as opposed to standard Black-Scholes, implied variances, and realized variances constructed from high-frequency intraday, as opposed to daily, data. Our findings suggest that temporal variation in risk and risk-aversion both play an important role in determining stock market returns.
The Value of Medicare Managed Care Plans and Their Prescription Drug Benefits
Authors: Hall Anne E.
Published: August 2019

I estimate the welfare, both gross and net, provided by the Medicare managed care program in 1999 through 2002. First, I estimate a model of demand for the benefits offered by managed care plans to Medicare beneficiaries. I then use the demand estimates to form estimates of welfare provided by the program. Medicare beneficiaries derived $14.9 billion of gross welfare per year from the Medicare HMO program. Depending on the amount of selection in the program, the Medicare managed care program provided from -$10.3 billion to $35.1 billion of net welfare total over the four-year period. I also estimate the welfare that beneficiaries receive from the prescription drug benefits offered by Medicare HMOs. HMO enrollees in plans offering drugs received on average $13 of consumer surplus per month from the drug benefits in 1999, and this estimate drops to $10 by 2002.
The 'Elusive' Capital-User Cost Elasticity Revisited
Authors: Coulibaly Brahima , Millar Jonathan N.
Published: August 2019

This paper estimates the long run elasticity of the demand for fixed nonresidential capital (both equipment and structures) to changes in its user cost using a quarterly panel of two-digit manufacturing data from South Africa from 1970 to 2001. Using a difference specification that does not rely on cointegration, we find highly significant estimates of the user cost elasticity on the order of -0.80. These estimates contrast sharply with many previous studies that obtained small and/or statistically insignificant estimates of the user cost elasticity using U.S. data. This discrepancy may owe to the possibility that the capital demand curve is better identified in a small open economy because shocks to capital supply are more likely to be exogenous. The economic embargo imposed on South Africa from 1985 to 1993 forced its economy to become more closed and therefore provides a unique natural experiment to assess this conjecture. Estimates of the user cost elasticity over this period are small and statistically insignificant, similar to the findings of previous studies where the user cost was likely endogenous. These findings underscore the importance of identification in estimating the user cost elasticity of capital demand.
The Rise and Fall of U.S. Inflation Persistence
Authors: Beechey Meredith J. , Österholm Par
Published: August 2019

This paper estimates the path of inflation persistence in the United States over the last 50 years and draws implications about the evolution of the Federal Reserve's monetary-policy preferences. Standard models of central-bank optimization predict persistent inflation outcomes. Time variation of the central bank's preference for output stability should be reflected in changes in inflation persistence. We estimate an ARMA (1,q) model with a time-varying autoregressive parameter for monthly U.S. inflation data from 1955 to 2006. The coefficients provide an estimate of the inflation target and the path of inflation persistence. The estimated inflation target over the sample is approximately 2.8 percent and we find that inflation persistence declined substantially during Volcker and Greenspan's tenures to a level significantly less than one and significantly below that of the 1970s and early 1980s.
News, Noise, and Estimates of the "True" Unobserved State of the Economy
Authors: Fixler Dennis J. , Nalewaik Jeremy J.
Published: August 2019

Which provides a better estimate of the "true" state of the U.S. economy, gross domestic product (GDP) or gross domestic income (GDI)? Past work has assumed the idiosyncratic variation in each estimate is pure noise, taking greater variability to imply lower reliability. We develop models that relax this assumption, allowing the idiosyncratic variation in the estimates to be partly or pure news; then greater variability may imply higher information content and greater reliability. Based on evidence from revisions, we reject the pure noise assumption for GDI growth, and our results favor placing a higher weight on GDI due to its relatively large idiosyncratic variability. This calls into question the suitability of the pure noise assumption in other contexts, including dynamic factor models.
Combining Forecasts From Nested Models
Authors: Clark Todd E. , McCracken Michael W.
Published: August 2019

Motivated by the common finding that linear autoregressive models forecast better than models that incorporate additional information, this paper presents analytical, Monte Carlo, and empirical evidence on the effectiveness of combining forecasts from nested models. In our analytics, the unrestricted model is true, but as the sample size grows, the data generating process converges to the restricted model. This approach captures the practical reality that the predictive content of variables of interest is often low. We derive MSE-minimizing weights for combining the restricted and unrestricted forecasts. Monte Carlo and empirical analyses verify the practical effectiveness of our combination approach.