bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Function of Silence in Gertrud von le Fort’s Novel “The Veil of Veronica”
Authors: Piasta Ewa Anna Anna
Published: August 2019

The German writer Gertrud von le Fort is among the leading representatives of the German Renouveau catholique – a religious and literary movement, originated in France in the 1900s. By turning to the values of an authentic Catholicism, the movement was aimed at a renewal of literature and society through faith. The subject of this article is the best known novel by Gertrud von le Fort, The Veil of Veronica, part one of which is titled The Roman Fountain, and part two – The Wreath of Angels. The objective of the present study is to analyse a variety of aspects and functions of silence, as seen in the novel The Veil of Veronica as well as to prove the assumption that this phenomenon is found both in the language layer of the text through direct reference or indirect implication, and in the layer of meaning, when used to highlight specific affections of the characters and to suggest what is not conveyed by language. The analysis is preceded by a theoretical introduction, in which the author defines the phenomenon of silence on the basis of the existing literature, focusing on its multiple meanings and functions.The analysis of the novel enables to argue that silence can mean understanding, a complete lack thereof, be an expression of refusal to communicate verbally, as well as an attitude of readiness to listen. In each of these cases, it is a form of communication. Silence is frequently related to profound experiences of literary characters and provides a means to intensify artistic expression. Silence is also connected with religious practice, as it arises from the experience of the sacred, which is of particular significance in the novel.
Instrucción Ortopédica de Posgrado - Imágenes. Presentación del caso. Postgraduate Orthopedic Instruction: Imaging. Case presentation.
Authors: Ghisi Juan Pablo , Vidondo María Emilia
Published: August 2019

Presentación de caso y estudios de imagen de una mujer de 50 años que practica deportes recreativos. Su principal queja es el dolor de rodilla anterior.Case presentation and imaging studies of a 50-year-old woman who practices recreational sports. Her chief complaint is anterior knee pain.
Hernia intraesponjosa de Schmörl sintomática. [Symptomatic intraosseous Schmörl herniation]
Authors: Guimbard Pérez Joint Halley , Barriga-Martín Andrés , Romero-Munóz Luis María
Published: August 2019

Las hernias discales intraesponjosas vertebrales o nódulos de Schmörl consisten en una herniación o una extrusión del núcleo pulposo del disco intervertebral a través del platillo vertebral hacia el cuerpo adyacente. Suelen asociarse a deformidades vertebrales, como la enfermedad de Scheuermann, o a enfermedades reumáticas, como la espondilitis anquilopoyética. En general, son hallazgos casuales y cuadros asintomáticos; son pocos los casos publicados de nódulos sintomáticos. Su aparición estaría relacionada con un platillo vertebral debilitado por traumatismo o estrés repetido. Cuando el nódulo es agudo o reciente, puede ser difícil diferenciar la degeneración benigna de una infiltración maligna o una infección. Presentamos un caso inusual de un nódulo de Schmörl doloroso en un hombre sin antecedentes de relevancia, que enmascaró una lesión metastásica de carcinoma pancreático a nivel lumbar. Se realiza una revisión bibliográfica.  ABSTRACTIntraosseous disc herniation –or Schmörl nodes (SN)– are a herniation or prolapse of the nucleus pulposus of the intervertebral disc through the vertebral plate and into the adjacent vertebral body. They are usually associated with vertebral deformities, suchas Scheuermann’s disease, or rheumatic diseases, such as ankylopoietic spondylitis. In general, they are spontaneous and asymptomatic findings, and there are only a few reported cases of symptomatic nodes. The etiology is supposedly related to a weakened spinal plate due to trauma or repeated stress. When the node is acute or recent, it can be difficult to differentiate a benign degeneration from a malignant infiltration or infection. In this paper, we discuss the unusual case of a painful Schmörl node in a man with no relevant history and a masked metastatic lumbar spinal tumor originated from pancreatic cancer. We performed a literature review.
Lesión traumática del nervio axilar identificada luego de la reparación del manguito rotador. [Traumatic injury of the axillary nerve identified after rotator cuff repair]
Authors: Cock Atehortua Julián Guillermo , Restrepo Noriega Victoria Eugenia
Published: August 2019

Introducción: La prevalencia del dolor de hombro oscila entre el 6,7% y el 66,7%; los trastornos del manguito rotador y especialmente la ruptura pueden alcanzar una prevalencia del 22,1%. Debido a los importantes avances y estudios en la reparación de esta lesión, la cirugía artroscópica ha permitido una mejor identificación, visualización y clasificación, y un mejor manejo de los pacientes. Además, la ruptura del manguito rotador o la fractura de la tuberosidad mayor del húmero incrementan el riesgo de lesión nerviosa (riesgo relativo –1,9), más significativa en pacientes >60 años. Se presenta a un paciente con ruptura postraumática del manguito rotador, quien requirió reparación artroscópica mínimamente invasiva, con evolución posoperatoria estacionaria y diagnóstico de lesión del nervio axilar, sin recuperación autolimitada atribuida a luxación anterior e inestabilidad secundaria altrauma inicial.Conclusiones: La lesión del nervio axilar es más frecuente que lo esperado y, en muchas ocasiones, la identificación temprana se pasa por alto debido a la alta asociación con otras lesiones. Por lo tanto, el diagnóstico y el manejo oportunos requieren mucho cuidado por parte del médico tratante. AbstractIntroduction: The prevalence of shoulder pain varies between 6.7% and 66.7%; whereas rotator cuff disorders–especially rupture–can reach a prevalence of 22.1%. Due to the important advances and studies in the repair of this injury, arthroscopic surgery has allowed a better identification, visualization and classification, as well as a better handling of the patients. In addition, rotator cuff ruptures or greater tuberosity fractures increase the risk of nerve injury (relative risk -1.9), which is more significant in patients >60 years old. We discuss the case of a patient with post-traumatic rotator cuff rupture who required minimally invasive arthroscopic repair. No weight-bearing was allowed during the postoperative period. Patient presented a non-self-limited axillary nerve injury secondary to anterior dislocation and resulting instability after the original trauma.Conclusions: Axillary nerve injuries are more common than expected and, in many cases, early identification is not possible due to its high rate of association with other injuries. Therefore, treating physicians must be very careful in order to achieve a timely diagnosis and management of the patient.
Exploration and researching for efficiency of open irrigation canals
Authors: Gadjev Roumen , Gerinski Yordan
Published: August 2019

In the irrigation systems, it is necessary to systematize and specify the characteristics for surveillance and inspecting of the efficiency of irrigation canals and their processes for transportation and distribution the water for irrigation. This requires applying of indices and features about the efficiency of water transportation and distribution and taking into account the influence of the flow quantity alteration, the coefficient of roughness, the velocity characteristics of the flow and the hydraulic flow condition.
For this reason in the paper is offered indices and approaches about the efficiency of irrigation activities by considering and analyzing the flow processes in irrigation open canals, as well as the dependencies for influence of flow condition and the coefficient of roughness on exploitation of irrigation canals.
Family in mind
Authors: Ellis Elizabeth Marrkilyi , Green Jennifer , Kral Inge
Published: August 2019

In the Ngaanyatjarra Lands in remote Western Australia children play a guessing game called mama mama ngunytju ngunytju ‘father father mother mother’. It is mainly girls who play the game, along with other members of their social network, including age-mates, older kin and adults. They offer clues about target referents and establish mutual understandings through multimodal forms of representation that include semi-conventionalized drawings on the sand. In this paper we show how speech, gesture, and graphic schemata are negotiated and identify several recurrent themes, particularly focusing on the domains of kinship and spatial awareness. We discuss the implications this case study has for understanding the changing nature of language socialization in remote Indigenous Australia. Multimodal analyses of games and other indirect teaching routines deepen our understandings of the acquisition of cultural knowledge and the development of communicative competence in this context.
Exploring the recognisability of early story-telling through an interactional lens
Authors: Filipi Anna
Published: August 2019

This study analyses two interactions between a parent and her child aged 23 months. The interactions provide examples of stories that begin to emerge when the child moves from talk that is highly dependent on the objects or activities in the physical space to talk about events that have occurred in a recent past and are not part of the immediate context. In the child language literature these interactions are referred as narratives. They are reported to emerge from the age of two, typically at the age of 2;6 (Miller & Sperry, 1988). Using the micro-analytic methods of conversation analysis where the focus is on interaction as the outcome of the joint, collaborative actions of both parent and child, and how they make visible to each other how they have understood the previous action or turn in talk, the analysis will show how one of the stories “fails” to progress while the second is successful. Analysis will proceed from using a set of features extrapolated from adult story-telling. They include what triggers the story-telling, how speakers resolve the interactional problem of creating a multi-unit turn, how story-telling is achieved collaboratively, what the purpose of the story is and who it is for, and how the story is oriented to as being newsworthy.
Staging social aggression
Authors: Evaldsson Ann-Carita , svahn Johanna
Published: August 2019

Drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analysis integrated with ethnographic approaches, we examine the organizing force and normative character of anger and aggression as jointly configured in the affective stances and moral actions displayed in the sequential and sociocultural context of an elaborated gossip event. Analytic attention is on the constitutive role of affect displays and membership categorization in mobilizing negative affect and evaluative actions toward a targeted girl leading ultimately to direct and verbal and physical confrontations. The analysis highlights how collaboratively performed affect displays (high-pitched voices, exaggerated faces, response cries, bodily re-enactments, laughter) and animated performances intensify reported insults (actual and imagined) and negative categorization of person and thus are mobilized in taking up oppositional stances and strengthening in-group alignments. It is found that the moral status of the targeted girl as a familiar ‘offender’ is incorporated into the affective moral stances and negative membership categorizations displayed in the moment-to-moment interactions, which in turn affect how and why the particular girl, cumulatively and over time, becomes a customary target of the others’ verbal and physical aggression.
Lexical repetitions and repair initiation in mother–child talk
Authors: Xavier Carla Cristina Munhoz , Walker Traci
Published: August 2019

This study examines the linguistic and interactional organization of repair in Brazilian Portuguese playtime conversations between six mothers and their children (mean age 2;6). Following both interactional phonetics and conversation analytic methodological approaches, this investigation focuses on how children and mothers negotiate the action done by the mother’s lexical repetition used to initiate repair on the child’s previous turn. The results suggest that children’s ability to understand mothers' lexical repetitions addressing pronunciation problems comes before their ability to understand repetitions that address problems of lexical choice.
Imitation in children’s locomotor play
Authors: Hoey Elliott M. , DeLiema David , Chen Rachel S. Y. , Flood Virginia J.
Published: August 2019

Children commonly engage in social locomotor play—the horsing around, running about, and physical contact characteristic of playgrounds and neighborhood streets. To adults and outsiders, this activity may look like undisciplined chaos. However, the very recognizabilitly of locomotor play—the fact that children observably pull it off together as a discriminate activity—points to a set of shared practices for its accomplishment. In this article, we investigate children’s methods and resources for organizing social locomotor play. Using video recordings of 5-6yo children playing during an immersive technologically-mediated science lesson, our analysis shows in fine detail some of the orderliness of social locomotor play. In particular, we demonstrate how children use imitation to organize the initiation and progression of this activity.
Embodying epistemic responsibility
Authors: Heller Vivien
Published: August 2019

The study explores how children deploy gaze and embodied epistemic stance displays to establish a mutual epistemic responsibility when dealing with potentially controversial questions. Drawing on video recordings of 24 peer interactions involving children aged 9-12 years, the sequential and multimodal analysis describes the practices that construct intercorporeal participation frameworks for collaborative reasoning. Findings demonstrate that children coordinate gaze and multimodal displays of epistemic stance to mobilize co-participants’ attention toward their position, while at the same time subjecting it to negotiation. Furthermore, children recruit the current speaker’s gaze to issue a friendly challenge to his/her pre-determined stance. When the mutual epistemic responsibility was at stake, children occasioned a recalibration of stance displays at the earliest possible place. The children’s embodied participation frameworks thus reflect their orientation to knowledge as being socially constructed.
Effects of Exercise on Chemotherapy Completion and Hospitalization Rates: The OptiTrain Breast Cancer Trial
Authors: Mijwel Sara , Bolam Kate A. , Gerrevall Jacob , Foukakis Theodoros , Wengström Yvonne , Rundqvist Helene
Published: August 2019

Background

Exercise during chemotherapy is suggested to provide clinical benefits, including improved chemotherapy completion. Despite this, few randomized controlled exercise trials have reported on such clinical endpoints. From the OptiTrain trial we previously showed positive effects on physiological and health-related outcomes after 16 weeks of supervised exercise in patients with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Here, we examined the effects of exercise on rates of chemotherapy completion and hospitalization, as well as on blood cell concentrations during chemotherapy.

Patients and Methods

Two hundred forty women scheduled for chemotherapy were randomized to 16 weeks of resistance and high-intensity interval training (RT-HIIT), moderate-intensity aerobic and high-intensity interval training (AT-HIIT), or usual care (UC). Outcomes included chemotherapy completion, hospitalization, hemoglobin, lymphocyte, thrombocyte, and neutrophil concentrations during chemotherapy.

Results

No significant between-groups differences were found in the proportion of participants who required dose reductions (RT-HIIT vs. UC: odds ratio [OR], 1.08; AT-HIIT vs. UC: OR, 1.39), or average relative dose intensity of chemotherapy between groups (RT-HIIT vs. UC: effect size [ES], 0.08; AT-HIIT vs. UC: ES, −0.07). A significantly lower proportion of participants in the RT-HIIT group (3%) were hospitalized during chemotherapy compared with UC (15%; OR, 0.20). A significantly lower incidence of thrombocytopenia was found for both RT-HIIT (11%) and AT-HIIT (10%) versus UC (30%; OR, 0.27; OR, 0.27).

Conclusion

No beneficial effects of either RT-HIIT or AT-HIIT on chemotherapy completion rates were found. However, combined resistance training and high-intensity interval training were effective to reduce hospitalization rates, and both exercise groups had a positive effect on thrombocytopenia. These are important findings with potential positive implications for the health of women with breast cancer and costs associated with treatment-related complications.
Measurement Error and Time Aggregation: A Closer Look at Estimates of Output-Labor Elasticities
Authors: Estevao Marcello
Published: August 2019

This paper analyzes the effect of time aggregation on estimates of the elasticities of output with respect to employment and to average hours of work. The main goal is to get accurate estimates of production function parameters. Low frequency data generate better estimates of output-employment elasticity while high frequency data generate better estimates of output-average hours elasticity. This result comes from the fact that time aggregation increases (decreases) the bias in the estimate of the elasticity with respect to average hours (employment). Estimations of these elasticities at different data frequencies and numerical simulations illustrate this point. In addition, this estimation methodology shows that the elasticity of output with respect to employment is bigger than the elasticity of output with respect to average hours, as theory predicts, contradicting an established result in the literature.
Stock Market Fluctuations and the Term Structure
Authors: Zhou Chunsheng
Published: August 2019

This paper uses the term structure of interest rates to explain the variations of stock prices and stock returns. It shows that interest rates have an important impact on stock returns, especially at long horizons. The hypothesis that expected stock returns move one-for-one with ex ante interest rates, which has been rejected strongly in other studies using short horizon data, is supported by long horizon data. The paper proposes, for the first time, a single measure---the present value of forward interest rates---to summarize the information of the term structure that is useful in characterizing the comovements of the equity market and the bond market, and finds that such a single measure explains a significant part of variation in dividend-price ratios. The paper also suggests that the high volatility of the stock market is related to the high volatility of long-term bond yields and may be accounted for by changing forecasts of discount rates. The findings of this paper are quite different from the typical findings of the previous work and may provide a reasonable economic explanation for the predictability of long-horizon stock returns.
Forecasting Long-and Short-Horizon Stock Returns in a Unified Framework
Authors: Zhou Chunsheng
Published: August 2019

If stock prices do not follow random walks, what processes do they follow? This question is important not only for forecasting purpose, but also for theoretical analyses and derivative pricing where a tractable model of the movement of underlying stock prices is needed. Although several models have been proposed to capture the predictability of stock returns, their empirical performances have not been evaluated. This paper evaluates some popular models using a Kalman Filter technique and finds that they have serious flaws. The paper then proposes an alternative parsimonious state-space model in which state variables characterize the stochastic movements of stock returns. Using equal-weighted CRSP monthly index, the paper shows that (1) this model fits the autocorrelations of returns well over both short and longer horizons and (2) although the forecasts obtained with the state-space model are based solely on past returns, they subsume the information in other potential predictor variables such as dividend yields.
Do Low Human Capital Coefficients Make Sense? A Puzzle and Some Answers
Authors: Judson Ruth A.
Published: August 2019

I develop a new measure of human capital stock that has two advantages over previous measures. First, it allows for varying costs of education across time, countries, and level of education. Second, the unit of measurement is dollars, which allows comparison of human capital stocks with other macro- economic variables, including national income (GDP) and physical capital stocks. Using cross-country panel regression analysis, I find that human capital accumulation accounts for a relatively small (about ten percent) of per-capita GDP growth. I further find that, unlike physical capital, the stock of human capital as a share of GDP increases with GDP.
Estimating the Price of Default Risk
Authors: Duffee Gregory R.
Published: August 2019

A firm's instantaneous probability of default is modeled as a square-root diffusion process. The parameters of these processes are estimated for 188 firms, using both the time series and cross-sectional (term structure) properties of the individual firms' bond prices. Although the estimated models are moderately successful at bond pricing, there is strong evidence of misspecification. The results indicate that single factor models of instantaneous default risk face a significant challenge in matching certain key features of actual corporate bond yield spreads. In particular, such models have difficulty generating both relatively flat yield spreads when firms have low credit risk and steeper yield spreads when firms have higher credit risk.
Initial Public Offerings in Hot and Cold Markets
Authors: Helwege Jean , Liang J. Nellie
Published: August 2019

The literature on IPOs offers a wide variety of explanations to justify the dramatic swings in the volume of IPOs observed in the market. Many theories predict that hot IPO markets are characterized by clusters of firms in particular industries for which a technological innovation has occurred, suggesting that hot and cold market IPO firms will differ in quality, prospects, or types of business. Others suggest hot market IPOs are firms that take advantage of irrational investors. We compare firms that go public in a number of hot and cold markets during 1975-2000, examining them at the time of the IPO and during the following five years. We find that both hot and cold market IPOs are largely concentrated in the same narrow set of industries and hot markets for many industries occur at the same time. We also find few distinctions in quality and scant evidence that hot market IPOs have better growth prospects. Our results suggest that technological innovations are not the primary determinant of hot markets because IPO markets cycle with greater frequency than the underlying innovations, and are more in line with the view that hot markets reflect greater investor optimism, though not necessarily active manipulation by managers.
The Effect of Deficit-Reduction Laws on Real Interest Rates
Authors: Elmendorf Douglas W.
Published: August 2019

This paper uses news reports about two deficit-reduction laws of the past decade to identify days when expected fiscal policy clearly became more or less expansionary. The paper also proposes a technique for identifying whether the real interest rate increased or decreased on those days, based on changes in the nominal interest rate, the exchange rate, commodity prices, and stock prices. As economic theory predicts, higher expected government spending and budget deficits raised real interest rates and the value of the dollar, while lower expected spending and deficits reduced real rates and the value of the dollar.
Moving Endpoints and the Internal Consistency of Agents' Ex Ante Forecasts
Authors: Kozicki Sharon , Tinsley Peter A.
Published: August 2019

Forecasts by rational agents contain embedded initial and terminal boundary conditions. Standard time series models generate two types of long-run "endpoints"---fixed endpoints and moving average endpoints. Neither can explain the shifting endpoints implied by postwar movements in the cross-section of forward rate forecasts in the term structure or by post-1979 changes in survey estimates of expected inflation. Multiperiod forecasts by a broader class of "moving endpoint" time series models provide substantially improved tracking of the historical term structure and generally support the internal consistency of the ex ante long-run expectations of bond traders and survey respondents.
Off-Farm Labor Supply and Fertilizer Use
Authors: Lamb Russell L.
Published: August 2019

I develop a two-period stochastic dynamic programming model to explain the interaction between fertilizer use and off-farm labor supply. Using a well-known sample of Indian farmers, I find that fertilizer use responds strongly to the village wage and that irrigation raises fertilizer use, while larger farmers use less fertilizer (per acre) than smaller ones. Response to one-sided production shocks, is stronger for female labor, indicating that it is more important for smoothing consumption than male labor.
Smart Systems and Simple Agents: Industry Pricing by Parallel Rules
Authors: Board Raymond , Tinsley Peter A.
Published: August 2019

A standard macroeconomic specification is that the aggregate economy is directed by a single, smart representative agent using optimal decision rules. This paper explores an alternative conjecture--that the dynamic behavior of markets is often better interpreted as the interactions of many heterogeneous, rule-of-thumb agents who are loosely coupled in smart systems--much like the contrast of a single serial processor with global information versus parallel processors with limited communications. The illustration used in this paper is the contrast between a conventional macro model of sluggish adjustments in an aggregate producer price index and a model of delayed industry price adjustments in a distributed production system under costly inter-firm communications.
Earnings Forecasts and the Predictability of Stock Returns: Evidence from Trading the S&P
Authors: Lander Joel , Orphanides Athanasios , Douvogiannis Martha
Published: August 2019

We develop a simple error-correction model, based on a well-known theory, espoused by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd and others, which presumes stock returns tend to restore an equilibrium relationship between the forecasted earnings yield on common stocks and the yield on bonds. The estimation uses I/B/E/S analysts forecasts of S&amp;P; earnings. To evaluate the model, we use rolling regressions to obtain out-of-sample forecasts of excess returns. Tests of association show the implicit timing signals to be statistically significant. Further, a strategy of investing in cash, when the excess return forecast is negative, and investing in the S&amp;P;, when the excess return forecast is positive, outperforms the S&amp;P; with higher returns and smaller volatility. Using the bootstrap methodology, we demonstrate that the findings are statistically significant.
Path-Dependent Option Valuation when the Underlying Path Is Discontinuous
Authors: Zhou Chunsheng
Published: August 2019

The payoffs of path-dependent options depend not only on the final values, but also on the sample paths of the prices of the underlying assets. A rigorous modeling of the underlying asset price processes which can appropriately describe the sample paths is therefore critical for pricing path-dependent options. This paper allows for discontinuities in the sample paths of the underlying asset prices by assuming that these prices follow jump diffusion processes. A general yet tractable approach is presented to value a variety of path-dependent options with discontinuous processes. The numerical examples show that ignoring the jump risk may lead to serious biases in path-dependent option pricing.
Three Sources of Increasing Returns to Scale
Authors: Kim Jinill
Published: August 2019

This paper reviews various types of increasing returns from a critical perspective. Increasing returns have been introduced in a monopolistic-competition model both at the firm level and at the aggregate level. We show that the degree of the aggregate returns to scale is a linear combination of three return parameters, with the weights determined by the specification of a zero-profit condition. Identification issues are discussed with an emphasis on recent macro literature. We argue that disaggregate data give information on the market structure rather than the technology. Welfare implications explain why it is important to identify various increasing returns.
The Effect of Automated Underwriting on the Profitability of Mortgage Securitization
Authors: Passmore Wayne , Sparks Roger
Published: August 2019

Over the past two years, many mortgage market analysts have praised automated underwriting as a technological innovation that will lower the costs of processing mortgage applications. However, automated underwriting is unlikely to decrease processing costs uniformly for all mortgage applications. Instead, it makes identifying and processing low-risk mortgage borrowers less costly, but may not significantly lower the costs of identifying and processing relatively high-risk applicants. Our results suggest that after the one-time cost reduction produced by automated underwriting, the resulting mortgage market equilibrium is characterized by lower mortgage rates and lower profits for the mortgage securitizer.
Margin Requirements, Volatility, and Market Integrity: What Have We Learned since the Crash?
Authors: Kupiec Paul H.
Published: August 2019

This study assesses the state of the policy debate that surrounds the federal regulation of margin requirements. A relatively comprehensive review of the literature finds no undisputed evidence that supports the hypothesis that margin requirements can be used to control stock return volatility and correspondingly little evidence that suggests that margin-related leverage is an important underlying source of "excess" volatility. The evidence does not support the hypothesis that there is a stable inverse relationship between the level of Regulation T margin requirements and stock returns volatility nor does it support the hypothesis that the leverage advantage in equity derivative products is a source of additional returns volatility in the stock market.
The GMM Parameter Normalization Puzzle
Authors: Fleischman Charles A.
Published: August 2019

A feature of GMM estimation--the use of a consistent estimate of the optimal weighting matrix rather than the joint estimation of the model parameters and the weighting matrix--can lead to the sensitivity of GMM estimation to the choice of parameter normalization. In many applications, including Euler equation estimation, a model parameter multiplies the equation error in some, but not all, normalizations. But, conventional GMM estimators that either hold the estimate of the weighting matrix fixed or allow some limited iteration on the weighting matrix fail to account for the dependence of the weighting matrix on the parameter vector implied by the multiplication of the error by the parameter. In finite samples, GMM effectively minimizes the square of the parameter times the objective function that obtains from an alternative normalization where no parameter multiplies the equation error, resulting in estimates that are smaller (in absolute value) than those from the alternative normalization. Of course, normalization is irrelevant asymptotically.
Staggered Price Setting and Real Rigidities
Authors: Kiley Michael T.
Published: August 2019

This paper emphasizes the notion that model features that contribute to endogenous price rigidity under staggered price setting lower the elasticity of marginal cost with respect to output, and these same model features tend to generate equilibrium indeterminacy, or "sunspot fluctuations", under price flexibility. Using this insight, staggered price setting is shown to imply persistent output responses to monetary shocks for certain parameterizations of one- and two-sector models with small increasing returns or countercyclical markups, and other model features that would contribute to persistence are discussed.
Market Definition and the Analysis of Antitrust in Banking
Authors: Kwast Myron L. , Starr-McCluer Martha , Wolken John D.
Published: August 2019

In antitrust analysis of bank mergers, banking markets are viewed as geographically local, with a "cluster" of products as the relevant product line. This view is criticized as outdated, now that many bank products are offered by nonbank institutions and financial institutions' operations are increasingly national in scope. This paper reexamines the question of market definition in banking, using two micro data sets uniquely well-suited to the task. We find that local depositories remain the dominant supplier of key financial services to households and small businesses, with geographic proximity still important in their institution choice.
Equilibrium Price with Institutional Investors and with Naive Traders
Authors: Dupont Dominique
Published: August 2019

This paper uses a competitive equilibrium model to study how institutional investors influence the volatility and the informativeness of asset prices. Institutional investors are assumed to be "rational" informed traders, while individual investors are supposed to be "naive" informed traders, insofar as the former use the equilibrium price to extract information while the latter do not. The paper compares the informativeness and the volatility of the equilibrium price in an economy in which the informed traders are naive and in one where they are rational; the paper also investigates how the price characteristics react to changes in the parameters, in particular in the number of informed traders.
Is Mortgage Lending by Savings Associations Special?
Authors: Passmore Wayne , Laderman Elizabeth
Published: August 2019

In this paper, we investigate whether elimination of the savings association charter might reduce lending to nontraditional mortgage borrowers. We present a theoretical model of lender portfolio choice, in which nontraditional lenders have some market power and traditional lenders are price-takers in the mortgage market. The comparative statics indicate differences between nontraditional and traditional lenders in terms of their asset allocation responses to changes in borrower income and house prices. Empirical tests indicate the absence of such differences between savings associations and commercial banks, suggesting that elimination of the savings association charter would not impair lending to nontraditional mortgage borrowers.
Monetary Policy under Neoclassical and New-Keynesian Phillips Curves, with an Application to Price Level and Inflation Targeting
Authors: Kiley Michael T.
Published: August 2019

This paper compares discretionary monetary policy under two Phillips curves. Previous work uses a Phillips curve consistent with "Neoclassical" models of price adjustment. Sticky price models imply a "New-Keynesian" Phillips curve based on staggered price setting that delivers familiar results on an inflationary bias and inflation contracts. However, the comparison of price level and inflation targeting reveals an output/price stability tradeoff under the New-Keynesian model that does not arise under the Neoclassical specification, illustrating the usefulness of considering the New-Keynesian model. Given the empirical support for the New-Keynesian specification, a stability tradeoff likely exists.
Comparing Market and Supervisory Assessments of Bank Performance: Who Knows What When?
Authors: Berger Allen N. , Davies Sally M. , Flannery Mark J.
Published: August 2019

We compare the timeliness and accuracy of government supervisors versus market participants in assessing the condition of large U.S. bank holding companies. We find that supervisors and bond rating agencies both have some prior information that is useful to the other. In contrast, supervisory assessments and equity market indicators are not strongly interrelated. We also find that supervisory assessments are much less accurate overall than both bond and equity market assessments in predicting future changes in performance, but supervisors may be more accurate when inspections are recent. To some extent, these results may reflect differing incentives of the parties.
Rational Error Correction
Authors: Tinsley Peter A.
Published: August 2019

Under general conditions, linear decision rules of agents with rational expectations are equivalent to restricted error corrections. However, empirical rejections of rational expectation restrictions are the rule, rather than the exception, in macroeconomics. Rejections often are conditioned on the assumption that agents aim to smooth only the levels of actions or are subject to geometric random delays. Generalizations of dynamic frictions on agent activities are suggested that yield closed-form, higher-order decision rules with improved statistical fits and infrequent rejections of rational expectations restrictions. Properties of these generalized “rational” error corrections are illustrated for producer pricing in maufacturing industries.
Inflation Expectations and the Transmission of Monetary Policy
Authors: Roberts John M.
Published: August 2019

New Keynesian models with sticky prices and rational expectations have a difficult time explaining why reducing inflation usually requires a recession. An explanation for the costliness of reducing inflation is that inflation expectations are less than perfectly rational. To explore this possibility, I estimate the degree of nonrationality implicit in two survey measures of inflation expectations. I find that the surveys reflect an intermediate degree of rationality: Expectations are nether perfectly rational nor as unsophisticated as simple autoregressive models would suggest. I also find that a structural New Keynesian model with expectations formation based on the survey results is able to match closely the empirical costs of reducing inflation.
Robustness of Simple Monetary Policy Rules under Model Uncertainty
Authors: Wieland Volker W. , Levin Andrew , Williams John C.
Published: August 2019

In this paper, we investigate the properties of alternative monetary policy rules using four structural macroeconometric models: the Fuhrer-Moore model, Taylor's Multi-Country Model, the MSR model of Orphanides and Wieland, and the FRB staff model. All four models incorporate the assumptions of rational expectations, short-run nominal inertia, and long-run monetary neutrality, but differ in many other respects (e.g., the dynamics of prices and real expenditures). We compute the output-inflation volatility frontier of each model for alternative specifications of the interest rate rule, subject to an upper bound on nominal interest rate volatility. Our analysis provides strong support for rules in which the first-difference of the federal funds rate responds to the current output gap and the deviation of the one-year average inflation rate from a specified target. In all four models, first-difference rules perform much better than rules of the type proposed by Taylor (1993) and Henderson and McKibbin (1993), in which the level of the federal funds rate responds to the output gap and the deviation from target. Furthermore, first-difference rules generate essentially the same policy frontier as more complicated rules (i.e., rules that respond to a larger number of variables and/or additional lags of output and inflation). Finally, this class of rules is robust to model uncertainty, in the sense that a first-difference rule taken from the policy frontier of one model is very close to the policy frontier of each of the other three models. In contrast, more complicated rules are less robust to model uncertainty: rules with additional parameters can be fine-tuned to the dynamics of a specified model, but typically perform poorly in the other models.
The Consolidation of the Financial Services Industry: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for the Future
Authors: Berger Allen N. , Demsetz Rebecca , Strahan Philip E.
Published: August 2019

This article designs a framework for evaluating the causes, consequences, and future implications of financial consolidation, reviews the extant research literature within the context of this framework (over 250 references), and suggests fruitful avenues for future research. The evidence is consistent with increases in market power from some types of consolidation; improvements in profit efficiency and diversification of risks, but little or no cost efficiency improvements; relatively little effect on the availability of services to small customers; potential improvements in payments system efficiency; and potential costs on the financial system from increasing systemic risk or expanding the financial safety net.
Bank Risk Rating of Business Loans
Authors: English William B. , Nelson William R.
Published: August 2019

In recent years many banks have attempted to improve the measurement and management of credit risk by assigning risk ratings to business loans. Virtually all large banks now assign such ratings. However, until recently there has been little information on the use of risk ratings by smaller banks. Recent revisions to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Terms of Business Lending and telephone consultations with more than 100 banks on the survey panel provide data on the prevalence and precision of risk rating systems at banks of all sizes. We find that the use of risk rating systems is quite widespread, but that smaller banks generally have less detailed systems than do larger banks. In addition, the new survey data allow us to asses the relationships between loan risk ratings and loan terms. Not surprisingly, riskier loans generally carry higher interest rates, even after taking account of other loan terms. There are more complex relationships between loan risk and other loan terms. Regression results indicate that banks of all sizes price for risk. We do not find a relationship between reported loan risk and delinquency and charge-off rates. However, this may reflect how recently the risk rating data have become available.
Evidence of Excess Returns on Firms That Issue or Repurchase Equity
Authors: Nelson William R.
Published: August 2019

Between 1927 and 1992, portfolios of the stock of the 5 percent of firms with the lowest annual change in shares experienced returns over the subsequent five years that averaged 12 percentage points more per year than the returns to portfolios of the 5 percent of firms with the highest change in shares. The difference in returns is greater in more recent years and was positive for all of the final 33 years of the sample. The difference is apparent for portfolios of firms of all sizes and industries. The market beta of the returns to the portfolios of repurchasers exceeds only slightly that of the returns to the portfolios of issuers, insufficiently to account for more than a small part of the difference in average returns.
Simple Rules for Monetary Policy
Authors: Williams John C.
Published: August 2019

What is a good monetary policy rule for stabilizing the economy? In this paper, efficient policy rules are computed using the FRB/US large-scale open-economy macroeconometric model. Simple three-parameter policy rules are found to be very effective at minimizing fluctuations in inflation, output, and interest rates: Increases in rule complexity yield only trivial reductions in aggregate variability. Under rational expectations, efficient policies smooth the interest rate response to shocks and use the feedback from anticipated policy actions to stabilize inflation and output and to moderate movements in short-term interest rates. Policy should react to a multi-period inflation rate rather than the current quarter inflation rate; in fact, targeting the price level, as opposed to the inflation rate, involves only small additional stabilization costs. These results are robust to parameter and model uncertainty and the imposition of the non-negativity constraint on nominal interest rates. However, if expectations formation is invariant to policy, as in backward-looking models, the expectations channel is shut off and the performance of policies that are efficient under rational expectations may, as a result, deteriorate markedly; efficient policies, in contrast, exploit systematic expectational errors.
The Geography of Medicare
Authors: Cutler David M. , Sheiner Louise
Published: August 2019

There is a great deal of geographic variation in Medicare spending. For example, while the average Medicare cost per beneficiary was around $5200 in 1996, Medicare spending, adjusted for differences in regional prices and demographic composition, was about $8000 per person in Miami, but only $3500 in Minneapolis. In this paper, we explore the source of this variation. We find that a substantial amount can be explained by differences across areas in the health of the elderly population. This finding suggests that some of the geographic variation in Medicare spending is efficient. But even accounting for differences in the health of the population, significant variation remains. We have been able to explain some of the remaining variation. The strongest factors are supply variables: for-profit hospitals and specialist physicians both increase Medicare spending. If these factors are exogenous, public policy may want to consider the supply of medical services more than it currently does. We do not find that expensive places spend a disproportionate amount on those near death.
Pricing Systemic Crises: Monetary and Fiscal Policy When Savers are Uncertain
Authors: Lehnert Andreas , Passmore Wayne
Published: August 2019

The return on assets depends on the joint behavior of all savers; if all sell the asset simultaneously, then there will be a financial "Armageddon." We assume that risk-neutral savers' information about aggregate investment is too vague to form precise probability estimates, so they have Knightian uncertainty, and thus act to maximize their minimum payoff. Savers invest in a risky asset (economy-wide production) and in a riskless asset (government bonds). In times of high uncertainty, savers hold too many government bonds, lowering output. A monetary policy of lowering the risk-free rate causes savers to save less in total but to invest more in the risky asset, and the policy is shown to be Pareto-improving; but the policy is unable to recapture the optimal allocations. To restore investment and total savings to their optimal levels, the government must also use a fiscal policy of distortionary taxes to discourage current consumption and leisure.
Computers and Growth with Costs of Adjustment: Will the Future Look Like the Past?
Authors: Kiley Michael T.
Published: August 2019

This paper augments the traditional growth accounting framework by including a common specification of investment adjustment costs and uses the new framework to examine the past and likely future growth in nonfarm business output in the United States. The inclusion of adjustment costs can have large effects on the growth-accounting exercise when a new investment good is introduced--such as computers in the last thirty years. The new framework indicates that the contribution of computers to economic growth has been held down by the large adjustment costs required to incorporate a new investment good into the economy's capital stock. Alternative calibrations of the model suggest that these adjustment costs have lowered measured growth in multifactor productivity since 1974 by about 1/2 percentage point--a nontrivial percentage of the productivity slowdown. Combining the adjustments to multifactor productivity and the impact of computers implied by the model with adjustment costs boosts long-run growth in output per hour 3/4 percentage point above the 1974-1991 average.