Research Database

Includes title: "Minnesota Economic Environment: 1985" by David Dahl, John Rosine and Thomas Supel

This paper reexamines volatility tests of the expectations model of the term structure of interest rates. The restrictions of the model are studied in a general multivariate MA representation of the time series process of interest rates under various assumptions on the number of unit roots and the pattern of cointegration. Test statistics are computed by Bayesian techniques. We find that the long term interest rate overreacts to transitory shocks, and underreacts to permanent shocks.

Economists and policymakers disagree on the lengths central banks should go in pursuit of price stability and, in fact, on exactly what price stability means. This essay advocates that central banks try to maintain stable price levels in their countries, and it argues that the benefits of achieving this objective are worth the transition costs. The essay reviews some of the relevant academic literature on the economic effects of inflation and specifically addresses the issues of transition cost, fiscal dominance, and credibility.

This paper develops a dynamic continuous-time model in which international risk sharing can yield substantial welfare gains through its positive effect on expected consumption growth. The mechanism linking global diversification to growth is an attendant world portfolio shift from safe, but low-yield, capital into riskier, high-yield capital. The presence of these two types of capital is meant to capture the idea that growth depends on the availability of an ever-increasing array of specialized, hence inherently risky, production inputs. A partial calibration exercise based on Penn World Table consumption data implies steady-state welfare gains from global financial integration that for some regions amount to several times initial wealth.

This paper presents a unified approach to nonlinear and nonstationary time-series analysis for a fairly wide class of linear time variable parameter (TVP) or nonlinear systems. The method theory exploits recursive filtering and fixed interval smoothing algorithms to derive TVP linear model approximations to the nonlinear or nonstationary stochastic system, on the basis of data obtained from the system during planned experiments or passive monitoring exercises. This TVP model includes the State Dependent type of Model (SDM) as a special case, and two particular SDM forms, due to Priestly and Young, are discussed in detail. The paper concludes with three practical examples: the first based on the modelling of data from a simulated nonlinear growth equation; the second concerned with the adaptive forecasting and smoothing of the Box-Jenkins Airline Passenger data; and the third providing a critical appraisal of state dependent modelling applied to the famous Sunspot time-series.

In this article, I suggest that incomplete markets and transaction costs are crucial for explaining the high equity premium and the low risk-free rate. I first demonstrate the failure of the complete frictionless markets model in explaining these return puzzles and then show how introducing incomplete markets and transaction costs can lead to success. Additionally, I explain how these features lead to predictions concerning individual consumptions, wealths, portfolios, and asset market transactions that are in better agreement with the facts than the predictions of the complete frictionless markets model.

This article investigates U.S. interbank relationships before the Civil War using previously unknown data for Pennsylvania banks from 1851 to 1859 that disaggregate the amounts due from other banks by debtor bank. It finds that country banks, banks outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, dealt almost exclusively with financial center banks. Most had a large, highly stable relationship with a single correspondent bank. The location of a country bank’s correspondent was consistent with trade patterns, particularly railroad and canal linkages. Philadelphia banks, in contrast, did not establish correspondent-type banking relationships. Further, Philadelphia’s correspondent banking market was not highly concentrated, and entry was easy.

This article investigates the relationship between inflation and output, in the data and in standard models. The article reports that empirical cross-country studies generally find a nonlinear, negative relationship between inflation and output, a relationship that standard models cannot come close to reproducing. The article demonstrates that the models' problem may be due to their standard narrow assumption that all money is held by the public for making transactions. When the models are adjusted to also assume that banks are required to hold money, the models do a much better job. The article concludes that researchers interested in studying the effects of monetary policy on growth should shift their attention away from printing money and toward the study of banking and financial regulations.

The U.S. Treasury could raise more revenue if it changed the way it auctions its debt. Under the current procedure, all bidders whose competitive bids for Treasury securities are accepted pay the prices they bid; different winning bidders, that is, pay different prices. Instead, economic theory says, all winning bidders should all pay the same price—that of the highest bid not accepted, or the price that just clears the market. This procedural change would increase the revenue that Treasury auctions raise primarily because it would decrease the amount of resources that bidders would spend collecting information about what other bidders are likely to do. It would also reduce the incentives for traders to attempt to manipulate the securities market.

Two mechanisms are considered through which money can play a role in a real business cycle model. One is in the form of aggregate price surprises when there is heterogeneity across individuals or groups of individuals (“islands”). These shocks affect the accuracy of information about real compensation that can be extracted from observed wage rates. Another, perhaps complementary, mechanism is that the amount of desired liquidity services varies over the cycle due to a trade-off between real money and leisure. This mechanism leads to price fluctuations even when the nominal money stock does not fluctuate. As is the case for the U.S. economy over the postwar period, the price level is then countercyclical. A key finding is that with neither mechanism do nominal shocks account for more than a small amount of variability in real output and in hours worked. Indeed, output variability may very well be lower the larger the variance of price surprises is.

This study describes and reconciles two common, seemingly contradictory views about a key monetary policy relationship: that between money and interest rates. Data since 1960 for about 40 countries support the Fisher equation view, that these variables are positively related. But studies taking expectations into account support the liquidity effect view, that they are negatively related. A simple model incorporates both views and demonstrates that which view applies at any time depends on when the change in money occurs and how long the public expects it to last. A surprise money change that is not expected to change future money growth moves interest rates in the opposite direction; one that is expected to change future money growth moves interest rates in the same direction. The study also demonstrates that stating monetary policy as a rule for interest rates rather than money does not change the relationship between these variables.

This paper shows that globalization of securities markets exacerbates the volatility of capital flows by strengthening incentives for herding behavior. This is a prediction of a mean-variance portfolio optimization model with imperfect information, in which investors acquire country-specific expertise at a fixed cost and incur variable reputational costs. The model produces equilibria in which incentives to confirm rumors decrease with globalization. Simulations based on equity markets data and country credit ratings suggest that herd behavior can induce large capital outflows from emerging markets.