Research Database

Evidence of the statistical significance of profits in Q regressions remains one of the principal findings in the empirical investment literature. This result is frequently taken to support the view that capital market imperfections are an important element for understanding investment. This paper challenges that conclusion. We argue that allowing the profit function at the firm level to be strictly concave, reflecting, for example, market power, is sufficient to replicate the Q theory based regression results in which profits are a significant factor determining investment. To be clear, our ability to replicate the existing results does not require the specification of any capital market imperfections. Thus the friction that explains the statistical significance of profits could be market power by sellers rather than capital market imperfections.

I consider two theories of the determination of political institutions. One of these theories stresses effects of changes in the balance of military power between the ruler and subjects on the distribution of property rights which the political system enforces. The other theory emphasizes the effect of changing informational constraints which require institutional changes to be made in order to maintain efficiency. I examine how each of these theories would apply to explaining the development of parliamentary government in thirteenth-century England. My general conclusion is that both theories are required to understand fully the process by which liberal political institutions emerge.

We develop a quantitative equilibrium model of financial crises to assess the interaction between ex-post interventions in credit markets and the buildup of risk ex ante. During a systemic crisis, bailouts relax balance sheet constraints and mitigate the severity of the recession. Ex ante, the anticipation of such bailouts leads to an increase in risk-taking, making the economy more vulnerable to a financial crisis. We find that moral hazard effects are limited if bailouts are systemic and broad-based. If bailouts are idiosyncratic and targeted, however, this makes the economy significantly more exposed to financial crises.

The reduced rank regression model arises repeatedly in theoretical and applied econometrics. To date the only general treatment of this model have been frequentist. This paper develops general methods for Bayesian inference with noninformative reference priors in this model, based on a Markov chain sampling algorithm, and procedures for obtaining predictive odds ratios for regression models with different ranks. These methods are used to obtain evidence on the number of factors in a capital asset pricing model.

We show that regulatory changes that occurred in the banking sector in the early eighties, which considerably weakened Regulation Q, can explain the apparent instability of money demand during the same period. We evaluate the effects of the regulatory changes using a model that goes beyond aggregates as M1 and treats currency and different deposit types as alternative means of payments. We use the model to construct a new monetary aggregate that performs remarkably well for the entire period 1915-2012.

We study cooperative optimal Ramsey equilibria in the open economy addressing classic policy questions: Should restrictions be placed to free trade and capital mobility? Should capital income be taxed? Should goods be taxed based on origin or destination? What are desirable border adjustments? How can a Ramsey allocation be implemented with residence-based taxes on assets? We characterize optimal wedges and analyze alternative policy implementations.

This paper provides a general and efficient method for computing density ratio class bounds on posterior moments, given the output of a posterior simulator. It shows how density ratio class bounds for posterior odds ratios may be formed in many situations, also on the basis of posterior simulator output. The computational method is used to provide density ratio class bounds in two econometric models. It is found that the exact bounds are approximated poorly by their asymptotic approximation, when the posterior distribution of the function of interest is skewed. It is also found that posterior odds ratios display substantial variation within the density ratio class, in ways that cannot be anticipated by the asymptotic approximation.

We study an overlapping generations model which contains a capital good that resembles actual gold. This capital good can he stored without physically depreciating and can, by using other resources, be converted back and forth between gold jewelry which yields utility directly and raw gold which does not.Under the assumption that the three utility-yielding objects - first and second period consumption and jewelry - are gross substitutes, stationary equilibria are shown to exist and are characterized; for some parameter values, there are inefficient equilibria, while for others there are efficient equilibria. Both types can be interpreted as commodity money equilibria.

This paper makes two straightforward points that we argue are central to understanding the literature and debate surrounding the stability of the Phillips curve. First, the endogeneity of monetary policy implies that aggregate data are largely uninformative as to the existence of a stable relationship between unemployment and future inflation. Second, if the NAIRU model is assumed to be true, regional data can be used to identify the structural relationship between unemployment and future inflation. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with a roughly 0.3 percentage point decline in inflation over the next year.

Time-varying risk is the primary force driving nominal interest rate differentials on currency-denominated bonds. This finding is an immediate implication of the fact that exchange rates are roughly random walks. We show that a general equilibrium monetary model with an endogenous source of risk variation—a variable degree of asset market segmentation—can produce key features of actual interest rates and exchange rates. The endogenous segmentation arises from a fixed cost for agents to exchange money for assets. As inflation varies, the benefit of asset market participation varies, and that changes the fraction of agents participating. These effects lead the risk premium to vary systematically with the level of inflation. Our model produces variation in the risk premium even though the fundamental shocks have constant conditional variances.