Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Search‐theoretic models of monetary exchange are based on explicit descriptions of the frictions that make money essential. However, tractable versions of these models typically make strong assumptions that render them ill suited for monetary policy analysis. We propose a new framework, based on explicit micro foundations, within which macro policy can be studied. The framework is analytically tractable and easily quantifiable. We calibrate the model to standard observations and use it to measure the cost of inflation. We find that going from 10 percent to 0 percent inflation is worth between 3 and 5 percent of consumption—much higher than previous estimates.

ABSTRACT In a financially integrated global market, the conditionally expected return on a portfolio of securities from a particular country is determined by the country's world risk exposure. This paper measures the conditional risk of 17 countries. The reward per unit of risk is the world price of covariance risk. Although the tests provide evidence on the conditional mean variance efficiency of the benchmark portfolio, the results show that countries' risk exposures help explain differences in performance. Evidence is also presented which indicates that these risk exposures change through time and that the world price of covariance risk is not constant.

Using loan-level data, we analyze the quality of subprime mortgage loans by adjusting their performance for differences in borrower characteristics, loan characteristics, and macroeconomic conditions. We find that the quality of loans deteriorated for six consecutive years before the crisis and that securitizers were, to some extent, aware of it. We provide evidence that the rise and fall of the subprime mortgage market follows a classic lending boom-bust scenario, in which unsustainable growth leads to the collapse of the market. Problems could have been detected long before the crisis, but they were masked by high house price appreciation between 2003 and 2005.

Why the Apple Doesn't Fall Far: Understanding Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital by Sandra E. Black, Paul J. Devereux and Kjell G. Salvanes. Published in volume 95, issue 1, pages 437-449 of American Economic Review, March 2005

We compare three market structures for monetary economies: bargaining (search equilibrium); price taking (competitive equilibrium); and price posting (competitive search equilibrium). We also extend work on the microfoundations of money by allowing a general matching technology and entry. We study how equilibrium and the effects of policy depend on market structure. Under bargaining, trade and entry are both inefficient, and inflation implies first-order welfare losses. Under price taking, the Friedman rule solves the first inefficiency but not the second, and inflation may actually improve welfare. Under posting, the Friedman rule yields the first best, and inflation implies second-order welfare losses.

This paper illustrates the technique of generational accounting, a new way to evaluate fiscal policy that overcomes the inherent ambiguities of traditional deficit accounting. The authors illustrate why there is no ‘correct’ measure of the deficit and how generational accounting--estimating the fiscal burdens current policy places on different generations--provides a clearer picture of the intergenerational and macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy than any measure of the deficit. Their calculations suggest that, despite recent changes, U.S. fiscal policy is unsustainable in that it will ultimately require future generations to bear a much higher burden than those currently alive.

This paper uses a new, large-scale, dynamic life-cycle simulation model to compare the welfare and macroeconomic effects of transitions to five fundamental alternatives to the U.S. federal income tax, including a proportional consumption tax and a flat tax. The model incorporates intragenerational heterogeneity and a detailed specification of alternative tax systems. Simulation results project significant long-run increases in output for some reforms. For other reforms, namely those that seek to insulate the poor and initial older generations from adverse welfare changes, long-run output gains are modest. (JEL H20, C68)

Central banks and other forecasters are increasingly interested in various aspects of density forecasts. However, recent sharp changes in macroeconomic volatility, including the Great Moderation and the more recent sharp rise in volatility associated with increased variation in energy prices and the deep global recession—pose significant challenges to density forecasting. Accordingly, this paper examines, with real-time data, density forecasts of U.S. GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, and the federal funds rate from Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) models with stochastic volatility. The results indicate that adding stochastic volatility to BVARs materially improves the real-time accuracy of density forecasts. This article has supplementary material online.

Workers' wages are not set in a spot market. Instead, the wages of most workers—at least those who do not switch jobs—typically change only annually and are mediated by a complex set of institutions and factors such as contracts, unions, standards of fairness, minimum wage policy, transfers of risk, and incomplete information. The goal of the International Wage Flexibility Project (IWFP)—a consortium of over 40 researchers with access to individual workers' earnings data for 16 countries—is to provide new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We investigate the extent of wage flexibility, with a particular focus on the extent of downward wage rigidity; and explore how measures of wage flexibility are affected by the wage-setting regimes that typically vary by country.

An economic experiment places people in an environment desired by the experimenter, who then records the time paths of their economic behavior. Performing experiments using actual people at the level of national economies is obviously impractical but constructing a model economy and computing the economic behavior of the model's people is. Such experiments are termed ‘computational’ because economic behavior of the model's people is computed. This essay specifies the steps in designing a computational experiment to address some well-posed quantitative question. The computational experiment is an econometric tool used in the task of deriving the quantitative implications of theory.

In a financially integrated global market, the conditionally expected return on a portfolio of securities from a particular country is determined by the country's world risk exposure. This paper measures the conditional risk of 17 countries. The reward per unit of risk is the world price of covariance risk. Although the tests provide evidence on the conditional mean variance efficiency of the benchmark portfolio, the results show that countries' risk exposures help explain differences in performance. Evidence is also presented which indicates that these risk exposures change through time and that the world price of covariance risk is not constant.

Observed human capital explains less than half of wage variation. In BLS Industry Wage Surveys, establishment-based wage differentials (controlling for occupation) account for 20–70 percent of intra-industry wage variation. This corresponds to a standard deviation in wages of 14 percent of the mean, almost as large as interindustry wage variation. Investigation suggests that establishment wage differentials are not random variations or returns to usual measures of human capital.

This paper compares alternative models of time-varying volatility on the basis of the accuracy of real-time point and density forecasts of key macroeconomic time series for the USA. We consider Bayesian autoregressive and vector autoregressive models that incorporate some form of time-varying volatility, precisely random walk stochastic volatility, stochastic volatility following a stationary AR process, stochastic volatility coupled with fat tails, GARCH and mixture of innovation models. The results show that the AR and VAR specifications with conventional stochastic volatility dominate other volatility specifications, in terms of point forecasting to some degree and density forecasting to a greater degree. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Social interaction contributes to some traders’ disposition effect. New data from an investment-specific social network linked to individual-level trading records builds evidence of this connection. To credibly estimate causal peer effects, I exploit the staggered entry of retail brokerages into partnerships with the social trading web platform and compare trader activity before and after exposure to these new social conditions. Access to the social network nearly doubles the magnitude of a trader’s disposition effect. Traders connected in the network develop correlated levels of the disposition effect, a finding that can be replicated using workhorse data from a large discount brokerage. Received September 8, 2015; accepted May 3, 2016 by Editor Stefan Nagel.

We develop a stochastic, general equilibrium, two-country model of trade and macroeconomic dynamics. Productivity differs across individual, monopolistically competitive firms in each country.

Despite the importance of employer-to-employer (EE) flows to our understanding of labor market and business cycle dynamics, the literature has lacked a comprehensive and representative measure of the size and character of these flows. To construct the first reliable measures of EE flows for the United States, this paper exploits the "dependent interviewing" techniques introduced in the Current Population Survey in 1994. The paper concludes that EE flows are large: On average 2.6 percent of employed persons change employers each month, a flow more than twice as large as that from employment to unemployment. Indeed, on-the-job search appears to be an important element in hiring, as nearly two-fifths of new jobs started between 1994 and 2003 represented employer changes. EE flows are also markedly procyclical, although the cyclicality is concentrated around the recession: EE flows did not increase as the labor market tightened between 1994 and 2000, but they did drop sharply as the labor market loosened during the period 2001 through 2003. We view the uneven cyclical pattern of EE flows as a pattern to be incorporated into future models.

Shadow bank market share in residential mortgage origination nearly doubled from 2007-2015, with particularly dramatic growth among online "fintech" lenders.We study how two forces, regulatory differences and technological advantages, contributed to this growth.Difference in difference tests exploiting geographical heterogeneity induced by four specific increases in regulatory burden-capital requirements, mortgage servicing rights, mortgage-related lawsuits, and the movement of supervision to Office of Comptroller and Currency following closure of the Office of Thrift Supervision--all reveal that traditional banks contracted in markets where they faced more regulatory constraints; shadow banks partially filled these gaps.Fintech lenders appear to offer a higher quality product and charge a premium of 14-16 basis points.Relative to other lenders, they seem to use different information to set interest rates.A quantitative model of mortgage lending suggests that regulation accounts for roughly 60% of shadow bank growth, while technology accounts for roughly 30%.

We propose a new model for measuring uncertainty and its effects on the economy, based on a large vector autoregression with stochastic volatility driven by common factors representing macroeconomic and financial uncertainty. The uncertainty measures reflect changes in both the conditional mean and volatility of the variables, and their impact on the economy can be assessed within the same framework. Estimates with U.S. data show substantial commonality in uncertainty, with sizable effects of uncertainty on key macroeconomic and financial variables. However, historical decompositions show a limited role of uncertainty shocks in macroeconomic fluctuations.

We develop a model of nominal and real bond yield curves that has four stochastic drivers but seven factors: three factors primarily determine the cross-section of yields, whereas four volatility factors solely determine risk premia. The model is estimated using nominal Treasury yields, survey inflation forecasts, and inflation swap rates and has attractive empirical properties. Time-varying volatility is particularly apparent in short-term real rates and expected inflation. Also, we detail the different economic forces that drive short- and long-term real and inflation risk premia and provide evidence that Treasury inflation-protected securities were undervalued prior to 2004 and during the recent financial crisis. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.

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