BHC expansion into nonbank financial activities may increase or decrease the standard deviation of BHC ROA and/or the probability of bankruptcy of the BHC. Using individual firm data and a new application of a simulated merger methodology, I find the standard deviation minimizing and bankruptcy...

This paper takes the parameters in central bank loss functions as fundamental preferences to be estimated from the data. It is these preferences (along with target values) that define the policy regime in operation and that potentially change with senior central bank appointments. Optimizing...

This paper examines the welfare costs of inflation in the presence of financial market frictions. The results suggest that financing constraints on firms' working capital expenditures significantly increase the welfare costs relative to the standard Cooley-Hansen (1989) cash-in-advance...

An “expansionary” monetary policy that increases the growth rate of bank reserves is generally believed by policy makers to induce a “liquidity effect”, or a persistent decline in short-term nominal interest rates, that stimulates real activity. Christiano, et al. (1991,1995,1997) have...

Nominal income rules for monetary policy have long been debated, but two issues are of particular recent interest. First, there are questions about the performance of such rules over a range of plausible empirical models-especially models with and without rational inflation expectations. Second,...

This paper introduces a model of international lender of last resort (ILLR) activity under asymmetric information. The ILLR is unable to distinguish between runs due to debtor insolvency and those which are the result of pure sunspots. Nevertheless, the ILLR can elicit the underlying state of...

Since Freeman and Medoff's (1984) comprehensive review of what unions do, union density in the U.S. has fallen substantially. During the same period, employer provision of health insurance has undergone substantial changes in extent and form. Using individual data from various supplements to the...

This paper attempts to determine the extent to which common external shocks explain simultaneous currency crises. We define crises on a country by country basis using a new criterion that takes into account variations in the volatility of exchange rates over time and across countries. Using a...

This paper presents techniques to solve for optimal simple monetary policy rules in rational expectations models, assuming discretion. The techniques described are notable for the flexibility they provide over the structure of the policy rule being solved for. Specifically, not all state...