We estimate a Bayesian learning model in order to assess the value of health plan performance information and the extent to which the explicit provision of information about product quality alters consumer behavior. We take advantage of a natural experiment in which health plan performance...

This paper develops a small forward-looking macroeconomic model where the Federal Reserve estimates the level of potential output in real time by running a regression on past output data. The Fed's perceived output gap is used as an input to the monetary policy rule while the true output gap...

Significant nonlinearities are found in several cyclical components macroeconomic time series across countries. Standard equilibrium models of business cycles successfully explain most first and second moments of these time series. Nevertheless, this paper shows that a model of this class cannot...

This paper examines the incidence and welfare costs of inflation in the presence of financial market frictions and home production. The results suggest that financing constraints on firms' working capital expenditures significantly increase the welfare costs relative to the standard...

We estimate the rate of embodied technological change directly from plant-level manufacturing data on current output and input choices along with histories on their vintages of equipment investment. Our estimates range between 8 and 17 percent for the typical U.S. manufacturing plant during the...

In this paper, I develop an industry-level index of capital-embodied R&D by capturing the extent of research and development directed at the capital goods in which a given industry invests. Compiling and adjusting data from the National Science Foundation and Commerce Department, I construct...

According to the Monetary Control Act of 1980, the Federal Reserve Banks must establish fees for their priced services to recover all operating costs as well as imputed costs of capital and taxes that would be incurred by a profit-making firm. The calculations required to establish these imputed...

Until recently, little evidence suggested that the computer revolution of recent decades has had much impact on aggregate economic growth. Analysis at the worker level has found evidence that use of computers is associated with higher wages. Although some research questions whether this finding...

This paper documents that daily stock returns of both firms and industries are more dispersed when the overall stock market rises than when it falls. This positive relation is conceptually distinct from - and appears unrelated to - asymmetric return correlations. I argue that the source of the...

We examine the rate of employment and the household income of the working-age population (aged 25-61) with and without disabilities over the business cycles of the 1980s and 1990s using data from the March Current Population Survey and the National Health Interview Survey. In general, we find...