The founding of the Federal Reserve System in 1914 led to a substantial change in the behavior of nominal interest rates. The authors examine the timing of this change and the speed with which it was effected. They then use data on the term structure of interest rates to determine how...

This paper examines popular advice on portfolio allocation among cash, bonds, and stocks. It documents that this advice is inconsistent with the mutual-fund separation theorem, which states that all investors should hold the same composition of risky assets. In contrast to the theorem, popular...

This paper examines Ricardian equivalence in a world in which taxes arenot lump sum, but are levied on risky labor income. It shows that themarginal propensity to consume out of a tax cut, coupled with a futureincome tax increase, can be substantial under plausible assumptions. Indeed, the MPC...